Rebecca Helferich Clarke
Encyclopedia
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and violist
Violist
-Notable violists:A* Julia Rebekka Adler * Sir Hugh Allen , conductor* Kris Allen * Johann Andreas Amon * Paul Angerer , composer* Steven Ansell * Atar Arad * Cecil Aronowitz...
best known for her chamber music
Chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
featuring the viola
Viola
The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...
. She was born in Harrow
Harrow, London
Harrow is an area in the London Borough of Harrow, northwest London, United Kingdom. It is a suburban area and is situated 12.2 miles northwest of Charing Cross...
and studied at the Royal Academy of Music
Royal Academy of Music
The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...
and Royal College of Music
Royal College of Music
The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...
in London, later becoming one of the first female professional orchestral players. Stranded in the United States at the outbreak of World War II, she settled permanently in New York City and married composer and pianist James Friskin in 1944. Clarke died at her home in New York at the age of 93.
Although Clarke wrote little, due in part to her ideas about the role
Gender role
Gender roles refer to the set of social and behavioral norms that are considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex in the context of a specific culture, which differ widely between cultures and over time...
of a female composer, her work was recognised for its compositional skill. Most of her works have yet to be published (or have only recently been published), and were largely forgotten after she stopped composing. Scholarship and interest in her compositions revived in 1976. The Rebecca Clarke Society was established in 2000 to promote the study and performance of her music.
Early life
London Borough of Harrow
The London Borough of Harrow is a London borough of north-west London. It borders Hertfordshire to the north and other London boroughs: Hillingdon to the west, Ealing to the south, Brent to the south-east and Barnet to the east.-History:...
, England, to Joseph Thacher Clarke, an American, and his German wife, Agnes Paulina Marie Amalie Helferich. Her father was interested in music, and had her take up the violin at age nine. She began her studies at the Royal Academy of Music
Royal Academy of Music
The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...
in 1903, but was withdrawn by her father in 1905 after teacher Percy Hilder Miles
Percy Hilder Miles
Percy Hilder Miles was an English composer, conductor and violinist. Among his students at the Royal Academy of Music was Rebecca Clarke, and among Miles' associates was Lionel Tertis.Miles had earlier been a student at the Royal Academy of Music, which he joined in June 1893 and where his teachers...
proposed to her (he later left her his Stradivarius
Stradivarius
The name Stradivarius is associated with violins built by members of the Stradivari family, particularly Antonio Stradivari. According to their reputation, the quality of their sound has defied attempts to explain or reproduce, though this belief is controversial...
violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
in his will). She made the first of many visits to the United States shortly after leaving the Royal Academy. She then attended the Royal College of Music
Royal College of Music
The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...
from 1907 to 1910, becoming one of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford
Charles Villiers Stanford
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford was an Irish composer who was particularly notable for his choral music. He was professor at the Royal College of Music and University of Cambridge.- Life :...
's first female composition students. At Stanford's urging she shifted her focus from the violin to the viola, just as the latter was coming to be seen as a legitimate solo instrument. She studied with Lionel Tertis
Lionel Tertis
Lionel Tertis, CBE was an English violist and one of the first viola players to find international fame.Tertis was born in West Hartlepool, the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants, and initially studied the violin in Leipzig and at the Royal Academy of Music in London...
, who was considered by some the greatest violist of the day. In 1910 she composed a setting of Chinese poetry, called "Tears", in collaboration with a group of fellow students at RCM. She also sang under the direction of Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
in a student ensemble organized by Clarke to study and perform Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition...
's music.
Following her criticism of his extra-marital affairs, Clarke's father turned her out of the house and cut off her funds. She had to leave the Royal College in 1910 and supported herself through her viola playing. Clarke became one of the first female professional orchestral musicians when she was selected by Sir Henry Wood
Henry Wood
Henry Wood was a British conductor.Henry Wood may also refer to:* Henry C. Wood , American Civil War Medal of Honor recipient* Henry Wood , English cricketer...
to play in the Queen's Hall Orchestra in 1912. In 1916 she moved to the United States to continue her performing career. A short, lyrical piece for viola and piano entitled Morpheus, composed under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
of "Anthony Trent", was premiered at her 1918 joint recital with cellist May Muklé in New York City. Reviewers praised the "Trent", largely ignoring the works credited to Clarke premiered in the same recital. Her compositional career peaked in a brief period, beginning with the viola sonata
Viola sonata
The viola sonata is a sonata for viola, sometimes with other instruments, usually piano. The earliest viola sonatas are difficult to date for a number of reasons:...
she entered in a 1919 competition sponsored by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge aka Liz Coolidge , born Elizabeth Penn Sprague, was an American pianist and patron of music, especially of chamber music....
, Clarke's neighbour and a patron
Patronage
Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows to another. In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings or popes have provided to musicians, painters, and sculptors...
of the arts. In a field of 72 entrants, Clarke's sonata tied for first place with a composition by Ernest Bloch
Ernest Bloch
Ernest Bloch was a Swiss-born American composer.-Life:Bloch was born in Geneva and began playing the violin at age 9. He began composing soon afterwards. He studied music at the conservatory in Brussels, where his teachers included the celebrated Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe...
. Coolidge later declared Bloch the winner. Reporters speculated that "Rebecca Clarke" was only a pseudonym for Bloch himself, or at least that it could not have been Clarke who wrote these pieces, as the idea that a woman could write such a work was socially inconceivable. The sonata was well received and had its first performance at the Berkshire music festival in 1919. In 1921 Clarke again made an impressive showing in Coolidge's composition competition with her piano trio
Piano trio
A piano trio is a group of piano and two other instruments, usually a violin and a cello, or a piece of music written for such a group. It is one of the most common forms found in classical chamber music...
, though again failed to take the prize. A 1923 rhapsody
Rhapsody (music)
A rhapsody in music is a one-movement work that is episodic yet integrated, free-flowing in structure, featuring a range of highly contrasted moods, colour and tonality. An air of spontaneous inspiration and a sense of improvisation make it freer in form than a set of variations...
for cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
and piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
followed, sponsored by Coolidge, making Clarke the only female recipient of Coolidge's patronage. These three works represent the height of Clarke's compositional career.
Later life and marriage
Clarke began a career as a solo and ensemble performer in London in 1924 after completing a world tour in 1922-23. In 1927 she helped form the English Ensemble, a piano quartet that included her, Marjorie Hayward, Kathleen Long and May Muklé. She also performed on several recordings in the 1920s and 1930s, and participated in BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
music broadcasts. Her compositional output greatly decreased during this period. However, she continued to perform, participating in the Paris Colonial Exhibition in 1931 as part of the English Ensemble. Between 1927 and 1933 she was romantically involved with the British baritone
Baritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
, John Goss, who was eight years her junior and married at the time. He had premiered several of her mature songs, two of which were dedicated to him, "June Twilight" and "The Seal Man". Her "Tiger, Tiger", finished at the time the relationship was ending, proved to be her last composition for solo voice until the early 1940s.
At the outbreak of World War II, Clarke was in the US vsiting her two brothers, and was unable to obtain a visa to return to Britain. She lived for a while with her brothers' families and then in 1942 took a position as a governess for a family in Connecticut. She composed 10 works between 1939 and 1942, including her Passacaglia on an Old English Tune. She had first met her husband, James Friskin (a composer, concert pianist and founding member of the Juilliard School
Juilliard School
The Juilliard School, located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, United States, is a performing arts conservatory which was established in 1905...
faculty), when they were both students at the Royal College of Music. They renewed their friendship after a chance meeting on a Manhattan street in 1944 and married in September of that year when both were in their late 50s. According to musicologist Liane Curtis, Friskin was "a man who gave [Clarke] a sense of deep satisfaction and equilibrium."
Clarke has been described by Curtis as one of the most important British composers in the period between World War I and World War II, and by Stephen Banfield as the most distinguished British female composer of the inter-war generation. However, her later output was sporadic. She suffered from dysthymia, a chronic form of depression
Mood disorder
Mood disorder is the term designating a group of diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classification system where a disturbance in the person's mood is hypothesized to be the main underlying feature...
; the lack of encouragement—sometimes outright discouragement—she received for her work also made her reluctant to compose. Clarke did not consider herself able to balance her personal life and the demands of composition: "I can't do it unless it's the first thing I think of every morning when I wake and the last thing I think of every night before I go to sleep." After her marriage, she stopped composing, despite the encouragement of her husband, although she continued working on arrangements until shortly before her death. She also stopped performing.
Clarke sold the Stradivarius she had been bequeathed, and established the May Muklé prize at the Royal Academy. The prize is still awarded annually to an outstanding cellist. After her husband's death in 1967, Clarke began writing a memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
, entitled I Had a Father Too (or the Mustard Spoon); it was completed in 1973 but never published. In it she describes her early life, marked by frequent beatings from her father and strained family relations which affected her perceptions of her proper place in life. Clarke died in 1979 at her home in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
at the age of 93, and was cremated
Cremation
Cremation is the process of reducing bodies to basic chemical compounds such as gasses and bone fragments. This is accomplished through high-temperature burning, vaporization and oxidation....
.
Music
A large portion of Clarke's music features the viola, as she was a professional performer for many years. Much of her output was written for herself and the all-female chamber ensembles she played in, including the Norah Clench Quartet, the English Ensemble, and the d'Aranyi Sisters. She also toured worldwide, particularly with cellist May Muklé. Her works were strongly influenced by several trends in 20th century classical music20th century classical music
20th century classical music was without a dominant style and highly diverse.-Introduction:At the turn of the century, music was characteristically late Romantic in style. Composers such as Gustav Mahler and Jean Sibelius were pushing the bounds of Post-Romantic Symphonic writing...
. Clarke also knew many leading composers of the day, including Bloch and Ravel, with whom her work has been compared.
The impressionism
Impressionist music
Impressionism in music was a tendency in European classical music, mainly in France, which appeared in the late nineteenth century and continued into the middle of the twentieth century. Similarly to its precursor in the visual arts, musical impressionism focuses on a suggestion and an atmosphere...
of Debussy is often mentioned in connection with Clarke's work, particularly its lush textures and modernistic harmonies
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
. The Viola Sonata
Viola Sonata (Rebecca Clarke)
Rebecca Clarke's Viola Sonata is first known of in 1919, when the composer was 23 years old. Clarke had moved to the United States in 1916, after being disowned by her father. She had been supporting herself with some success as a soloist....
(published in the same year as the Bloch and the Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
Viola Sonata) is an example of this, with its pentatonic
Pentatonic scale
A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave in contrast to a heptatonic scale such as the major scale and minor scale...
opening theme, thick harmonies, emotionally intense nature, and dense, rhythm
Rhythm
Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...
ically complex texture. The Sonata remains a part of standard repertoire for the viola. Morpheus
Morpheus (Rebecca Clarke)
Morpheus is a composition for viola and piano by the English composer and violist Rebecca Clarke. It was written in 1917 when Clarke was pursuing a performing career in the United States. The piece shows off the impressionistic musical language Clarke had developed, modeled on the music of...
, composed a year earlier, was her first expansive work, after over a decade of songs and miniatures. The Rhapsody that Coolidge sponsored is Clarke's most ambitious work: it is roughly 23 minutes long, with complex musical ideas and ambiguous tonalities contributing to the varying moods of the piece. In contrast, "Midsummer Moon", written the following year, is a light miniature, with a flutter-like solo violin line.
In addition to her chamber music for strings, Clarke wrote many songs. Nearly all of Clarke's early pieces are for solo voice and piano. Her 1933 "Tiger, Tiger", a setting of Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
's poem "The Tyger
The Tyger
"The Tyger" is a poem by the English poet William Blake. It was published as part of his collection Songs of Experience in 1794 . It is one of Blake's best-known and most analyzed poems...
", is dark and brooding, almost expressionist
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
. She worked on it for five years to the exclusion of other works during her tumultuous relationship with John Goss and revised it in 1972. Most of her songs, however, are lighter in nature. Her earliest works were parlour songs
Parlour music
Parlour music is a type of popular music which, as the name suggests, is intended to be performed in the parlours of middle class homes by amateur singers and pianists...
, and she went on to build up a body of work drawn primarily from classic texts by Yeats
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...
, Masefield
John Masefield
John Edward Masefield, OM, was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967...
, and A.E. Housman.
During 1939 to 1942, the last prolific period near the end of her compositional career, her style became more clear and contrapuntal
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
, with emphasis on motivic
Motif (music)
In music, a motif or motive is a short musical idea, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition....
elements and tonal structures, the hallmarks of neoclassicism
Neoclassicism (music)
Neoclassicism in music was a twentieth-century trend, particularly current in the period between the two World Wars, in which composers sought to return to aesthetic precepts associated with the broadly defined concept of "classicism", namely order, balance, clarity, economy, and emotional restraint...
. Dumka (1941), a recently published work for violin, viola, and piano, reflects the Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
an folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
styles of Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
and Martinů
Bohuslav Martinu
Bohuslav Martinů was a prolific Czech composer of modern classical music. He was of Czech and Rumanian ancestry. Martinů wrote six symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. Martinů became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic...
. The "Passacaglia
Passacaglia
The passacaglia is a musical form that originated in early seventeenth-century Spain and is still used by contemporary composers. It is usually of a serious character and is often, but not always, based on a bass-ostinato and written in triple metre....
on an Old English Tune", also from 1941 and premiered by Clarke herself, is based on a theme attributed to Thomas Tallis
Thomas Tallis
Thomas Tallis was an English composer. Tallis flourished as a church musician in 16th century Tudor England. He occupies a primary place in anthologies of English church music, and is considered among the best of England's early composers. He is honoured for his original voice in English...
which appears throughout the work. The piece is modal in flavor, mainly in the Dorian mode
Dorian mode
Due to historical confusion, Dorian mode or Doric mode can refer to three very different musical modes or diatonic scales, the Greek, the medieval, and the modern.- Greek Dorian mode :...
but venturing into the seldom-heard Phrygian mode
Phrygian mode
The Phrygian mode can refer to three different musical modes: the ancient Greek tonos or harmonia sometimes called Phrygian, formed on a particular set octave species or scales; the Medieval Phrygian mode, and the modern conception of the Phrygian mode as a diatonic scale, based on the latter...
. The piece is dedicated to "BB", ostensibly Clarke's niece Magdalen; scholars speculate that the dedication is more likely referring to Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
, who organised a concert commemorating the death of Clarke's friend and major influence Frank Bridge
Frank Bridge
Frank Bridge was an English composer and violist.-Life:Bridge was born in Brighton and studied at the Royal College of Music in London from 1899 to 1903 under Charles Villiers Stanford and others...
. The Prelude, Allegro, and Pastorale, also composed in 1941, is another neoclassically-influenced piece, written for clarinet and viola (originally for her brother and sister-in-law).
Clarke composed no large scale works such as symphonies. Her total output of compositions comprises 52 songs, 11 choral works, 21 chamber pieces, the Piano Trio, and the Viola Sonata. Her work was all but forgotten for a long period of time, but interest in it was revived in 1976 following a radio broadcast in celebration of her ninetieth birthday. Over half of Clarke's compositions remain unpublished and in the personal possession of her heirs, along with most of her writings. However, in the early 2000s more of her works were printed and recorded. Examples of recent publications include two string quartet
String quartet
A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...
s and Morpheus, published in 2002.
Modern reception of Clarke's work has been generally positive. A 1981 review of her Viola Sonata called it a "thoughtful, well constructed piece" from a relatively obscure composer; a 1985 review noted its "emotional intensity and use of dark tone colours". Andrew Achenbach, in his review of a Helen Callus
Helen Callus
Helen Callus is a British violist who currently teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara.Callus studied with Ian Jewel at the Royal Academy of Music in London, earning an Honorary ARAM . She then continued her studies at the Peabody Conservatory, where she served as the teaching...
recording of several Clarke works, referred to Morpheus as "striking" and "languorous". Laurence Vittes noted that Clarke's "Lullaby" was "exceedingly sweet and tender". A 1987 review concluded that "it seems astonishing that such splendidly written and deeply moving music should have lain in obscurity all these years".
Rebecca Clarke Society
The Rebecca Clarke Society was established in September 2000 to promote performance, scholarship, and awareness of the works of Rebecca Clarke. Founded by musicologists Liane Curtis and Jessie Ann Owens and based in the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis UniversityBrandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
, the Society has promoted recording and scholarship of Clarke's work, including several world premiere performances, recordings of unpublished material, and numerous journal publications.
The Society made available previously unpublished compositions from Clarke's estate. "Binnorie", a twelve-minute song based on Celt
Celt
The Celts were a diverse group of tribal societies in Iron Age and Roman-era Europe who spoke Celtic languages.The earliest archaeological culture commonly accepted as Celtic, or rather Proto-Celtic, was the central European Hallstatt culture , named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria....
ic folklore, was discovered in 1997, and not premiered until 2001. Over 25 previously unknown works have been published since the establishment of the Society. Several of Clarke's chamber works, including the expansive Rhapsody for cello and piano, and Cortège, her only piano work, were first recorded in 2000 on the Dutton label, using material from the Clarke estate. In 2002, the Society organised and sponsored the world premieres of the 1907 and 1909 violin sonatas.
The head of the Rebecca Clarke Society, Liane Curtis, is the editor of A Rebecca Clarke Reader, originally published by Indiana University Press in 2004. The book was withdrawn from circulation by the publisher following complaints from the copyright holders about the inclusion musical examples. However, the Reader has since been reissued by the Rebecca Clarke Society itself.
Selected works
For a complete listing, see List of compositions by Rebecca Clarke.Chamber music
- 2 Pieces: Lullaby and Grotesque for viola (or violin) and cello (ca. 1916)
- MorpheusMorpheus (Rebecca Clarke)Morpheus is a composition for viola and piano by the English composer and violist Rebecca Clarke. It was written in 1917 when Clarke was pursuing a performing career in the United States. The piece shows off the impressionistic musical language Clarke had developed, modeled on the music of...
for viola and piano (1917–1918) - SonataViola Sonata (Rebecca Clarke)Rebecca Clarke's Viola Sonata is first known of in 1919, when the composer was 23 years old. Clarke had moved to the United States in 1916, after being disowned by her father. She had been supporting herself with some success as a soloist....
for viola (or cello) and piano (1919) - Piano Trio (1921)
- Rhapsody for cello and piano (1923)
- Passacaglia on an Old English Tune for viola (or cello) and piano (?1940–1941)
- Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale for viola and clarinet (1941)
Vocal
- Shiv and the Grasshopper for voice and piano (1904); words from The Jungle BookThe Jungle BookThe Jungle Book is a collection of stories by British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling. The stories were first published in magazines in 1893–4. The original publications contain illustrations, some by Rudyard's father, John Lockwood Kipling. Kipling was born in India and spent the first six...
by Rudyard KiplingRudyard KiplingJoseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature... - Shy One for voice and piano (1912); words by William Butler YeatsWilliam Butler YeatsWilliam Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...
- He That Dwelleth in the Secret Place (Psalm 91Psalm 91Psalm 91 , referred to by its Latin title Qui habitat , is known as the Psalm of Protection. As a religious song, this Psalm is commonly invoked in times of hardship...
) for soloists and mixed chorus (1921) - The Seal Man for voice and piano (1922); words by John MasefieldJohn MasefieldJohn Edward Masefield, OM, was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967...
- The Aspidistra for voice and piano (1929); words by Claude FlightClaude FlightWalter Claude Flight also known as Claude Flight or W. Claude Flight was a British artist who pioneered and popularised the linoleum cut technique. He also painted, illustrated and made wood cuts. He was the son of Walter Flight.Flight was a fervent promoter of the linoleum cut technique from the...
- The Tiger for voice and piano (1929–1933); words by William BlakeWilliam BlakeWilliam Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
- God Made a Tree for voice and piano (1954); words by Katherine Kendall
Further reading
- Ann M. Woodward, program notes to Clarke's Sonata for Viola and Piano, J. & W. Chester, Ltd., 1985.