Rebecca Clarke - Sonata for Viola and Piano

Clarke with a viola in 1919

Rebecca Helferich Clarke (27 August 1886 – 13 October 1979) was a British-American classical composer and violist. Internationally renowned as a viola virtuoso, she also became one of the first female professional orchestral players. Born in England (of a German mother and an American father), Rebecca Clarke claimed both British and American nationalities and spent substantial periods of her long life in the United States, where she permanently settled after World War II. She was born in Harrow and studied at the Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music in London. Stranded in the United States at the outbreak of World War II, she married composer and pianist James Friskin in 1944. Clarke died at her home in New York at the age of 93.

Although Clarke's output was not large, her work was recognised for its compositional skill and artistic power. Some of her works have yet to be published (and many were only recently published); those that were published in her lifetime 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.

 

Viola Sonata

 

Performers: Antoine Tamestit (viola), Ying-Chien Lin (piano) 00:00 – I. Impetuoso 07:20 – II. Vivace 11:09 – III. Adagio

 

Rebecca Clarke's Sonata for Viola and Piano is first known of in 1919, when the composer was 33 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. The first reference to the Viola Sonata was upon its submission to a composition competition sponsored by Clarke's neighbor, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. Out of 72 entries, Clarke's Sonata tied for first with a piece by the Swiss composer, Ernest Bloch. In the end Bloch was declared the winner, despite all the judges favoring Clarke—it was decided that declaring Clarke the winner would smack of favoritism on Coolidge's part. It was also suspected by some that the name "Rebecca Clarke" was a pen-name of a male composer, as few imagined the possibility of a competent female writing such music. The piece had its première at the Berkshire Music Festival in 1919, and was well received. It, along with the Piano Trio of 1921 and the Rhapsody for cello and piano of 1923, represent the zenith of her compositional career, though afterwards Clarke wrote hardly any more music. The sonata was first published in 1921 by Chester Music. Clarke gives us an incipit on the first page of the sonata, a quote from La Nuit de mai (1835) by the French poet Alfred de Musset: Poète, prends ton luth; le vin de la jeunesse Fermente cette nuit dans les veines de Dieu. Poet, take up your lute; the wine of youth this night is fermenting in the veins of God. The sonata is cast in three movements. The first movement, marked Impetuoso, begins with a vibrant fanfare from the viola, before moving on into a melodic and harmonic language reminiscent of Achille-Claude Debussy and Ralph Vaughan Williams, two important influences on Clarke's music. Her language is at times very chromatic and shows the invention of Debussy in the use of modes and the whole-tone scale. The second movement, marked Vivace, makes use of many interesting 'special effects' like harmonics and pizzicato. The final movement, Adagio, is both pensive and sensual in its language. However, Clarke works in a special surprise: a segue into a restatement of themes from the first movement. The sonata ends in a lush and brilliant pyrotechnical display, showing off the full range of the viola, as well as the piano (whose part is of equal difficulty.) Because of the many different obstacles the piece presents, as well as its highly idiomatic writing, it is becoming more and more a staple of the violist's repertoire. [Wikipedia.org]