Rebecca Clarke (composer)
[1] Rebecca Clarke had a German mother and an American father, and spent substantial periods of her life in the United States, where she permanently settled after World War II.
Stranded in the United States at the outbreak of World War II, she married composer and pianist James Friskin in 1944.
[4] She started composing at an early age[5] and began her studies at the Royal Academy of Music in 1903, but was abruptly withdrawn by her father in 1905 after her harmony teacher Percy Hilder Miles proposed to her.
Clarke (along with Jessie Grimson) became one of the first female professional orchestral musicians when she was selected by Sir Henry Wood to play in the Queen's Hall Orchestra in 1912.
[4][9] She was highly sought after as a violist, playing with Artur Schnabel, Pablo Casals, Jascha Heifetz, Jacques Thibaud, Guilhermina Suggia, Arthur Rubinstein, Pierre Monteux, and George Szell, among others.
In 1918, she premiered her short, lyrical piece for viola and piano titled Morpheus, composed under the pseudonym of 'Anthony Trent,' at her joint recital with cellist May Mukle in New York City.
[5] Her compositional career peaked in a brief period, beginning with the viola sonata she entered in a 1919 competition sponsored by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, Clarke's neighbour and a patron of the arts.
[10] In 1927 she helped form the English Ensemble, a piano quartet that included herself, Marjorie Hayward, Kathleen Long and May Mukle.
At the outbreak of World War II, Clarke was in the US visiting her two brothers, and was unable to obtain a visa to return to Britain.
[3] She had first met James Friskin, a composer, concert pianist, and founding member of the Juilliard School faculty, and later to become her husband, when they were both students at the Royal College of Music.
According to musicologist Liane Curtis, Friskin was "a man who gave [Clarke] a sense of deep satisfaction and equilibrium.
[2] It has been suggested by musicologist Liane Curtis that Clarke had dysthymia, a chronic form of depression;[15] the lack of encouragement—sometimes outright discouragement—she received for her work also made her reluctant to compose.
[16] After her husband's death in 1967, Clarke began writing a memoir, titled I Had a Father Too (or the Mustard Spoon); it was completed in 1973 but never published.
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.
[2] During 1939 to 1942, the last prolific period near the end of her compositional career, her style became more clear and contrapuntal, with emphasis on motivic elements and tonal structures, the hallmarks of neoclassicism.
Dumka (1941), a recently published work for violin, viola, and piano, reflects the Eastern European folk styles of Bartók and Martinů.
[9] The "Passacaglia on an Old English Tune", also from 1941 and premiered by Clarke herself, is based on a theme attributed to Thomas Tallis which appears throughout the work.
[18] 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).
Her total output of compositions comprises 52 songs, 11 choral works, 21 chamber pieces, the Piano Trio, and the Viola Sonata.
[9] 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.
[21] Andrew Achenbach, in his review of a Helen Callus recording of several Clarke works, referred to Morpheus as "striking" and "languorous".
Founded by musicologists Liane Curtis and Jessie Ann Owens and based in the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, the Society has promoted recording and scholarship of Clarke's work, including several world premiere performances, recordings of unpublished material, and numerous journal publications.
[29] Chamber music Vocal Choral Media related to Rebecca Helferich Clarke at Wikimedia Commons
