Rebecca Clarke
America’s musical press in 1919 was awash with rumours about a new work – Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata. It had just tied for first place in the prestigious Berkshire Festival Chamber Music Competition, for which all entries had to be submitted anonymously. The jurors had speculated that the Sonata had been written by Ravel. When Clarke was revealed as the composer, they were astonished. ‘You should have seen their faces when they saw it was by a woman,’ the Festival’s patron confided to Clarke. The Sonata was hailed in the press as a work of ‘greatest genius’, compared favourably to pieces by Debussy.
When composing at her best, Clarke felt ‘flooded with a wonderful feeling of power’
The Sonata has remained one of Clarke’s best-known works and is now a staple of the viola repertoire. It also spearheaded the ‘rediscovery’ of her music in the 1980s. Although read, in its entirety, ‘See James Friskin’. But in 1927, her entry in the same dictionary had been extensive, listing all her major works including the Sonata, her Piano Trio (1921) and Cello Rhapsody (1923) and a substantial quantity of songs. Like so many women composers, Clarke’s music was slowly excised from the historical record and is only now reclaiming a place in concert halls.
