A year or so ago, I was speaking with a musically knowledgeable acquaintance
when the subject of women composers arose.  My acquaintance suggested
that if I was interested in women composers, I might enjoy the music of
the English composer Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979), a composer with whom I
was unfamiliar.  I replied something to the effect that I did not select
music based on the sex of the composer.  However, the conversation stayed
with me, so that I was willing to plunk down some "greenbacks" for a CD
containing Clarke's piano trio and her sonata for viola and piano (ASV
catalog no.  DCA 932) featuring a superb performance by the members of
the Endellion quartet and pianist Martin Roscoe.  This CD (on sale now
at http://www.berkshirerecordoutlet.com) is a definite keeper: these are
both wonderful pieces (um, for a girl?).  It is indeed unfortunate that
her life did not lend itself to more composition, for despite living
into her tenth decade, Clarke's compositional output is small.  Indeed,
after the trio, composed in 1921, she wrote little of significance- aside
from a couple of dozen songs- so that her reputation rests largely on
these two pieces.  Probably her output was circumscribed by prevailing
attitudes of the suitability of women to musical composition.  She once
performed a concert featuring several of her own compositions, but she
substituted a man's name for her own when listing the composer in the
program: she thought it "silly to have my name on the program yet again",
a stance I somehow doubt would have occurred to Wagner.

One would scarcely imagine that the two works on this CD were written
by a member of the sex known in Victorian times for fainting at the sight
of a mouse.  Both are forthright, powerful, lyrical and muscially complex
(but not, I suspect, notably technically difficult, which may be surprising
given that Clarke was known as a vituouso violist).  The trio particularly
seems to me to represent a sort of triumph over inner turmoil.

The viola sonata has an interesting history, which I will quote from the
CD's liner notes.

   "she [Clarke] became friends with Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge,
   the American patroness of modern chamber music.  Mrs Coolidge
   had established a festival at Pittsfield, Massachusetts and in
   1919 was having a composing competition for a work for viola and
   piano. There were 73 entires, all entered anonymously.  The six
   judges were equally divided between two works, the casting vote
   being given to Mrs Cooldige who chose what turned out to be
   Bloch's Suite for viola and piano. The jury insisted that the
   runner-up be indentified ... "And you should have seen their
   faces when they saw it was written by a woman" Mrs Coolidge later
   told Clarke."

The sonata may be surprising in that a pre-eminent violist wrote her
only sonata in which the viola and piano share the limelight.  The
numerous variations on her theme are audibly recognizeable, unlike many
20th century variations which in my mind require studying the score to
understand that the music is in fact a theme and variation.  The sonata
strikes me to as unpredictable, but achieves unpredictability in a
musically and emotionally satisfying way, and not in a determined effort
to be probabilistic.

Clarke's best known work, her piano trio, ranks in my mind with the
greatest of the genre: here she need not take second seat to Schubert,
Beethoven, Brahms, or Shostakovich.  It exercises nearly the full dynamic
range of the instruments, but without dramatizing that it is doing so.
The work is not for the faint of heart: its rhythmic complexity combined
with its effective use of dissonance help make it a hugely powerful work
with drama, mystery, and a sense of terror worthy of Shostakovich.

Regarding the question of why Clarke did not compose more, she gave an
answer of sorts in an interview that is excerpted in an excellent article
by musicologist Liane Curtis that appeared originally in The Musical
Times in May 1996 (http://www.rebeccaclarke.org/identity.pdf).

"I wanted to, but I couldn't.  I had lots of sketches of things.  I know
and I miss it, because there's nothing in the world more thrilling- or
practically nothing ...  But you can't do it - at least I can't- maybe
that's where a woman's different - 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 - I've got to have it in my mind all
the time and if one allows too many other things to take over one is
liable not to be able to do it, that's been my experience."

Clarke was greatly esteemed for her playing in chamber music; her partners
included Arthur Schnabel, Casals, Thibaud, Artur Rubinstein (who referred
to her as "the glorious Rebecca Clarke"), Percy Grainger, Myra Hess, and
George Szell.  Nevertheless, history should remember her most for her
splendid, but lamentably few, compositions.

Larry Sherwood