Exploring the VIOLIN Music of Rebecca Clarke

May 7, 2024, 10:21 AM · Rebecca Clarke is one of the female composers that most people who either play viola or know violists know, because of her famous viola sonata. The excellent news for violinists is that Dr. Cora Cooper has been working with Clarke’s musical executor, Christopher Johnson, to publish her little-known works for violin! These include two sonatas, several chamber pieces, and even some short pieces suitable for an early intermediate level student. I had the opportunity to sit down and talk to Dr. Cooper about her experiences discovering and working with these pieces.

Claire Allen: First, for those of us violinists who only know Rebecca Clarke as the composer who wrote that one viola sonata, what can you tell us about her?

Dr. Cora Cooper: Clarke was born in 1886 in Harrow, England and died in 1979. The justly famous viola sonata was written in 1919, during her first American tour, and sent off to a competition sponsored by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. The jury deadlocked between this piece and another - all submitted anonymously, and Sprague broke the tie in favor of what turned out to be Ernest Bloch’s Suite. But the judges liked the other piece so much that they insisted on bending the rules and revealing its composer also. Coolidge told Clarke later, "You should have seen their faces when they saw it was by a woman." Between the story of the competition, the wonderfulness of the Sonata, and Clarke’s many performances of it on tours in both the U.S. and the U.K., she became very well-known in the early 20th century.

Rebecca Clarke with violin, in the yard at Gayton Corner, Harrow, c. 1908, Rebecca Clarke and James Friskin Papers, Library of Congress. Courtesy Christopher Johnson, rebeccaclarkecomposer.com.

But she started her musical life on the violin, first sitting in on her brother’s lessons and then joining in herself later on, though she hated to practice. When she went to the Royal College of Music in London (1908) to study composition with Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, he suggested that she switch to viola so that, in orchestra, she would be "right in the middle of the sound, and can tell how it’s all done." Her major violin works, some of which have just been published for the first time in the last year, date from around this time with Stanford—including the brilliant and substantial three-movement Sonata in D major. In my humble opinion, it has the most beautiful slow movement you can possibly find. Clarke clearly kept her hand in on the violin, going on tour as the violinist in a piano trio during 1925.

She was a groundbreaking musician - not only one of the first women to become a "regular member" of a professional orchestra in London (the Queen’s Hall Orchestra, 1913) but she became a solo performer of international renown who could sell out Wigmore Hall for a recital of her music. She wrote lots of chamber music, including her brilliant piano trio, and played with the most famous musicians of her day. In addition to smaller solo pieces for both violin and viola, Clarke wrote many songs and some choral pieces, which are also being "rediscovered" today.

I highly recommend Christopher Johnson’s website, www.rebeccaclarkecomposer.com, for the most accurate and entertaining information about Clarke, her music, and her career as a composer and as a violist!

Claire Allen: How did you meet Christopher Johnson, and how did you get the rights to publish Clarke’s violin music?

Dr. Cora Cooper: I first got in touch with Chris in 2005, after I had heard Clarke’s then-unpublished Three Pieces for Two Violins and Piano on a CD recorded in 2003 by Lorraine McAslan and Ian Jones, and fell madly in love with it. I had to play it! I was able to license the manuscript from Chris and performed it that fall. When I was compiling the anthology (Violin Music by Women), I remembered the gorgeous slow movement of her D major violin sonata, also on that CD. I really wanted to put it in Volume 4, so one time when I was going to the Starling-DeLay Symposium at Juilliard, I contacted him and took him out for lunch at Cafe Fiorillo - had the best seafood risotto! - and we had a good long talk.

I said that I wasn’t just looking for any old pieces by women, but that I was looking for well-crafted works, both in terms of the instrument and musically, that happened to be written by women. That was the magic phrase that made him realize I would be good to work with. He has been so helpful to me in understanding so many aspects of the publishing business— all those things we don’t learn in music school! I was thrilled to be asked to publish these violin works of Clarke’s.

Claire Allen: What kind of violin pieces have you been working on getting published?

Dr. Cora Cooper: We started with the two violin sonatas, which was a huge project. One of her first student works was the Sonata in D Major for Violin and Piano, which is a whole three-movement sonata and is an amazing, 25-minute-long piece. Quite a beginning! It was written in 1908, and it’s often said to have Brahmsian influence, but to me it’s still distinctly written in her own unique voice. There are also impressionistic elements, and that second movement....Apparently when Clarke brought that movement to Stanford in a composition lesson, he looked at the opening and then got up without a word and left the room with the music. She had no idea what was happening, but found out later that he had run down the hall to show it to the violin professor, and that this was his highest compliment. It never happened again!

BELOW: Violin Sonata in D Major: II. Andante quasi adagio, performed by violinist Judith Ingolfsson and pianist Vladimir Stoupel:

Here is a link for the sheet music: Rebecca Clarke's Sonata in D Major for Violin and Piano.

Claire Allen: I haven’t tried playing the Sonata in D Major yet, but I’m looking forward to it!

Dr. Cora Cooper: The second movement double-stops are pretty tricky, but otherwise it’s very playable. But if you don’t want to tackle anything that big, there’s the G Major Sonata which is a standalone movement, around 11 minutes long. It was originally titled "First Movement," but really is complete on its own. When you hear it, it sounds complete - why would you follow it with anything? It’s also from her student years, around 1908.

BELOW: Rebecca Clarke's Sonata in G Major, performed by violinist Judith Ingolfsson and pianist Vladimir Stoupel:

Here is a link for the sheet music: Rebecca Clarke's Sonata in G Major for Violin and Piano

Claire Allen: And for violinists who might not be feeling ready to tackle a whole sonata, your newest publications make playing Rebecca Clarke very accessible! Can you tell us more about those?

Dr. Cora Cooper: So hot off the press are three short new pieces. One is a duet for two violins, and the other two are single-line melodies. They were literally scribbled on a legal pad that she turned sideways and drew the staff lines on. Christopher Johnson found them only a few years ago. They were being used as bookmarks in her biography of Debussy.

The duet is called "For 2 Violins". It’s in F minor and is crazily chromatic, and is a really cool piece, Clarke dated it as from 1940. As for the two melodies, one is called "Jig/March," and the other is this really gorgeous "Lament." They’re both about two minutes long. The "Jig/March" is playable all in first position and the "Lament" uses first and third.

Claire Allen: How did you go about getting these scribbles being used as a bookmark ready for publication?

Dr. Cora Cooper: When we talked about publishing these, I wondered how we could make them most useful, and bring the works together into a cohesive volume. I asked Chris what he thought about the idea of hiring somebody to write accompaniments for them. We actually hired two somebodies —two graduate students at Kansas State University, Alan and Andrew S. Bell, who had done some Sibelius (music notation software) work for me on the violin sonatas.

They were amazing. I gave them every Clarke score I had that had strings in it, and they analyzed them. They just absorbed her language and were so patient. We went through many revisions, and they were enthusiastic and delightful the whole time. They came up with some pretty remarkable stuff. We had them do a second violin accompaniment for each piece, so two students could play it together, and a piano part suitable for recital. The second violin and piano parts for each piece aren’t exactly the same, but have some similar harmonic structures. I keep having to remind myself that this isn’t Clarke because it sounds so organic, and the music all works together so well.

BELOW: "Lament" by Rebecca Clarke, with piano accompaniment by Andrew S. Bell. Performed by violinist Cora Cooper and pianist Amanda Arrington.

Here is a link for the sheet music: Rebecca Clarke: Three Pieces for Violin or Violins

Claire Allen: That’s fantastic. What other works by Clarke have you recently published or will you be publishing soon?

Dr. Cora Cooper: For the violists, I recently published Concert Arrangements and a Cadenza, all pieces arranged by or written by Clarke for her own use. The cadenza is to the third movement of the B minor Handel/Casadesus concerto. Caroline Castleton wrote her doctoral dissertation on Clarke as a performer and did a great deal of work with this material. I also just published "Daybreak," which is for male or female voice and string quartet and is a beautiful setting of a text by John Donne.

Here are the links for those pieces:

Rebecca Clarke: Concert Arrangements and a Cadenza

Rebecca Clarke: Daybreak for Voice and String Quartet

Coming out later this year will be those gorgeous "Three Pieces for Two Violins and Piano," and in time for the holidays will be two versions of "Combined Carols" (a string quartet version and a string orchestra version) - a Christmas carol mashup.

Claire Allen: What? Christmas carols?

Dr. Cora Cooper: Yes, it’s several Christmas carols all combined at once: "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," "Silent Night," and "O Come All Ye Faithful." There are mixed meters going on at times, with some parts in 4 and some in 3, and some pretty intriguing counterpoint. In her family, they always had to play Christmas carols together 0 and apparently it wasn’t a Hallmark movie sort of evening. It’s subtitled "Get ‘em all over at once."

Claire Allen: This is so incredible to have access to Clarke’s work! How does it feel to be the person working on a project like this?

Dr. Cora Cooper: When I started Sleepy Puppy Press in 2013, I certainly never imagined I’d be the one getting all of Clarke’s remaining violin works in print, many for the first time ever. It’s a real privilege and I appreciate Chris Johnson’s faith in me and my little cottage industry. Clarke was really an extraordinary composer and I hope more people will get to enjoy her work through some of these pieces. After the first time I heard the viola sonata, I was so jealous that there wasn’t one for violin. Little did I know that violinists have two!

Claire Allen: I can’t wait to listen to and start learning all of this music - and learn more about Rebecca Clarke herself! Thank you so much for bringing it to the world, and thank you to Christopher Johnson as well for taking care of her music.

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Replies

Steve Jones

May 7, 2024 at 04:17 PM · It's good to see these works finally coming to light, so Rebecca can at last receive her due recognition. Another unjustly neglected composer of this period is her first teacher when she entered the Royal Academy of Music, Percy Hilder Miles. It was on account of his importunate proposal of marriage that she transferred to the College. A stash of Miles's unpublished manuscripts has recently come to light, including his second violin sonata composed at the age of 16 .

Percy's style was far more conservative and I'm sure Rebecca's move was beneficial to her subsequent development. But in 1922 Percy did her a more welcome favour by bequeathing her his Stradivarius in his will.

Laura McDermott

May 9, 2024 at 04:43 PM · This is a great interview and post. I will enjoy exploring more of Rebecca Clarke's violin music. I have purchased from Sleepy Puppy previously. They have great music and the music arrives quickly.

Steve Jones - Thanks for the mention of PH Miles. I have spent the morning listening and looking at his music.

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