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Rebecca Clarke's Chamber Music (I)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2010
Extract
Thus Hugh Wood in this magazine, nearly a decade ago. At the time he was writing, one name whose re-emergence hadn't even been guessed at was that of Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979), who'd been living in New York for close on 40 years. The New Grove was about to reduce the scant paragraph she'd received in Grove 5 to a single sentence, barely mentioning that she wrote any music at all. Yet since some American broadcasts to mark her 90th birthday, the revival of interest in her works has been swift and strong. Several of them have been committed to record—the Viola Sonata and Piano Trio three times each!—and commentators have recognized, with unusual alacrity, another significant British figure from the inter-war years who wrote with impressive technical command, individual expression, and a refreshingly international outlook.
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References
page 15 note * Bridge, Frank and the Land without Music', TEMIO 121 (06 1977), p. 7 Google Scholar.
page 16 note * The previous critical literature is small: Edwin Evans's brief discussion of the Sonata and Trio in Cobbett was long almost the only source. More recently Ponder, Michael has written some articles of a general introductory nature, among which that for the British Music Society Journal, Volume 5 Google Scholar, is indispensable for its appended complete list of works. Among the record annotations, Christopher Johnson's sleeve-note for Northeastern NR212, drawing on conversations with the composer and on her unpublished memoirs and diaries, is especially valuable.
page 16 note † Petrie's manuscript merely designates the tune ‘A Lullaby’ with the ascription ‘from Miss Ross’: presumably the same Miss Jane Ross of New Town, Limavady, from whom he obtained the famous ‘Londonderry Air’ later set by Stanford, Harty, Grainger and others. Some. writers have doubted whether the ‘Air’ is a genuine folksong, and Havergal Brian put forward the ingenious theory that Miss Ross included compositions of her own among the material she communicated to Petric (see his 1935 article ‘Stanford and the Londonderry Air’, now reprinted by Toccata Press in Havergal Brian on Music Volume 1). Perhaps No. 1007 falls into this same category?
page 18 note * The Stravinsky pieces were not even performed in Britain until 1919, though it seems just possible that Rebecca Clarke may have heard them played by the Flonzaley Quartet in the U.S.A.
page 19 note † The Clarke Sonata is in fact described on the printed score as ‘For Viola (or Violoncello) and Piano’, but I take this to be a publisher's bid for increased sales: only one perfunctory ossia takes advantage of the otherwise unused lower octave.
page 20 note * The Trio pre-datcd them both. Myra Hess, pianist at the first performance, later premièred Bridge's Sonata.
page 23 note * It has recently been recorded for a future BBC broadcast by Moray Welsh and David Owen Norris.