Music
Clarke, Rebecca
Rebecca Clarke (b. Harrow, England, 1886; d. New York City, 1979), one of the finest viola-players of her day and a composer of rare distinction, studied with Sir Charles Stanford at the Royal College of Music, London, and played chamber music with many of the greatest artists of the 1910s and 1920s, including Schnabel, Casals, Thibaud, Rubinstein, Grainger, Hess, and Szell. Clarke's compositional output was small (only 90 works, including juvenilia) but brilliant and powerful. Her Piano Trio and Viola Sonata are often played and recorded, and are now generally regarded as masterpieces. Her songs-perhaps her finest body of work, running the gamut from Blakean simplicity to brutal tragedy to outright farce-are also widely performed. Clarke's choral and vocal-ensemble music were virtually unknown until publication of her Ave Maria and Chorus from Shelley's "Hellas" (OUP, 1998 and 1999, respectively), but her shorter instrumental chamber pieces have been regularly performed and recorded.
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View Rebecca Clarke's Catalogs of Works
