REBECCA CLARKE

Rebecca Clarke passed away on this day in 1979. Here's a little #FlashbackFriday clip of her beautiful setting of Yeat's poem "The Cloths of Heaven" from Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago's 2021 Collaborative Works festival.

This performance with pianist Ronny Michael Greenberg was the festival's second performance, which featured music by composers who immigrated to the United States.

Born to an American father and German mother in Harrow, England, Rebecca Clarke (1886 – 1979) spent the early part of her life in England, where she received her musical training. After a family dispute with her father, she was forced to cut off her musical studies in composition and support herself as a performing violist. A pioneer as both a virtuoso violist and woman composer, Clarke entered her 1919 viola sonata in a competition at the Berkshire Festival of Chamber Music. The rules of the competition required anonymous submissions, and the piece placed a very close second to an entry by Ernest Bloch. When it was revealed that the viola sonata so loved by the jury was composed by a woman, the judges were astonished. The piece would go on to become central to the instrument’s standard repertory and the publicity about her near-win cemented international her reputation as a composer. After extensive international performing tours from 1916 through the early 20’s, Clarke returned to her home in London in 1924 until the outbreak of World War II.

Visiting family in the United States in 1939 when England declared war on Germany, Clarke found herself stranded in America, unable to obtain a visa to get back across the Atlantic. She remained in the states until her death in 1979.