Clarke: Viola Sonata
Like Hindemith, composer-violist Rebecca Clarke also traded the violin for the viola; her teacher, the famed British composer Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, believed the middle-voice instrument would be more instructive in the areas of harmony and orchestration, “because then you are right in the middle of the sound, and can tell how it’s all done.” Bolstered by a supportive network of other successful female musicians, Clarke found remarkable success as a performer (this was not the case in her parallel work as a composer, where her gender and dual career both handicapped her professional standing). Her travel resumé is especially impressive given the contemporary professional obstacles for women; in 1922 alone, Clarke gave concerts in Singapore, Indonesia, Burma, India, China, Japan, the United States, England and Hawaii. It was under gloomier circumstances, however, that she found herself living in the United States in 1916: Clarke transplanted across the Atlantic after her abusive father disowned her following her confrontation about his infidelity. It was in America that Clarke befriended Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, an important patron of the arts and a friend and champion of Clarke for the next three decades. Coolidge personally encouraged Clarke to enter a composition competition she was sponsoring in 1919, and Clarke’s Viola Sonata tied for first place out of 72 entries with a piece by Ernest Bloch (the judges ultimately declared Bloch the winner, in part so as to avoid arousing suspicions of favoritism; meanwhile, reporters speculated that “Rebecca Clarke” must have been a pseudonym of Bloch himself, unable to imagine a woman penning such compelling music).
At the top of the Viola Sonata’s score, Clarke left a short verse from Alfred de Musset’s 1835 poem La Nuit de mai: “Poet, take up your lute; the wine of youth / this night is fermenting in the veins of God.” The incipit bespeaks a French connection that echoes throughout Clarke’s oeuvre, and this Sonata in particular. The proud, pentatonic fanfare that opens the work is quick to suggest a kinship with Debussy’s Cello Sonata from just four years prior, which begins in a similar vein and also proceeds with a cadenza-like passage for the string instrument atop still piano accompaniment. Aside from Clarke’s documented admiration for Debussy, congruencies in their harmonic language could be traced back to each composer’s attendance at the Paris World’s Fair (Debussy in 1889, Clarke in 1900) and their subsequent interest in “Oriental” music. After their exposure to such expositions as a Javanese gamelan and Vietnamese dance music, both composers adopted “exotic” scales into their styles, including pentatonic, octatonic and whole tone, all of which are on display in Clarke’s Viola Sonata.
The first movement, Impetuoso, achieves its namesake in no small part via another Debussian technique: a dynamic process of quick crescendos followed by sudden drops to piano, yielding a breathless, surging quality. The piano introduces the second theme, a slinking chromatic subject shadowed by glassy eighth notes above. Here again, the shape of the theme, Clarke’s interest in half-step relationships, and the smoky rolled-chords that bloom beneath the melody point unmistakably to Debussy. In the second movement’s light-footed Vivace scherzo, Clarke seems under the influence of Ravel, the other leading French Impressionist composer; the movement’s effervescent character, sparkling sonorities and flitting melodies call to mind Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin and the Pantoum movement of his Piano Trio as possible models. The pensive Adagio finale derives much of its reflective nature from its modal harmonies, which are decidedly less directed than those of traditional tonality. Clarke’s choice of modes puts her in the company of her countryman Ralph Vaughn Williams, who had himself studied with Ravel, and whose English pastoral style is finds a natural home in Clarke’s French-inflected Sonata.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for Piano on Park
Like Hindemith, composer-violist Rebecca Clarke also traded the violin for the viola; her teacher, the famed British composer Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, believed the middle-voice instrument would be more instructive in the areas of harmony and orchestration, “because then you are right in the middle of the sound, and can tell how it’s all done.” Bolstered by a supportive network of other successful female musicians, Clarke found remarkable success as a performer (this was not the case in her parallel work as a composer, where her gender and dual career both handicapped her professional standing). Her travel resumé is especially impressive given the contemporary professional obstacles for women; in 1922 alone, Clarke gave concerts in Singapore, Indonesia, Burma, India, China, Japan, the United States, England and Hawaii. It was under gloomier circumstances, however, that she found herself living in the United States in 1916: Clarke transplanted across the Atlantic after her abusive father disowned her following her confrontation about his infidelity. It was in America that Clarke befriended Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, an important patron of the arts and a friend and champion of Clarke for the next three decades. Coolidge personally encouraged Clarke to enter a composition competition she was sponsoring in 1919, and Clarke’s Viola Sonata tied for first place out of 72 entries with a piece by Ernest Bloch (the judges ultimately declared Bloch the winner, in part so as to avoid arousing suspicions of favoritism; meanwhile, reporters speculated that “Rebecca Clarke” must have been a pseudonym of Bloch himself, unable to imagine a woman penning such compelling music).
At the top of the Viola Sonata’s score, Clarke left a short verse from Alfred de Musset’s 1835 poem La Nuit de mai: “Poet, take up your lute; the wine of youth / this night is fermenting in the veins of God.” The incipit bespeaks a French connection that echoes throughout Clarke’s oeuvre, and this Sonata in particular. The proud, pentatonic fanfare that opens the work is quick to suggest a kinship with Debussy’s Cello Sonata from just four years prior, which begins in a similar vein and also proceeds with a cadenza-like passage for the string instrument atop still piano accompaniment. Aside from Clarke’s documented admiration for Debussy, congruencies in their harmonic language could be traced back to each composer’s attendance at the Paris World’s Fair (Debussy in 1889, Clarke in 1900) and their subsequent interest in “Oriental” music. After their exposure to such expositions as a Javanese gamelan and Vietnamese dance music, both composers adopted “exotic” scales into their styles, including pentatonic, octatonic and whole tone, all of which are on display in Clarke’s Viola Sonata.
The first movement, Impetuoso, achieves its namesake in no small part via another Debussian technique: a dynamic process of quick crescendos followed by sudden drops to piano, yielding a breathless, surging quality. The piano introduces the second theme, a slinking chromatic subject shadowed by glassy eighth notes above. Here again, the shape of the theme, Clarke’s interest in half-step relationships, and the smoky rolled-chords that bloom beneath the melody point unmistakably to Debussy. In the second movement’s light-footed Vivace scherzo, Clarke seems under the influence of Ravel, the other leading French Impressionist composer; the movement’s effervescent character, sparkling sonorities and flitting melodies call to mind Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin and the Pantoum movement of his Piano Trio as possible models. The pensive Adagio finale derives much of its reflective nature from its modal harmonies, which are decidedly less directed than those of traditional tonality. Clarke’s choice of modes puts her in the company of her countryman Ralph Vaughn Williams, who had himself studied with Ravel, and whose English pastoral style is finds a natural home in Clarke’s French-inflected Sonata.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for Piano on Park