JAVS Fall 2020

one which I think will last. Personally, I feel sorry for Miss Clarke. Her Sonata has much charm; the first movement is very fine, but the scherzo is so freakish and has no thematic substance of any consequence; the last movement is too rhapsodic. But just the same, a very fine talent. What the wise-acres would have said, had a “woman-composer” and one of your personal friends in Pittsfield won the prize, I do not dare to contemplate, but I am sure suspicions of a frame-up between you and the judges would have been endless, and that we might have had a great deal of other trouble besides. All things considered we were most fortunate in your choice. 17 Of the three 1919 composers in our study, only Clarke had to contend constantly with gender as a qualifier of her competence and compositional skill. (Hopefully this is quite different in 2019, for Anna Thorvaldsdottir than it was one hundred years ago!) Clarke recounted in her old age that certain reports reached me averring that I had not written my own work, or that it had been helped by other composers, among whom, ironically, Bloch himself was named. . . . I even once received a press clipping stating that Rebecca Clarke was a pseudonym for someone else—in other words that I did not exist. So I take this opportunity to emphasise that I do indeed exist; . . . and finally, that my viola sonata is my own unaided work! 18 Clarke’s sonata has gone on to be one of the most beloved and frequently recorded works in the viola literature. It benefits now from the further possibility of being performed in an orchestrated version by Ruth Lomon completed in 2007. Modern listeners are drawn to the work for its ingenious combination of French influences and English modal melodies, as well as overt nods to pentatonic chinoiserie that Clarke was quite fond of. The Sonata’s second and third movements share structural similarities with Ravel’s Piano Trio, while remaining deeply original. Clarke absorbs many influences from the great French composer, learning from her friend Ralph Vaughan Williams, who studied with Ravel in 1908. Her choice to model the second movement on a “Pantoum,” an authentic Eastern verse structure, implies her interest in Orientalism is more than a superficial desire to employ exotic clichés.

Ultimately to end this study discussing Clarke is a choice to come full circle in the journey connecting 1919 to 2019. From Coolidge’s ground-breaking choice to sponsor a competition for viola compositions, to Clarke’s posthumous stature as one of the instrument’s greatest exponents, there is much to reflect on. In the end, Clarke quietly defied norms and expectations, leading a successful career as a performer, composing more than one hundred works, and traveling widely, from England, the continental US and Hawai`i to Burma, Singapore, China, Japan, Hong Kong, and Europe. Her path to prominence as a composer is circuitous, and it is wonderful to know that her Sonata, along with the seminal works by Hindemith and Bloch, has reached its centennial elevated to the status it truly deserves. May the musical connections, explorations and celebrations continue with the premieres of the 2019 works by Norman, Thorvaldsdottir and Wollschleger, and may the journey to their centennial be similarly bright! Daphne Gerling enjoys an international career teaching, performing, and writing about the viola. She has participated in multiple commissioning projects is currently developing a recital project featuring lesser known works by female composers who may have participated in the 1919 Coolidge competition. She is Principal Lecturer of Viola at the University of North Texas and Secretary of the American Viola Society.

Bibliography

Barr, Cyrilla. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge: American Patron of Music. New York: Schirmer Books, 1998.

Cook, Nicholas and Anthony Pople. The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Curtis, Liane, ed. A Rebecca Clarke Reader. Waltham, MA: Rebecca Clarke Society, 2005.

Gerling, Daphne. “Connecting Histories: Identity and Exoticism in the 1919 Viola Works of Ernest Bloch, Rebecca Clarke, and Paul Hindemith.” DMA diss., Rice University, 2007.

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 36, No. 2, Fall 2020

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