page_title: Rebecca Clarke (composer)
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Rebecca Clarke (composer) / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: A 3×4 segment panoramic image of the Royal College of Music in London, England. Taken by myself with a Canon 5D and 70-200mm f/2.8L lens at 70mm. Français&#160;: Photo panoramique 3x4 de l'université Royale de Musique a Londres, en Angleterre. Photo prise avec un appareil Canon 5D et un objectif 70-200mm f/2.8L réglé a 70mm. Español: Fotografía panorámica en formato 3x4 del Real Colegio de Musica en Londres, Inglaterra. Fotografía tomada con una Canon 5D y un objetivo 70-200mm f/2.8L regulado a 70mm. Italiano: Photografia panorámica en formato 3x4 del Real Colegio de Musica a Londra, Inglaterra. Fotografía pressa da una Canon 5D y un obbiettivo 70-200mm f/2.8L regulato a 70mm.
context_page_description: Rebecca Clarke was a British-American classical composer and violist. Internationally renowned as a viola virtuoso, she also became one of the first female professional orchestral players. Born in England, Rebecca Clarke claimed both British and American nationalities, and spent substantial periods of her long life in the United States, where she permanently settled after World War II. She was born in Harrow and studied at the Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music in London. Stranded in the United States at the outbreak of World War II, she married composer and pianist James Friskin in 1944. Clarke died at her home in New York at the age of 93.
  Although Clarke's output was not large, her work was recognised for its compositional skill and artistic power. Some of her works have yet to be published; those that were published in her lifetime were largely forgotten after she stopped composing. Scholarship and interest in her compositions revived in 1976. The Rebecca Clarke Society was established in 2000 to promote the study and performance of her music.
context_section_description: Clarke was born in Harrow, England, to Joseph Thacher Clarke, an American, and his German wife, Agnes Paulina Marie Amalie Helferich. Her father was interested in music, and Clarke started on violin after sitting in on lessons that were being given to her brother, Hans Thatcher Clarke, who was 15 months her junior. She began her studies at the Royal Academy of Music in 1903, but was withdrawn by her father in 1905 after her harmony teacher Percy Hilder Miles proposed to her. He later left her his Stradivarius violin in his will. She made the first of many visits to the United States shortly after leaving the Royal Academy. She then attended the Royal College of Music from 1907 to 1910, becoming one of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford's first female composition students. At Stanford's urging she shifted her focus from the violin to the viola, just as the latter was coming to be seen as a legitimate solo instrument. She studied with Lionel Tertis, who was considered by some the greatest violist of the day. In 1910 she composed a setting of Chinese poetry, called "Tears", in collaboration with a group of fellow students at RCM. She also sang under the direction of Ralph Vaughan Williams in a student ensemble organized by Clarke to study and perform Palestrina's music.
  Following her criticism of his extra-marital affairs, Clarke's father turned her out of the house and cut off her funds. She had to leave the Royal College in 1910 and supported herself through her viola playing. Clarke became one of the first female professional orchestral musicians when she was selected by Sir Henry Wood to play in the Queen's Hall Orchestra in 1912. In 1916 she moved to the United States to continue her performing career. A short, lyrical piece for viola and piano entitled Morpheus, composed under the pseudonym of "Anthony Trent", was premiered at her 1918 joint recital with cellist May Mukle in New York City. Reviewers praised the "Trent", largely ignoring the works credited to Clarke premiered in the same recital. Her compositional career peaked in a brief period, beginning with the viola sonata she entered in a 1919 competition sponsored by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, Clarke's neighbour and a patron of the arts. In a field of 72 entrants, Clarke's sonata tied for first place with a composition by Ernest Bloch. Coolidge later declared Bloch the winner. Reporters speculated that "Rebecca Clarke" was only a pseudonym for Bloch himself, or at least that it could not have been Clarke who wrote these pieces, as the idea that a woman could write such a beautiful work was socially inconceivable. The sonata was well received and had its first performance at the Berkshire music festival in 1919. In 1921 Clarke again made an impressive showing in Coolidge's composition competition with her piano trio, though again failed to take the prize. A 1923 rhapsody for cello and piano followed, sponsored by Coolidge, making Clarke the only female recipient of Coolidge's patronage. These three works represent the height of Clarke's compositional career.
caption: London's Royal College of Music where Clarke studied from 1907 to 1910
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