Synopsis

Today’s date in 1979 marked the passing, at 93, of a remarkable composer and performer named Rebecca Clarke. Born in Harrow, England, in 1886, she became one of the first female professional orchestral viola players in the United Kingdom, and in 1916 moved to the United States.

At a New York recital in 1918, she premiered one of her own compositions under the male pseudonym of Anthony Trent. While “Trent’s” work was praised, the same reviewers largely ignored or dismissed her other works on the same recital, which she programmed under her name.

Late in Clarke’s life, with the renewal of interest in works by neglected women composers, she enjoyed a major revival of interest in her works, with her Viola Sonata, written in 1919, singled out as a significant achievement. Even so, she wryly remarked to an interviewer that even then “I got one or two press clippings saying that it was impossible, that I couldn’t have written [the Viola Sonata] myself. And the funniest review of all was that I didn’t exist, and there wasn’t any such person as a Rebecca Clarke, that it was a female pseudonym for Ernest Bloch.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979): Vivace from Viola Sonata; Philip Dukes, viola; Sophia Rahman, piano; Naxos 8.557934