Rebecca Clarke composed the Sonata for Viola and Piano, attributed to the year 1919, when the composer was 33 years old. Clarke had moved to the United States in 1916, after being disowned by her father. She had been supporting herself with some success as a soloist.

Career

The first reference to the Viola Sonata was upon its submission to a composition competition sponsored by Clarke's neighbour,

Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge aka Liz Coolidge (30 October 1864 – 4 November 1953), born Elizabeth Penn Sprague, was an American pianist and patron of music, especially of chamber music. Biography Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge's father was a we ...

. Out of 72 entries, Clarke's Sonata tied for first with a piece by the Swiss composer,

Ernest Bloch Ernest Bloch (July 24, 1880 – July 15, 1959) was a Swiss-born American composer. Bloch was a preeminent artist in his day, and left a lasting legacy. He is recognized as one of the greatest Swiss composers in history. As well as producing music ...

. In the end Bloch was declared the winner, despite all the judges favouring Clarke—it was decided that declaring Clarke the winner would smack of favouritism on Coolidge's part. It was also suspected by some that the name "Rebecca Clarke" was a pen-name of a male composer, as few imagined the possibility of a competent woman writing such music.

Premiere

The piece had its première at the Berkshire Music Festival in 1919, and was well received. It, along with the Piano Trio of 1921 and the Rhapsody for cello and piano of 1923, represent the zenith of her compositional career, though afterwards Clarke wrote hardly any more music. The sonata was first published in 1921 by Chester Music. Clarke gives us an incipit on the first page of the sonata, a quote from ''La Nuit de mai'' (1835) by the French poet

Alfred de Musset Alfred Louis Charles de Musset-Pathay (; 11 December 1810 – 2 May 1857) was a French dramatist, poet, and novelist.His names are often reversed "Louis Charles Alfred de Musset": see "(Louis Charles) Alfred de Musset" (bio), Biography.com, 2007 ...

: The sonata is cast in three movements. * The first movement, marked ''Impetuoso'', begins with a vibrant fanfare from the viola, before moving on into a melodic and harmonic language reminiscent of

Claude Debussy (Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...

and

Ralph Vaughan Williams Ralph Vaughan Williams, (; 12 October 1872– 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over ...

, two important influences on Clarke's music. Her language is at times very chromatic, and shows the invention of Debussy in the use of

modes Mode ( la, modus meaning "manner, tune, measure, due measure, rhythm, melody") may refer to: Arts and entertainment * '' MO''D''E (magazine)'', a defunct U.S. women's fashion magazine * ''Mode'' magazine, a fictional fashion magazine which is ...

and the

whole-tone In Western music theory, a major second (sometimes also called whole tone or a whole step) is a second spanning two semitones (). A second is a musical interval encompassing two adjacent staff positions (see Interval number for more det ...

scale. * The second movement, marked ''Vivace'', makes use of many interesting 'special effects' like

harmonics A harmonic is a wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the ''fundamental frequency'', the frequency of the original periodic signal, such as a sinusoidal wave. The original signal is also called the ''1st harmonic'', the ...

and

pizzicato Pizzicato (, ; translated as "pinched", and sometimes roughly as "plucked") is a playing technique that involves plucking the strings of a string instrument. The exact technique varies somewhat depending on the type of instrument : * On bowed ...

. * The final movement, ''Adagio'', is both pensive and sensual in its language. However, Clarke works in a special surprise: a segue into a restatement of themes from the first movement. The sonata ends in a lush and brilliant pyrotechnical display, showing off the full range of the viola, as well as the piano (whose part is of equal difficulty.) Because of the many different obstacles the piece presents, as well as its highly idiomatic writing, it is becoming more and more a staple of the violist's repertoire.

Orchestration

Th
Rebecca Clarke Society
commissioned an orchestration of the Viola Sonata from composer

Ruth Lomon Ruth Lomon (7 November 1930 – 26 September 2017) was a Canadian classical composer. A native of Montreal, Canada, she was born in Montreal and died in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She attended le Conservatoire de Quebec and McGill University. Sh ...

. It was premiered in 2007 by violis
Peter Sulski
Subsequent performances have featured soloist
Esra Pelivahnli
Catherine Hanson, and Melissa Matson.

References

Journal

External links

*
Performance of Viola Sonata
by

Antoine Tamestit Antoine Tamestit (born 1979) is a French violist. Tamestit studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, and further with Jesse Levine at Yale University, and with Tabea Zimmermann. He won the 2001 Primrose International Viola Competition, the 2003 Yo ...

(viola) and Ying-Chien Lin (piano) from the

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts, which houses significant examples of European, Asian, and American art. Its collection includes paintings, sculpture, tapestries, and decorative arts. It was founded ...

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

format {{Authority control Compositions by Rebecca Clarke Clarke, Rebecca 1919 compositions