What we believe to be the last of Clarke’s extant pieces for violin have just been published by Sleepy Puppy Press.

They can’t be dated with certainty, but circumstantial evidence suggests an association with the early years of World War Two, when Clarke was marooned in the United States, cut off from her funds, unable to secure a visa to return home to London, and forced to camp out with her two brothers and their families. She contributed as she could, in part by giving her niece Magdalen violin-lessons.

The duet “For 2 Violins” dates from 1940—or so Clarke recalled decades later—although the autograph continues with the beginning of another duet with the lower voice in bass clef, similar to a piano-piece that she wrote while studying counterpoint with R.O. Morris, in London, in the early 1930s.

The unaccompanied solos Lament and Jig/March are a total mystery. I stumbled across them a few years ago, jotted down on yellow tablet-paper, folded down small, and inserted into one of Clarke’s books, where they marked a passage about Debussy’s experience at the beginning of World War One. Their purpose remains unknown—as does their instrumentation, although an unaccompanied violin seems like just the thing for a jig, and perfectly plausible for a lament.

Since all three pieces can be associated, however tangentially, with the time when Clarke was giving violin-lessons, and can serve, quite nicely, as instructional materials for that instrument, we decided to publish them together, providing optional accompaniments for Lament and Jig/March—carefully modeled after Clarke’s late style, by Alan and Andrew Bell—in order to facilitate use in the studio and in recital. The pieces can be used, singly or together, in a variety of ways: as two short solos and a more extended duet; as a set of three violin-duets; as a pair of violin-and-piano duos; or in any combination, mix and match.

Admittedly, this goes far beyond anything Clarke ever stipulated, but we couldn’t help feeling that these pieces were just too attractive to be put before the public as bare technical material. so we’ve tried to present it both ways: if you want (or require) the Urtext, you have it here, as Clarke left it; and if you want it in a form that wouldn’t be out of place in your next recital, you have that, too.

Available in print and digital formats, with a full set of demonstration videos either way.