Discussion

Interviews, conversations, colloquies, and lectures on Clarke’s life and works, and the world she lived in

BRIGHT YOUTH

Ostensibly about “The Seal Man,” this podcast tells more about Clarke’s early musical training and experience than any other publicly-available source, and does so with a youthful relish that Clarke herself would have enjoyed. Of course, it does wind its way around to “The Seal Man” in the end, and what it has to say about that beats just about anything else you’re likely to encounter. Buckle up. And when you’re done, check out the illustrated feature on the piece on our Gallery page.

THE LEGACY REVEALED

What began as a simple “making-of” featurette promoting Signum’s Complete Songs album turned into a magnificent documentary about Clarke’s life, career, and music—indeed, about her very essence—with important contributions by Nicholas Phan (and if he ever gets tired of the tenor thing, he’s got a stellar career as a filmmaker waiting for him), Kitty Whately, Anna Tilbrook, Roderick Williams, and Christopher Johnson. Whether you’re new to Clarke, or you know her work inside out, this is something you want to see.

MASTERCLASS ON THE VIOLA SONATA

Shmuel Katz, associate principal viola of the MET Orchestra, gives a fascinating masterclass on the opening movement of Clarke’s Sonata, beginning at 1:00:34. His comments on the sul ponticello passage at no. 14 are especially useful, and his point about the soloist being keenly alive to the piano part is absolutely vital. In the Q&A that follows, his comments on the importance of singing have immediate relevance to Clarke’s instrumental music—she was, after all, one of the great song-composers of the twentieth century.

WHAT MAKES A GREAT SONATA “GREAT!”?

Here’s a terrific video—and a deeply insightful one—by Max Mandel, principal violist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, about Clarke’s Sonata, and why it continues to go from strength to strength, more than a century on. His point about how Clarke’s parallel career as a high-test freelance performer both enriched and supported her composing cannot be sufficiently emphasized—and on that score, do yourself a favor and check out Caroline Castleton’s work on Clarke’s performance-materials, here, here, and previewed on this page, immediately below.

THE TRIO IN CONTEXT

Jesse Mills, violinist of the Horszowski Trio, speaks with David Plylar, of the Library of Congress, about Clarke’s Trio in the context of Schubert and Wuorinen. The Schubert connection is obvious—he was Clarke’s all-around favorite, at least in terms of “lovability,” as she put it—but the parallels with Wuorinen are at once unexpected and perfectly sensible, especially in terms of Clarke’s characteristic thematic layering. Discussion of Clarke begins at 11:25. For a transcript and more information, see here. To hear what the Horszowskis can do with the Trio itself, see here.

VIOLA PLAYER

The first serious attempt to examine Clarke’s contribution to viola-playing through her performance practice, repertoire-choices, and cultivation of a broad audience in the early days of radio, Caroline Castleton’s virtual presentation at the 47th International Viola Congress on June 2, 2022, breaks fascinating new ground all over the place, while offering a preview of Castleton’s transformative doctoral dissertation at the University of Maryland (link here). One thing in particular blew us away: the simple, practical insight that virtuosos must compose their own music in order to have showcases worthy of their skills—an obvious point, once it’s made, but Castleton was the first to apply it to Clarke.

Caroline Castleton, “Rebecca Clarke, the Violist: A Pioneering Performance Career,”
virtual presentation at the 47th International Viola Congress, Columbus, Georgia, USA, June 2, 2022

STUDYING CLARKE’S MANUSCRIPTS AND PERFORMANCE-MATERIALS

Vinciane Béranger’s ClarkeSources—Les manuscrits de Rebecca Clarke : un terrain fertile pour l’interprète, a combination research-project and étude du répertoire conducted at the Haute École de Musique in Lausanne during much of 2022–23, shows what can be achieved by close study of Clarke’s manuscripts and marked-up scores and parts—particularly for performers, and especially for violists. Here’s a summary report, subtitled in French and English, with excerpts from the related concert-series, Journées Rebecca Clarke, in October 2022:

Access to the underlying materials is available through this website.

TALKING ABOUT SONGS

In a podcast from The Red House, the former home of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, Dr. Lucy Walker, the organization’s Head of Public Engagement, talks with Dr. Natasha Loges, Head of Postgraduate Programmes at the Royal College of Music, about songs on the concert stage and in the home, the relationships that inspire composers to write them, and the ever-changing conventions of song performance, with particular emphasis on Rebecca Clarke. A few of the broader cultural generalizations do not apply to Clarke—almost from the beginning of her career, for example, she had full access to “the structure” of the music-trade, and commanded support from performers who were world-class before the term was invented—but on the whole this is a refreshingly practical take on the world reflected in Clarke’s diaries and conversations, challenging much received wisdom about “intimacy” and “the domestic sphere.”

A HALF-CENTURY WITH REBECCA CLARKE

Christopher Johnson, Clarke’s great-nephew-by-marriage, talks about his nine years working with Clarke, and his fifty years working with her music, in an interview with Robert Cruz, for the Carrefour Chamber Music Project. (Please note that there are a few unavoidable streaming herky-jerks in the discussion of Stanford. It is not your computer.)