Clarke’s Daybreak, for voice and string quartet, originally published in 2012, has just been reissued—freshly engraved, with an updated introduction and a cover-design that captures something of the piece’s overwhelming sensuality—by our friends at Sleepy Puppy Press. Details on our Shop page, and on Sleepy Puppy’s website (here for the print edition, here for the digital).
The text is John Donne’s aubade “Stay O sweet, and do not rise!”—which, in case you’ve forgotten, is not just a morning-song but a morning-after song, in which two lovers are not only still in bed, but wound very tightly in one another’s embrace.
Little else needs to be said, except that you should immediately knock yourself out with the glorious performance by Nicholas Phan and Brooklyn Rider, here or at either of the Sleepy Puppy links above.
Cover art: Detail from a portrait of Rebecca Clarke, 21 July 1925, by Langfier Ltd., London, Rebecca Clarke and James Friskin Papers, Music Division, Library of Congress
The New York Review of Books published a review-essay about Leah Broad’s Quartet in their issue dated October 5, 2023 (published online in mid-September), and while the bulk of the reviewer’s attention went to Dame Ethel Smyth—whose success at eating all the oxygen in any room she’s let into remains unparalleled—a number of statements were made about Rebecca Clarke, virtually all of them untrue, and most of them plainly lifted, not from Dr. Broad’s book, but from Wikipedia.
Well, this wasn’t our first rodeo, so we weren’t particularly surprised, even though the reviewer is Distinguished Professor of Music History and Dean Emeritus at a well-known American university, and probably wouldn’t tolerate such behavior from his students. What stuck in our craw, however, was not the ahistorical and overwhelmingly reductive treatment of Clarke’s output and publishing-history, but the final as-if silver lining—”Fortunately her works are being championed and the unpublished pieces brought into print by the recently formed Rebecca Clarke Society at Brandeis.”—giving credit to a scofflaw outfit that has been the principal impediment to the publication of Clarke’s works for the last two decades.
Clearly, this required a response, so we contacted the Review immediately with the relevant facts. This yielded a slight correction, deleting “and the unpublished pieces brought into print” from the body of the review, and adding a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it line at the end, reading “An earlier version of this article misstated the purpose of the Rebecca Clarke Society at Brandeis.” Well, no, actually—both versions of the article misstated the facts of the matter across the board, so we submitted a formal letter to the editor, and were told that it had gone to the relevant department for consideration. A month of near-silence passed, followed by a month of absolute silence, followed—after one final query on our part, just this morning—by news that space could not be found.
Be that as it may, people are still being misled, so here’s our letter, as submitted on October 19, 2023. We realize that our circulation doesn’t quite equal that of the New York Review, but we do make every effort to keep the public record straight, and to find space for the truth.
It is with great joy—and in a state of dazed half-belief—that I announce the following:
All of Rebecca Clarke’s remaining vocal music—the early songs that she wrote as an uninstructed amateur, her first experiments as a fledgling professional, her fabulous duets—will be published by ClarNan Editions, an imprint of Classical Vocal Reprints, in a series of volumes co-edited with Nicholas Phan, the brilliant Grammy-nominated tenor who has done so much for Clarke’s music in the concert-hall.
All of Clarke’s remaining music with strings—including the ensemble-version of Chinese Puzzle that she made for the Aeolian Players, and the violin teaching-pieces she wrote for one of her nieces—will be published by Sleepy Puppy Press, along with a volume for viola comprising Clarke’s arrangements of pieces by other composers, and her cadenza for the “Handel”/Casadesus concerto, co-edited by Caroline Castleton, whose doctoral work at the University of Maryland promises to transform our understanding of Clarke as a performer.
If current projections hold, this means that all of Clarke’s compositions known to exist in a completed state—excluding only sketches, drafts, and exercises—will have been published by the end of 2023. Thus, Clarke will join the likes of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Berlioz, and Palestrina in having virtually every note she ever wrote put before the public, but with one vital distinction: Clarke’s de-facto Complete Works Edition will exist, not as a monumental set that only large reference collections can afford to acquire, but as a series of practical publications available through normal commercial channels to the widest possible range of musicians, students, and music-lovers.
Once these projects are completed, along with a giant piece of research that I am determined to finish on the same schedule, I will be donating Clarke’s manuscripts and papers, and those of her husband, the great pianist James Friskin, “to the United States of America for the benefit of the American people and inclusion in the Library of Congress“—a phrase in the deed of gift that overwhelms me every time I think of it—where they will form a named collection, The Rebecca Clarke and James Friskin Papers, to which the aforementioned research project will serve as a key.
In 1982, Clarke’s heirs assigned her rights to me with the goal of “promoting such rights as a memorial,” and in the intervening forty-one years much ink has been spilled as to whether or not I have done so. Like Clarke, I am content to let my work speak for itself.
Library of Congress James Madison Building, Washington, D.C., exterior view, from corner of Independence Avenue and 2nd Street, by Carol M. Highsmith, 2007, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LOT 13908 (ONLINE)
Rebecca Clarke 