Rebecca Clarke

Synopsis

In 1942, the 19th Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music was held in Berkeley, California. Over 30 composers from 13 nations were represented. All of them were male­ — with one exception. On today’s date, the Prelude, Allegro, and Pastorale for clarinet and viola written by Rebecca Clarke was premiered at the Festival.

Clarke was born in England, in 1886, to an American father and a German mother. She grew up a British citizen, studied music in London, and became one of the U.K.’s first female professional orchestral violists. She was stranded in the United States at the outbreak of World War II and settled permanently in New York City.

In notes for the 1942 Festival, she modestly described her Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale as: “… very unpretentious: a short, unassuming little prelude … The second movement should sound very spirited … The third movement, Pastorale, is rather melancholy and nostalgic…”

This work, and much of her music, remained unpublished during her lifetime, but, over time, its quality and range increasingly came to light. When she turned 90 in 1976, she was interviewed by the BBC, and seemed both gratified and bemused by all the renewed attention.

Music Played in Today's Program

Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979): Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale; Robert Plane, clarinet; Philip Dukes, viola; Naxos 8.557934

On This Day

Deaths

• 1904 - Austrian music critic and university professor Eduard Hanslick, champion of Brahms and enemy of Wagner, dies in Vienna, 78

• 1970 - German-born American composer Ingolf Dahl, 68, in Frutigen, Switzerland

Premieres

• 1946 - American premiere of Britten: opera Peter Grimes, at Berkshire Music Center (Tangelwood), with Leonard Bernstein conducting

• 1947 - Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras No. 8, in Rome, conducted by the composer

• 1947 - Von Einem: opera Dantons Tod (The Death of Danton) at the Salzburg, Festival in Austria,with Ferenc Fricsay conducting

• 1966 - Henze: Die Bassariden (after Euripides’ play The Bacchae) at the Salzburg Festival in Austria

• 1967 - Piston: Clarinet Concerto, during the Fifth Congregation of the Arts at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire

• 1988 - Ned Rorem: Bright Music for flute, two violins, cello and piano, at Presbyterian Church, Bridgehampton (New York), by the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Associates

• 2000 - Joan Tower: Big Sky for piano trio, in LaJolla, California, at a SummerFest concert featuring Chee-Yun (violin), David Finckel (cello) and Wu Han (piano)

Others

• 1826 - At his parents’ mansion outside Berlin, 17-year-old German composer Felix Mendelssohn completes his overture to Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream after reading the play the previous month. The first private performance (in a two-piano version) was given at the family mansion by Felix and his sister Fanny on November 19, 1826. The first public performance (in its orchestral version) was given in Stettlin on February 20, 1827, conducted by Carl Loewe. Mendelssohn returned to the play nearly two decades later after he had become court composer to the king of Prussia, creating a whole score of incidental music besides the overture, and conducted the concert premiere of the expanded incidental music in Berlin on November 14, 1842 in Berlin. The complete incidental music integrated into a staging of Shakespeare’s play was performed at the Neue Palais at Potsdam on October 14, 1843.