Rebecca Clarke was a British composer and violist active from the early to mid-20th century, born in Harrow, England, to an American father and German mother. She studied composition at the Royal College of Music under Charles Villiers Stanford and viola with Lionel Tertis, becoming one of the first female professional orchestral musicians in London as a member of Sir Henry Wood’s Queen’s Hall Orchestra. Stranded in the United States at the outbreak of the Second World War, she settled permanently in New York, marrying pianist-composer James Friskin in 1944 and largely ceasing to compose thereafter. Her modest but distinctive output, shaped by Impressionist influences, centers on chamber music featuring the viola, songs, and choral works, including the Viola Sonata (1919) and the Piano Trio (1921). She died in New York City in 1979 at the age of 93.

Widely regarded as the most distinguished British female composer of the inter-war generation, Clarke long remained obscure after abandoning composition in the 1940s, and her reputation was largely rebuilt through a scholarly and performance revival beginning around her ninetieth birthday in 1976. Her Viola Sonata, originally overshadowed by gender bias despite tying for first prize in Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge’s 1919 competition, has since become a staple of the standard viola repertoire, championed by artists such as Tabea Zimmermann. The Rebecca Clarke Society and ongoing publication of previously unknown works have cemented her status as a significant, if long-underrecognized, voice in early 20th-century British chamber music.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Clarke_(composer)