Musicology Australia

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A musical woman in a man's world: Rebecca Clarke

A Rebecca Clarke reader

Sally Macarthur

To cite this article: Sally Macarthur (2007) A musical woman in a man's world: Rebecca Clarke,
Musicology Australia, 29:1, 161-166, DOI: 10.1080/08145857.2007.10416593

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A Musical Woman in a Man's World:
Rebecca Clarke

Liane Curtis fed.),

,4 Rebecca Clarke Reader,
Waltham, Massachusetts: Rebecca Clarke Society, 2005, xv, 241 pp.
ISBN 0 9770079 0 1

SALLY MACARTHUR
In the last decades of the twentieth century, an explosion of information became
available on women's music through the concentrated research effort of a thriving
scholarly community loosely affiliated with the feminist arm of musicology, i By
the turn of the twenty-first century, however, despite the optimistic anticipation
of a bright future by Susan McClary who, in 1993, wrote that it is 'anybody's
guess what will have transpired by the year 2000', 2 scholarship focused on wom-
en's art music has virtually disappeared from the musicological radar screen in the
northern hemisphere? a situation which is evident in other parts of the globe,
including Australia. 4
1 Ehzabeth Wood's review essay in Stgns comprehensively documents the achievements of this
research which, m the early period (up to 1981), takes the form of archival research, biographies,
crmcal editions of music, single monograph and edited anthologies, and compllanons of refer-
ence materials See Elizabeth Wood, 'Review Essay: Women in Music', Szgns 6 (Winter 1980),
283-97 More than a decade later, Susan McClary describes how musicology has been trans-
formed by its encounter with feminism See Susan McClary, 'Reshaping a Dlsciphne. Musmology
and Femimsm m the 1990s', Femtntst Studzes 19/2 (Summer 1993), 399-423.
2 McClary, 'Reshaping a Discipline', 420.
3 I am not alone in making this observation. See Suzanne G. Cusick, '"Eve blowing in our ears"?
Toward a History of Music Scholarship on Women m the Twentieth Century', Women andMustc
(2001), 125-40 When scholars began to turn their attentmn to issues of'difference' more broadly
it seems that work specifically to do with women's music began to dimimsh m anthologies loosely
assocmted with the north American 'new musicology' and its British counterpart 'critical musicol-
ogy'. See Muszcology and Dfference." Gender and Sexuahty m Music Scholarship ed. Ruth A. Solie
(Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1993) m which only four out
of a total of sixteen articles are concerned exclusively with women's music. A book pubhshed a year
earher edited by Katherine Bergeron and Philip V. Bohlman, DisaphnmgMusic Musicology and zts
Canons (Chicago and London. Unxversity of Chicago Press, 1992) includes only one out of eleven
articles concerned wlth women's music. From around the turn of the twenty-first century, more
antholog,es began to appear which increasingly veered away from women's music. Rethinking
Mustc, ed. Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) includes one
article out of 24 devoted to gender and femimsm, and a sprlnkhng of others which deal with femt-
rest issues and politics in among larger discussions of music. WesternMusic and its Others"Dfference,
Representation, and.dppropr~at~on m Music ed. Georgma Born and David Hesmondalgh (Berkeley,
Los Angeles and London: Umversity of Cahfornia Press, 2000) deals with the 'other' but not w, th
women; Postmodern Mus~c/Postmodern Thought ed Judy Lochhead and Joseph Auner (New York
and London: Routledge, 2002) includes two articles on Kagel, and two out of a total of seventeen
artxcles on women's music or music and feminism The Cultural Study of Music"/1 Cr~ttcal
Introductzon ed. Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert and Rmhard Middleton (New York and London:
Routledge, 2003) does not discuss women's issues or music and there are no articles on women or
feminist issues m Beyond Structural Ltsten~ng~ Postmodern Modes of Hearing ed. Andrew
Dell'Antonio (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: Umversxty of Cahfornia Press, 2004).
4 Discussion of this situation is given m Sally Macarthur, 'Gender and the Tertiary Music
Curnculum' m Music ~n~lustrahan Tertiary Institutions. Issuesfor the 21st Century, ed. Nactmus/
161
162 MustcologyAustrohavol.29, 2007

For all its well-intentioned work on women's music since the 1970s, as I have
argued elsewhere, feminist musicology has succumbed to the dictates of postmod-
ernism with negative repercussions, s T h e eroding of the essentialist subject has
translated into the destabilization of the concept of'woman', effectively producing
the situation in which, as Suzanne Cusick observed a decade ago, scholars have
been distancing themselves from, if not abandoning altogether, the study of(women)
composers and their works. 6 This phenomenon is attributed to postmodernism's
theorizing of the subject as a 'fragmented' identity, in Butler's terms, a constantly
'performative', shifting identity and/or set of behaviours. 7 T h e postmodern tenet
that celebrates multiplicities of differences automatically disables the kind o f e m a n -
cipatory politics that might once have taken the category 'woman' seriously.
Paradoxically, however, for all its apparent liberating potential for various marginal-
ized groups, including women, the logical conclusion, even of Butler's work, is to
return the representation of these identities to the 'norm' (or to variations of the
norm), ultimately perpetuating the idea of the universal subject. Constructions of
the male/female subject are thus unavoidably understood as variations of an implied
essential 'norm' and women's music is viewed as negating the norm.
W i t h these issues in mind, the task of reviewing this latest addition to the
scholarly material on women composers is made somewhat complicated. D o I view
this Reader on the English composer Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) 8 as a product of
mainstream musicology--which has remained relatively immune to feminist and
critical theories--or is it to be seen as an extension of the important excavation
enterprise that began in the 1970s? Does the Reader attempt to develop a feminist
analysis of the music? Or, does it perpetuate a negative image for the w o m a n com-
poser? W h o will read this book? Does the subject matter make it of marginal
interest to a general music readership and would it, similarly, be of peripheral inter-
est to feminist musicologists given that in the main they seem to have drifted away
from the study of women's art music? Is the job of the review and the book itself,
then, to re-ignite interest in this potentially abandoned field of study?
I f only to situate as examples of sheer brilliance two of Clarke's works, the
Viola Sonata (1919, pub. 1921) and the Piano Trio (1921, pub. 1928), alongside
other 'greats' of the period (such as those of Debussy, Ravel and Bloch), this book,
in my view, will have done its job. It would be true to say that on their own, these
works by C l a r k e - - w h i c h are now fast becoming relatively well known through a

Catherine Grant (Queensland Conservatormm Research Centre, forthcoming) and an Sally

Macarthur, 'Raising the Platform for Women', Music Forum 12/2 (February-April 2006), 40-3
5 SallyMacarthur, 'Dassonant Polyphony: Femamsm, Postmodermsm and Musac Analysis', paper
dehvered at the Music and Postmodern Cultural Theory Conference, Umversatyof Melbourne,
5-6 December 2006
6 SuzanneCusmk, Keynote Address at the Resonances Conference held in conjunctmn with the
Thard Austrahan Women's Musac Festival, 27 September 1997, quoted an Sally Macarthur,
'Dissonances. Reflectaons of Music Research and the Academy', Postwest 15 (1999), 50
7 See Judith Butler, Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion ofldentzty (New York and
London. Routledge, 1990).
8 Remhwrites that Clarke was born an Harrow, a suburb of London, an 1886 and began studying
vaolin and swatchedto vaola.After an argument with her father she left home an her early twentaes
and undertook a career as a professxonalvxolaplayer which, Reach says,was 'a most unusual satu-
ataon for a proper upper maddle-class Enghshwoman an the first decade of the twentieth century'
(pp 12-13). Throughout her career, Clarke made many trips to the Umted States and, following
her brief marraage an 1944 to paanist, composer and teacher at the Julliard, James Fnskan untxl his
death in 1967, she lavedan the United States, and dxed in New York in 1979 (p. 15).
 Rewew Artlcles 163

series of performances and CD recordingsg--have thrown the composer into the

spotlight, initially when they were first performed at the Sprague Coolidge com-
petitions (1919 and 1921 respectively) and then with renewed vigour after the
composer's death. The close analytical readings given to both works by Bryony
Jones (Chapter 4) illustrate some of the idiosyncratic harmonic, melodic and
rhythmic constructions of this music. Jones suggests that Clarke's compositional
procedure is founded on a process involving the 'repetition and transformation of
motifs' (p. 80), and her essay would support the claim made earlier in the book by
Nancy Reich that Clarke was a musician of'uncommon eloquence, creative energy
and power', and 'one of the twentieth century's "uncommon women"' (pp. 16-17).
While poststructuralist, feminist work would avoid the close readings offered by
Jones, thus perpetuating the notion of the universal figure of the composer, I sug-
gest that without such readings--which are done as a matter of course for male
composers--it would be difficuh to lay claim to the originality of this music.
Although written much earlier, Reich's biographical essay, first published in
Sounds Australian, 1~ reinforces this point, for she explains that these two works
were submitted anonymously to the Sprague Coolidge competitions. T h e Viola
Sonata tied for first place with Ernest Bloch's Viola Suite and 'the sponsor
[Coolidge] of the competition was asked to break the tie' (p. 14), awarding first
prize to Bloch. As Clarke herself reminisces in a 1976 interview with Robert
Sherman, the judges were astonished that the Sonata was by a woman (p. 175).
Entered into the 1921 competition, the Trio, which Clarke says she liked better
than the Viola Sonata, tied for second place with an halian composer, Renzo
Bossi (p. 175). 11 Reich's ground-breaking musicological work on Clarke reveals
that she was a woman of many talents: not only was she a composer of stature but
she had carved out a career as a professional violist; and, aside from performing
and composing, she was an articulate commentator on music. In the second part
of the Reader, five of Clarke's articles have been reprinted, two drawn from Music
and Letters (1923 and 1927), two from the 1929 Cobbett's Cyclopedic Survey of
Chamber Music (one on the viola and one on Bloch), and another from the B M S
(British Music Society) Bulletin (Autumn 1931). As Reich points out, Clarke was
generous in her tribute to Bloch, describing his music in glowing terms that, as
she also says, could just as well describe her own music (p. 16).
If, as the Reader implies, the music of the Viola Sonata and the Trio are the
pinnacle of her composing career, how is the remainder of Clarke's output to be
evaluated without diminishing its importance? A recurring theme is that the
composer also made her mark as a songwriter. The gender/genre association
becomes immediately apparent: of around a total of 85 works, Clarke wrote 52
songs which, as Liane Curtis says, 'she fek encouraged to write ... because o f . . .
[their] appropriateness as a feminine genre' (p. 26). In a previous article, Curtis
(editor of this present collection, and founder and president of the Rebecca Clarke

9 TheReaderinc•udesa`Se•ectedDisc•gra••y•thathstseightrec•rdings•ftheV1••aS•nataand
four recordingsof the Piano Trio. See pp. 231-4
10 NancyB. Reich, 'Rebecca Clarke. An UncommonWoman', SoundsAustrahan: The Woman's
lssue40 (Summer1993-4), 14-16.
11 Reich'sreport on the Coolidge competitionsis taken from CyriUa Barr's unpublished essay,
'Rebecca Clarke's "One Brief Whiff of Fame"'. Also see discussion of these competitionsin
CyrillaBarr,Ehzabetb SpragueCoohdge(NewYork: Schlrmer,1998), 141-8, citedin the Reader,
n. 7, p 181.
164 MustcologyAustrahavol.29, 2007

Society), wrote that whereas the Viola Sonata and Piano Trio were composed in a
competitive forum, most of Clarke's music is for the private sphere, intended to be
performed in the intimate surroundings of family and friends. 12 This idea is
echoed by Rachel Mina who (in an article which is not included in the Reader)
comments that the majority of Clarke's viola and piano pieces principally locate
themselves as pieces associated with femininity: 'these personal pieces, many of
which have titles associated with motherhood and possess a highly emotional
inclination, demonstrate the characteristics of typically female works'. 13 How
convincing is this observation and does the Reader address the question of femi-
nine difference?
While Deborah Stein undertakes close readings of three of Clarke's songs
which span three decades, showing there to be an evolution of style from the chro-
matically tonal works, 'Shy One' (1912), through music which is 'quasi-tonal', 'The
Seal Man' (1922-3), to the intensely dramatic, atonal music, 'rich in dissonance' (p.
44) of'Tiger, Tiger' (1933), she avoids discussing their associations with the com-
poser's gender (Chapter 3). Rather, Stein seems to want to claim Clarke's songs as
music that occupies the same (masculine) territory as the Viola Sonata and the
Trio. I f this is the aim, the author has succeeded, for she extracts from the music an
array of melodic motives to reveal the underlying pitch designs of the songs, and
discusses their metrical constructions, illustrating the relationship between the
shifting metres and the expressive qualities of the music and text. No attempt is
made to undertake a feminist analysis of this music. In the following chapter, Jones
makes the point that the quality of Clarke's other music (meaning the songs and
chamber music) should not be under-estimated. As she states:
Her songs and chamber works are remarkable for their internal cohesion,
supreme craftsmanship, and integrity. The repetition and transformation of
motifs form the basis of her compositional method, whether within the con-
fines of a twenty-measure song or the expanses of a three-movement sonata.
(p. so)
By avoiding discussion of the feminine qualities of Clarke's music (that other
writers have been keen to examine, arguing, in my own case, the presence of a
feminist aesthetic in the Triol4), and elevating the music previously recognised
as 'feminine' to the 'masculine' sphere, Jones and Stein have both steered well
away from this topic. The implication from these two writers is that the recep-
tion of Clarke's music is better served by an analysis that treats it as a culturally
neutral medium.
This approach would seem to characterize each of the essays in the first sec-
tion of the book. They offer multiple perspectives on the music but they downplay
its connection with gender. Throughout the Reader, however, it becomes apparent
that Clarke was well aware of her status as a woman in what was principally a

12 LxaneCurtis, 'Rebecca Clarke and Sonata Form: O~emons of Gender and Genre', Musical
Quarterly 81/3 (Fall 1997),40Z
13 SusanRachelMma, 'RebeccaClarke: An Evaluanonof Her Pubhshed and Unpubhshed Vxola
Works m the Context of Her Life as a Vxohstand Composerfor the Viola',http://pubweb.acns.
nwu.edu/~srmma/rc.htmi, 10 May 2000, 2.
14 See SallyMacarthur, 'Sexing the Subject of Musm Analysis: Rebecca Clarke and Ehsabeth
Lutyens', Fermmst_desthetzcs zn Mustc (Westport, CT and London: GreenwoodPress, 2002),
91-6.
 RevtewArttcles 16.5

man's world. In February 1976, when Clarke had been rediscovered as a composer
by the broadcaster Jim Sherman (Curtis, p. 157), the composer spoke candidly
about her experiences as a woman. The transcriptions of these interviews are
included in the Reader in Chapters 10 and 11. She explained to Sherman that
when she used the pseudonym 'Anthony Trent' as the composer of a work--
Morpheus (1918)--that 'it had much more attention paid to it than the pieces I
had written ... in my own name, which was rather a joke' (p. 175).
The 'woman composer' issue is also briefly explored In Liane Curtis's
insightful essay (Chapter 2) in which she situates the composer in the midst of
the 'British musical renaissance' among luminaries such as Walton and Vaughan
Williams, and some of Charles Stanford's pupils, including Ivor Gurney.
Curtis notes that Clarke was a founding member of the English Society of
Women Musicians (1911) but was careful to distance herself from the label
'woman composer' (p. 20). None of the women with whom Clarke was associ-
ated in this society was mentioned in her 1970s' interviews or in her memoir
(1969-73). Curtis notes that Clarke was very much a product of the social
values of the day and, aware that women were not taken seriously as compos-
ers, would have intuitively distanced herself from her female colleagues. As
Curtis quips, 'marginality reinforces marginality' (p. 20). Curtis goes on in
this chapter to offer an analysis of two of Clarke's settings of poems by W. B.
Yeats, 'Down by the Sally Gardens' (1919) and 'The Cloths of Heaven' (c.1912)
and, disregarding the inherent dangers of comparing works by male and female
composers, she offers a comparative analysis of the settings of the same poems
by Clarke's contemporary, Ivor Gurney. M y own problem with this approach is
that when the (male) 'norm' is used as the yardstick by which music is judged,
women's music can appear to be inferior by comparison. This thesis seems to
be borne out in this case.
This is a meticulously edited collection of essays (which started life in a one-
day conference on Clarke at Brandeis University), and the volume is enriched by
the inclusion of Clarke's interviews and writings. Editor Liane Curtis has forged
a career as the leading exponent and advocate of Clarke in the English-speaking
world. The Reader comprises three sections, the first of which presents biographi-
cal information and analyticalwork by the authors Reich, Curtis, Stein and Jones.
Here Clarke is portrayed as a musician with remarkable talent and achievements
and the point is made that until the 1980s, like many other female composers, she
was virtually unknown, is The second two sections--more than half of the con-
tents of the book--contain Clarke's own writings (Part II) and, to highlight her
'mini-revival' in the mid-1970s, her interviews with broadcaster Robert Sherman,
violist Nancy Usher and musicologist Ellen D. Lerner (Part III).
The Reader was originally published in 2004 by Indiana University Press but
was almost immediately withdrawn amid some controversy. According to
Christopher Johnson, Clarke's grandnephew and manager of the Clarke estate, it
contained defamatory statements and Curtis was accused of violating some of the

15 Two important scholarlypublications on Clarke that became availablein the 1980s and 1990s
were Cahm MacDonald, 'Rebecca Clarke's Chamber Music', Tempo 160 (1987), 15-27; and
Lxane Curtis, 'Rebecca Clarke and Sonata Form: Questions of Gender and Genre', Mutual
Quarterly 81/3 (1997), 393-429. The only book-length critical study, aside from the present
volume,is m German, and comesmuchlater: Daniela Kohnen,RebeccaClarke"Kompomstm und
Bratscbtst~n--Biograph~e (Hohenhausen,Egelsbach:VerlagHansel, 1999).
166 MuslcologyAustrahavol 29,2007

conditions of copyright. Johnson threatened legal action, 16 and I n d i a n a University

Press withdrew the book and handed over the distribution rights to Liane Curtis.
I n 2005, Curtis re-issued the book in a paperback volume minus the offending
content. 17 It is this version that is the subject of this review. For all the difficulties
a book such as this might raise for poststructuralist, feminist musicology, it is an
important contribution to the scholarly work available on Rebecca Clarke. I f
Liane Curtis's aim has been to 'open the door to a b u r g e o n i n g world of Clarke
Studies' (p. 4), then, in my view, she has succeeded.

Sally Macarthur, Head of Music and Performance, University of Western Sydney, has
written extensively about feminist issues and women's music. Recent articles include,
'Women, Spirituality, Landscape: The Music of Anne Boyd, Sarah Hopkins and Moya
Henderson' in The Soundscapes of Australia: Muszc, Place and Spmtuality (Ashgate Press,
2007); 'Gender and the Tertiary Music Curriculum in Australia' in Music in Australian
Tertiary Inshtutzons: Issuesfor the 21st Century, ed. Nactmus/Catherme Grant (Queensland
Conservatormm Research Centre, forthcoming), and 'Raising the Platform for Women',
Muszc Forum 12/2 (February-Aprd 2006). Her books include FemzmstAesthetics in Music
(Greenwood Press, 2002), with co-editor Cate Poynton, Muszcs andFemimsms (Australian
Music Centre, 1999), and with co-editors, Bruce Crossman and Ronaldo Morelos,
InterculturalMusic." Creahon andlnterpretatzon (Australian Music Centre, 2007).
s.macarthur@uws.edu.au

16 The detads of the case are pubhshed an the ChromcleofHzgherEducatwn, 2004. The photocop-
ied, paperbackvolume ofA RebeccaClarkeReaderwhich as reissuedthrough the Rebecca Clarke
Society, of which Cures as founding memberand presadent, can be found at http.//www rebec-
caclarke.org.reader.html. Thas page also contains a lankto the Chromcleamcle.
17 According to the report in the ChromcleCures had questxonedsome of the editing declsmns
made by Johnson to the materaal he pubhshed through Oxford UmversatyPress. Instead of
defending his edxtorialdeosions an the usual scholarlymanner, however, such as in musacologi-
cal forums, he decaded to hand the matter over to has lawyers He also took the opportumty to
'kdl' the anthology of essays about the composer Rebecca Clarke. But as the article also wryly
notes, for all their differences, Ms. Curtas observes that she and Mr Johnson share more than
thear anterest in Rebecca Clarke's musac. 'One thing about us both', she says, 'I thank we're a
httle bat obsessed wath both of us. He's gotten very obsessed with me, and I've gotten very
obsessed with ham'. See http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i45/45aO1401.htm.