Rebecca Clarke

 A musical anniversary today: Rebecca Clarke, one of a number of women composers who are now getting their due in terms of recognition and airplay, was born on this day in 1886. She had a tough start in life and in music, thanks to her abusive father, who often beat her, and who withdrew her from the Royal Academy of Music after her harmony teacher, Percy Hilder Miles, proposed to her. She later studied at the Royal College of Music under Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, who arranged for her to study the viola under Lionel Tertis. However, while still at the college, she angered her father by criticising his extramarital activities, and in response he turned her out of the house and cut off her funds. Fortunately by then Clarke was able to support herself as a professional violist, becoming one of the first female professional orchestral musicians, and performing with all the greats of the day – Schnabel, Heifetz, Casals, Rubinstein, etc. In 1916 she moved to the United States to continue her performing career, and began to perform her own works. She later returned to London, then found herself stranded in the States when war broke out in 1939. It was while living in America that she wrote this piece, her Passacaglia on an Old English Tune, which seems to me impressive and rather beautiful –