Viola (or Cello) Sonata

As a young, independent female graduate of London’s Royal College of Music in the early years of the 20th century, Rebecca Clarke forged a powerfully individual musical voice. She was a superb professional viola player, and it was with her own Viola Sonata of 1919 that she first found an international audience. The pretext was a composition competition organized by the American philanthropist Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. Clarke’s sonata tied for first place, and since the competition required entries to be submitted anonymously, a newspaper claimed that both the winning pieces had been written by the Swiss composer Ernest Bloch. Clarke was swift to set the record straight, and the Sonata has since become a classic of the viola repertoire. Clarke left one clue to her inspiration, however: a quote, on the score, from the French writer Alfred de Musset, telling of poetry, youth, and the intoxication of creativity. The viola begins with a solo declamation: the starting point for an urgent, rhapsodic first movement that finally dissolves in an impressionistic shimmer. The central movement flickers between light and shade: at its centre, the viola sings a mysterious incantation over rippling piano. And then the finale begins with a quiet, folk-like melody marked “semplice” (“simply”): revisiting earlier themes and moods before striding forward to a sonorous and passionate finish.