REBECCA CLARKE Life&times

1886

LIFE: Rebecca Clarke is born in Harrow on 27 August to a German mother and an American father. She begins on violin, sharing lessons with her younger brother. TIMES: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is published in the US, then shortly after in the UK. After a positive review in The Times, it becomes a major bestseller.

1919

LIFE: Her Viola Sonata ties for first place in the Berkshire Festival Chamber Music Competition, though loses out to a suite by Ernest Bloch when a casting vote is made by competition patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. TIMES: The 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which bans the production, import and transport of alcoholic drinks, is ratified, introducing the era of Prohibition the following year.

1944

LIFE: She marries the composer and pianist James Friskin, a former fellow student from the Royal College of Music, whom she has encountered by chance in Manhattan earlier that year. TIMES: On D-day, more than 155,000 Allied troops land on the beaches of Normandy, setting in motion Operation Overlord to invade and liberate German-occupied western Europe.

1927

LIFE: Performing and recording as both a viola soloist and ensemble player, she founds The English Ensemble alongside violinist Marjorie Hayward, pianist Kathleen Long and cellist May Mukle.

TIMES: Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party. Banished soon after to Kazakhstan, he is exiled from the Soviet Union completely the following year, eventually settling in Mexico.

1933

LIFE: She makes the last of several revisions to ‘The Tiger’. This darkly tempestuous song setting of William Blake possibly reflects her romantic involvement with the baritone John Goss. TIMES: Two weeks into his presidency, Franklin D Roosevelt gives the first of his ‘Fireside Chats’, a series of evening radio broadcasts in which he addresses Americans about current issues.

1979

LIFE: Having spent most of her life in the US, Clarke dies in New York City on 13 October. She composed little in her last three decades, but made arrangements of earlier works.

TIMES: Margaret Thatcher becomes the UK’S first ever woman prime minister, the Conservative Party having won a 44-seat majority in the House of Commons.