Herbert L. Clarke
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Herbert Lincoln Clarke (September 12, 1867–January 30, 1945) was a noted American cornet player, bandmaster, and composer. He is widely considered one of the greatest cornet soloists of all time. Clarke left a legacy that included some of the most popular compositions for the instrument, many definitive recordings, as well as a seminal school of playing which emphasized not only extreme technical aptitude, but also increased warmth and lyricism of tone. He also produced several method books that are still widely used by brass students to this day.
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[edit] Biography
Clarke was born in Woburn, Massachusetts in 1867. The son of a composer and organist, William Clarke, Herbert's family moved often to accommodate William's work engagements, from Massachusetts to Ohio, to Indiana, back to Massachusetts, and finally to Toronto in 1880.
Clarke's early musical instruction had been on the violin; by 1881, he was a second violinist in the Toronto Philharmonic Society. However, according to his autobiography, one of the formative moments in his musical upbringing was attending a concert of The American Band of Providence, Rhode Island at the Horticultural Pavilion in Toronto in 1881, and hearing Bowen R. Church play a cornet solo. He subsequently began practicing his brother's cornet and took a chair as a cornetist in the Queen's Own Rifle band in 1882, in order to obtain his own government-issue cornet on which to practice.
Between 1884, when he graduated from high school, and 1887, Clarke drifted between playing in the pit orchestra of English's Opera House in Indianapolis, where his family had moved; working (unhappily) at the John Kay store in Toronto, while playing second chair cornetist with the Queen's Own; and playing at the Ontario Beach lake resort in the summer. It was in 1887 that he joined the Citizen's Band of Toronto, under John Bayley, as the band's cornet soloist. He spent the next five years playing in and leading several bands around Toronto (the Taylor Safe Works Band, Heintzman Piano Company Band, Streetsville Ontario Band) and teaching at the Toronto Conservatory of Music (where he also played in the Toronto Conservatory String Quartet) and at the Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario. In September of 1889 he married Elizabeth (Lizzie) Loudon, with whom he had two children: Vivian (Grace) in 1890 and James (Edward James Watkin) in 1892. In the spring of 1892, he left Canada once again, after successfully auditioning for the Patrick Gilmore Band, based in Boston.
In 1893, he joined John Phillip Sousa's Band as a cornet soloist. After playing at the Chicago World's Fair in the same year, he left to play with various other bands, continuing to do so over the next five years. During this period, he held temporary positions as second trumpet with the New York Philharmonic, and as principal trumpet in the Metropolitan Opera, for which he temporarily switched to trumpet. He also divorced Lizzie Loudon and married Lillian Bell Hause, with whom he had two more children, Ruby Bell and Herbert L. Clarke, Jr.
In 1898 he returned to Sousa's Band, with whom he toured extensively, and later became Sousa's assistant director, conducting the band in many recording sessions. Furthermore, he spent time testing and developing instruments for Conn Instruments in Elkhart, Indiana, and making a considerable number of solo recordings. He resigned from Sousa's band in September of 1917 and returned to Canada to lead the Anglo-Canadian Leather Company Band in Huntsville, Ontario from 1918 to 1923. During this time he performed very little, instead focusing his efforts not only on conducting, but also composition, and setting up his own school of cornet playing in Chicago.
In 1923, he moved to Long Beach, California due to his wife's health and conducted the Long Beach Municipal Band until 1943. In April of 1934, he was elected President of the American Bandmasters Association. Upon his death in 1945, his ashes were interred at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., near the gravesite of John Phillip Sousa. His papers and memorabilia are held at the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
[edit] Notable works
[edit] Solo cornet compositions
Clarke composed over 50 solos for cornet, many of which have experienced several editions. Here are his most famous pieces, with the date of the earliest publication included.
- Bride of the Waves (1904)
- Sounds from the Hudson (1904)
- Caprice Brilliante (1908)
- Southern Cross (1911)
- The Carnival of Venice (1912)
- Sounds from the Hudson (Valse Brilliante) (1914)
- The Debutante (1917)
- Stars in a Velvety Sky (1919)
[edit] Cornet and Trombone
- Cousins
[edit] Cornet methods
- Elementary Studies (1909)
- Technical Studies (1912)
- Characteristic Studies (1915)
- Setting Up Drills (1929)
[edit] Prose
How I Became A Cornetist (1934): an autobiography
[edit] External links
- Biography from Library and Archives Canada, which was the source for much of the information in this article.
- An extremely detailed biography from 4barsrest.com, an online brass band resource.
- How I Became a Cornetist text
[edit] Resources
- Clarke, Herbert L. How I became a Cornetist. St. Louis: Joseph L. Huber, 1934. Reprint, Kenosha: G. Leblanc Corporation, 1973.
