Clara Butt
Encyclopedia
Dame Clara Ellen Butt DBE
(1 February 1872 – 23 January 1936), sometimes called Clara Butt-Rumford after her marriage, was an English
contralto
with a remarkably imposing voice and a surprisingly agile singing technique. Her main career was as a recitalist and concert singer.
, Sussex
. Her father, Henry Albert Butt, was a sea captain who had been born in 1848 in Saint Martin, Jersey
, Channel Islands
. He married Clara Hook in 1869. She was born in Shoreham
, the daughter of Joseph Hook, another mariner. (See the relevant British Census returns for 1861 and 1871.)
In 1880, the Butt family moved to the port city of Bristol
in England's West Country
, and Clara was educated at South Bristol High School, where her singing ability was recognised and her talent as a performer encouraged. At the request of her headmistress, she was trained by the bass Daniel Rootham and joined the Bristol Festival Chorus, of which he was musical director. Butt won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music
in January 1890. During her fourth year of vocal lessons at the college she spent three months studying in Paris
at the expense of Queen Victoria
. She also studied in Berlin
and Italy
.
She made her professional début at the Royal Albert Hall
in London
in Sir Arthur Sullivan
’s cantata
The Golden Legend. This took place on 7 December 1892. Three days later, she appeared as Orfeo in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice
at the Lyceum Theatre. Then music critic Bernard Shaw
wrote in The World that she ‘far surpassed the utmost expectations that could reasonably be entertained’ (14 December 1892).
She returned to Paris
and undertook further studies with Jacques Bouhy
(the teacher of two other deep-voiced female singers with international reputations, Louise Homer
and Louise Kirkby Lunn
). Later, she polished her skills in Berlin
with the famous retired soprano
Etelka Gerster
. The French composer Camille Saint-Saëns
heard her, and wanted her to study his opera Dalila, but due to laws then extant forbidding the representation of biblical subjects on the British stage, nothing came of it.
Soon she had acquired an excellent reputation for her vocal attributes back home in England, which was reinforced by her physical presence on the concert platform: she was 6 feet 2 inches tall. She made many gramophone record
ings, often accompanied by the (uncredited) pianist Miss Lillian Bryant. Among Butt's recordings are several recordings of Arthur Sullivan's song "The Lost Chord
", and her friend Fanny Ronalds
, in her 1916 will, bequeathed the original manuscript of the song to Butt. She was primarily a concert singer and only ever appeared in two opera
productions, both of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, mounted in 1892 and 1920. Britain's leading composer of the era, Sir Edward Elgar
, composed his Sea Pictures
for contralto and orchestra with Clara Butt in mind as the soloist, and she sang at the first performance of the work at the Norwich
Festival on 5 October 1899, with the composer conducting.
Kennerly Rumford and, thereafter, would often appear with him in concerts. The couple eventually had three children, two sons and a daughter. Besides singing in many important festivals and concerts, she was honoured with royal commands to appear before Queen Victoria, King Edward VII
, and King George V
. She made tours of Australia
, Japan
, Canada
, the United States
and to many European cities.
During the First World War
, she organised and sang in many concerts for service charities, and for this she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire
(DBE) in the 1920 civilian war honours. That year she sang four performances of Gluck
's Orfeo ed Euridice
at Covent Garden
, with Miriam Licette
, under the baton of Sir Thomas Beecham
. According to The Times she 'played fast and loose with the time and spoilt the phrasing' and it appears not to have been a success. It was her only appearance in grand opera.
Butt's three sisters were also singers. One, Ethel Hook, became a famous contralto in her own right, made some solo recordings, and in 1926 appeared in an early sound film
made in the Lee De Forest
Phonofilm
sound-on-film process.
In later life, Clara Butt was dogged by tragedies. Her elder son died of meningitis while still at school, and the younger one committed suicide. During the 1920s, she became seriously ill with cancer of the spine. She made many of her later records seated in a wheelchair. She died in 1936, age 63, at her home in North Stoke, Oxfordshire
, reportedly as a result of an accident she had suffered in 1931. It is not clear how ill she was with the spinal cancer at the time of her death. Her voice can still be heard on CD transfers of her 78-rpm recordings.
".
Indeed, not all serious musicians admired her booming contralto voice, which can be mistaken for a man's on some recordings, or her rather 'populist' approach to her art. In his autobiography, conductor Sir Adrian Boult recounts an anecdote about two young music students going for a bicycle ride one afternoon. After a while they stopped and sat making idle conversation on a piece of grass. One rider looked at his bicycle and mused 'I am going to call it Santley because it is a Singer'. (Sir Charles Santley
, a veteran baritone, was the most noted British singer of the day, and Singer was the maker of the bicycle.) The other responded 'I am going to call mine Clara Butt because it is not.' He then noticed as they rode home that a frosty atmosphere had developed. He realised the reason for the frostiness when, a short time afterwards, he read in the press that his companion, Robert Kennerly Rumford (1870-1957), was engaged to Clara Butt.
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(1 February 1872 – 23 January 1936), sometimes called Clara Butt-Rumford after her marriage, was an English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
contralto
Contralto
Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...
with a remarkably imposing voice and a surprisingly agile singing technique. Her main career was as a recitalist and concert singer.
Early life and career
Clara Butt was born in SouthwickSouthwick, West Sussex
Southwick is a small town and civil parish in the Adur District of West Sussex, England located three miles west of Brighton and a suburb of the East Sussex resort City of Brighton & Hove...
, Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
. Her father, Henry Albert Butt, was a sea captain who had been born in 1848 in Saint Martin, Jersey
Saint Martin, Jersey
-Subdivisions:St. Martin is divided into vingtaines as follows:*La Vingtaine de Rozel*La Vingtaine de Faldouet*La Vingtaine de la Quéruée*La Vingtaine de l'Église*La Vingtaine du Fief de la ReineThe Écréhous are part of the parish of St...
, Channel Islands
Channel Islands
The Channel Islands are an archipelago of British Crown Dependencies in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two separate bailiwicks: the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey...
. He married Clara Hook in 1869. She was born in Shoreham
Shoreham
Shoreham is the name of several different places:* Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, UK** Shoreham 1974–1997** New Shoreham 1295–1885* Shoreham, Kent, UK* Shoreham, Michigan, USA...
, the daughter of Joseph Hook, another mariner. (See the relevant British Census returns for 1861 and 1871.)
In 1880, the Butt family moved to the port city of Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
in England's West Country
West Country
The West Country is an informal term for the area of south western England roughly corresponding to the modern South West England government region. It is often defined to encompass the historic counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset and the City of Bristol, while the counties of...
, and Clara was educated at South Bristol High School, where her singing ability was recognised and her talent as a performer encouraged. At the request of her headmistress, she was trained by the bass Daniel Rootham and joined the Bristol Festival Chorus, of which he was musical director. Butt won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music
Royal College of Music
The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...
in January 1890. During her fourth year of vocal lessons at the college she spent three months studying in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
at the expense of Queen Victoria
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
. She also studied in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
.
She made her professional début at the Royal Albert Hall
Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall situated on the northern edge of the South Kensington area, in the City of Westminster, London, England, best known for holding the annual summer Proms concerts since 1941....
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in Sir Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
’s cantata
Cantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....
The Golden Legend. This took place on 7 December 1892. Three days later, she appeared as Orfeo in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice
Orfeo ed Euridice
Orfeo ed Euridice is an opera composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck based on the myth of Orpheus, set to a libretto by Ranieri de' Calzabigi. It belongs to the genre of the azione teatrale, meaning an opera on a mythological subject with choruses and dancing...
at the Lyceum Theatre. Then music critic Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
wrote in The World that she ‘far surpassed the utmost expectations that could reasonably be entertained’ (14 December 1892).
She returned to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and undertook further studies with Jacques Bouhy
Jacques Bouhy
Jacques-Joseph-André Bouhy a Belgian baritone, most famous for being the first to sing the Toreador Song in the role of Escamillo in Carmen....
(the teacher of two other deep-voiced female singers with international reputations, Louise Homer
Louise Homer
Louise Homer was an American operatic contralto who had an active international career in concert halls and opera houses from 1895 until her retirement in 1932. After a brief stint as a vaudeville entertainer in New England, she made her professional opera debut in France in 1898...
and Louise Kirkby Lunn
Louise Kirkby Lunn
Louise Kirkby Lunn was an English contralto. Sometimes classified as a mezzo-soprano, she was a leading English-born singer of the first two decades of the 20th century, earning praise for her performances in concert, oratorio and opera.-Training:Kirkby Lunn had her early vocal training in her...
). Later, she polished her skills in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
with the famous retired soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
Etelka Gerster
Etelka Gerster
Etelka Gerster was a Hungarian soprano. She debuted in Italy in 1876 and sang in London the following year.In 1878 she was performing in the Academy of Music in New York City where she was considered one of the leading singers of her time...
. The French composer Camille Saint-Saëns
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
heard her, and wanted her to study his opera Dalila, but due to laws then extant forbidding the representation of biblical subjects on the British stage, nothing came of it.
Soon she had acquired an excellent reputation for her vocal attributes back home in England, which was reinforced by her physical presence on the concert platform: she was 6 feet 2 inches tall. She made many gramophone record
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
ings, often accompanied by the (uncredited) pianist Miss Lillian Bryant. Among Butt's recordings are several recordings of Arthur Sullivan's song "The Lost Chord
The Lost Chord
"The Lost Chord" is a song composed by Arthur Sullivan in 1877 at the bedside of his brother Fred during Fred's last illness. The manuscript is dated 13 January 1877; Fred Sullivan died five days later...
", and her friend Fanny Ronalds
Fanny Ronalds
Mary Frances "Fanny" Ronalds , was an American socialite and amateur singer who is best known for her long affair with the composer Arthur Sullivan in London in the last decades of the nineteenth century....
, in her 1916 will, bequeathed the original manuscript of the song to Butt. She was primarily a concert singer and only ever appeared in two opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
productions, both of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, mounted in 1892 and 1920. Britain's leading composer of the era, Sir Edward Elgar
Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...
, composed his Sea Pictures
Sea Pictures
Sea Pictures, Op. 37 is a song cycle by Sir Edward Elgar consisting of five songs written by various poets. It was set for contralto and orchestra, though a distinct version for piano was often performed by Elgar...
for contralto and orchestra with Clara Butt in mind as the soloist, and she sang at the first performance of the work at the Norwich
Norwich
Norwich is a city in England. It is the regional administrative centre and county town of Norfolk. During the 11th century, Norwich was the largest city in England after London, and one of the most important places in the kingdom...
Festival on 5 October 1899, with the composer conducting.
20th century
In 1900 she married the baritoneBaritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
Kennerly Rumford and, thereafter, would often appear with him in concerts. The couple eventually had three children, two sons and a daughter. Besides singing in many important festivals and concerts, she was honoured with royal commands to appear before Queen Victoria, King Edward VII
Edward VII of the United Kingdom
Edward VII was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910...
, and King George V
George V of the United Kingdom
George V was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 through the First World War until his death in 1936....
. She made tours of Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and to many European cities.
During the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, she organised and sang in many concerts for service charities, and for this she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(DBE) in the 1920 civilian war honours. That year she sang four performances of Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...
's Orfeo ed Euridice
Orfeo ed Euridice
Orfeo ed Euridice is an opera composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck based on the myth of Orpheus, set to a libretto by Ranieri de' Calzabigi. It belongs to the genre of the azione teatrale, meaning an opera on a mythological subject with choruses and dancing...
at Covent Garden
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
, with Miriam Licette
Miriam Licette
Miriam Licette was an English operatic soprano whose career spanned 35 years, from the mid-1910s to after World War II. She was also a singing teacher, and created the Miriam Licette Scholarship.-Career:...
, under the baton of Sir Thomas Beecham
Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...
. According to The Times she 'played fast and loose with the time and spoilt the phrasing' and it appears not to have been a success. It was her only appearance in grand opera.
Butt's three sisters were also singers. One, Ethel Hook, became a famous contralto in her own right, made some solo recordings, and in 1926 appeared in an early sound film
Sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
made in the Lee De Forest
Lee De Forest
Lee De Forest was an American inventor with over 180 patents to his credit. De Forest invented the Audion, a vacuum tube that takes relatively weak electrical signals and amplifies them. De Forest is one of the fathers of the "electronic age", as the Audion helped to usher in the widespread use...
Phonofilm
Phonofilm
In 1919, Lee De Forest, inventor of the audion tube, filed his first patent on a sound-on-film process, DeForest Phonofilm, which recorded sound directly onto film as parallel lines. These parallel lines photographically recorded electrical waveforms from a microphone, which were translated back...
sound-on-film process.
In later life, Clara Butt was dogged by tragedies. Her elder son died of meningitis while still at school, and the younger one committed suicide. During the 1920s, she became seriously ill with cancer of the spine. She made many of her later records seated in a wheelchair. She died in 1936, age 63, at her home in North Stoke, Oxfordshire
North Stoke, Oxfordshire
North Stoke is a village beside the River Thames in the Crowmarsh civil parish in South Oxfordshire, south of the market town of Wallingford.-Parish church:...
, reportedly as a result of an accident she had suffered in 1931. It is not clear how ill she was with the spinal cancer at the time of her death. Her voice can still be heard on CD transfers of her 78-rpm recordings.
Reputation
Sir Thomas Beecham once said, jokingly, of Butt that: "On a clear day, you could have heard her across the English ChannelEnglish Channel
The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...
".
Indeed, not all serious musicians admired her booming contralto voice, which can be mistaken for a man's on some recordings, or her rather 'populist' approach to her art. In his autobiography, conductor Sir Adrian Boult recounts an anecdote about two young music students going for a bicycle ride one afternoon. After a while they stopped and sat making idle conversation on a piece of grass. One rider looked at his bicycle and mused 'I am going to call it Santley because it is a Singer'. (Sir Charles Santley
Charles Santley
Sir Charles Santley was an English-born opera and oratorio star with a bravuraFrom the Italian verb bravare, to show off. A florid, ostentatious style or a passage of music requiring technical skill technique who became the most eminent English baritone and male concert singer of the Victorian era...
, a veteran baritone, was the most noted British singer of the day, and Singer was the maker of the bicycle.) The other responded 'I am going to call mine Clara Butt because it is not.' He then noticed as they rode home that a frosty atmosphere had developed. He realised the reason for the frostiness when, a short time afterwards, he read in the press that his companion, Robert Kennerly Rumford (1870-1957), was engaged to Clara Butt.
Further reading
- Biography, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- Andrea Suhm-Binder's biography page
- Winifred Ponder, Clara Butt - Her Life-Story, London: George Harrap, 1928. Reprinted, New York: Da Capo Press, 1978. ISBN 0306775298
External links
- Dame Clara Butt - The Complete Discography
- Butt, Clara at www.cantabile-subito.de