Composers Datebook

Today a salute to a remarkable American composer and performer—the cornet virtuoso Herbert Lincoln Clarke. Clarke was born in Wolburn, Massachusetts, on September 12, 1867, into a peripatetic musical family. He began to play his brother’s cornet and was soon earning fifty cents a night playing in a restaurant band. At age 19, Clarke won first prize at a cornet competition in Indiana, and, in 1893, after many years on the road, Clarke got the call from John Philip Sousa to join his illustrious organization as its star soloist, a position he held for over 20 years. From 1900 on, Clarke began to compose and make recordings of his own music. In 1904, while on a return voyage from England with the Sousa Band, Clarke completed one of his best-known pieces, a work originally titled “Valse Brilliante”—but while waiting to dock in New York, at Sousa’s suggestion Clarke changed the title to “Sounds from the Hudson.” In 1923, Clarke accepted an offer to direct the Municipal Band of Long Beach, California, performing a new work at his debut concert there, entitled—appropriately enough—“Long Beach is Calling!” Herbert L. Clarke died in California on today’s date in 1945. But the much-traveled composer and performer was buried on the opposite coast—in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.—near the grave of his lifelong friend, John Philip Sousa.