HERBERT CLARKE
Five-year-old Herbert Clarke stealthily crept up the attic stairs as he had done for days when his mother was busy. He quietly opened up the cases of wind instruments stored there. Not daring to take them out, he sat entranced as he examined each one separately.
But his favorite play place was soon discovered. His father ordered him to stay out of the attic and then began to teach him violin. The boy progressed surprisingly fast, but the forbidden instruments were constantly in his mind.
Herbert Lincoln Clarke, born September 12, 1867, in Woburn, Massachusetts, was the fourth of five sons of William Horatio and Eliza Tufts Richardson Clarke. His father, a celebrated organist and composer, disapproved of band musicians although he could play any kind of instrument made. He wanted his sons to learn and enjoy classical music and frequently roared at them, “Music is an art, not a profession!” But band music was Herbert’s heritage.
He watched the torchlight processions of the political parties prior to the election of 1876, the fife and drum corps, and bands of all kinds marching and playing with hundreds of men, all bearing torches and wearing multi-colored capes. He would lie awake nights listening to bands playing in the distance, then fall asleep and dream that he was a man playing with them.
After his brother Ed bought a cornet and joined a band Herbert’s band fever grew worse. On their first parade Herbert marched alongside Ed and announced to all they passed, “This is my brother playing the cornet.”
When Herbert was twelve the family moved to Toronto, Canada, having previously lived in four different cities where Mr. Clarke had been called to play the church organ or take charge of school music. At first Herbert had to content himself with trailing bands and keeping his brothers’ instruments polished and their uniforms brushed and spotless.
After he had heard Bowen R. Church, his first cornetist hero, Herbert again hopefully invaded the attic collection. He took out the old brass cornopean from its box and plastered it together with beeswax. Watching his chance to practice he found he could draw only wheezy noises from the dilapidated old horn, but he did learn to play some of the cornet scales. Finally one loud toot blew the old instrument apart.
Regretfully, Herbert went back to his violin and with some of his schoolmates organized a little orchestra which did so well that they were soon playing at church sociables. Herbert’s music attracted so much attention that he was offered the second violinist chair with the Toronto Philharmonic Orchestra of some fifty players. Here the thirteen-year-old boy learned much good music.
One day he persuaded his mother to let him “try just once” to play his brother’s silver cornet. She was so surprised at his performance that she asked Ed to hear him. As a result Herbert was allowed to play in his brother’s small orchestra at the opening of a new restaurant. The fifty cents he received was the first money he had ever made from music.
This spurred him on to further practice and to begin saving money to buy his own cornet. He shoveled snow furiously at twenty-five cents a job, but at the end of a month his cornet seemed far away. His father, usually so generous, refused to contribute a cent to this cause.
Discouraged, Herbert decided to try for a job playing with the Government Regiment Band as he had heard that they furnished instruments free to those who did not own them. In spite of the fact that he was only fourteen, he was accepted and took the oath of allegiance to Queen Victoria for service. The bandmaster gave him a cornet, a plain brass one with badly corroded slides; but he happily cleaned it up and polished it till it glistened like new. No one worked harder than Herbert. With distended cheeks and bulging eyes he practiced faithfully.
His big day soon came. At the opening of Canadian Parliament he put on his regimental uniform to perform guard duty. In twelve below zero weather the band marched through snowy and icy streets. At first he could not keep step and hold his mouthpiece in place. Then the cornet froze to his lips. It not only made no sound, but it took the skin when he removed it. His proud schoolmates who trooped along home with him after the parade did not know that their hero had not played a note during the entire march.
That fall after a hard fought football game, Herbert contracted pneumonia and was kept in bed from December till April. His brother Ed who was now playing a violin in an orchestra felt so sorry for Herbert that he allowed him to use his cornet. Father relented enough to say, “Get well, son, and I’ll let you play the cornet since nothing else will do. That is, if you behave yourself and keep your school work up to the mark.” Herbert returned to school and was graduated with his class in 1884.
Then his family moved again—this time to Indianapolis, Indiana. There, fortunately, each musician had his own room. Herbert and his cornet, Ern and his trombone, Ed and his violin, Mr. Clarke and his organ. Besides, the boys and their father began playing together. Many unsigned notes were left in the Clarke’s mailbox, all expressing the same thought—that the family was the “neighborhood nuisance” and that “they should take their instruments and move to the country.”
Herbert got a job playing at a roller skating rink for fourteen dollars a week and proudly began to pay board at home, a dollar a week. Now he was making enough money to buy his own cornet. Although it was not a silver-plated one like Ed’s, it was a prized possession.
The boy’s ambition was fired again when Patrick Gilmore’s band came to play in Indianapolis. Herbert met them at the station and, standing first on one foot then on the other, tried to get enough courage to ask to carry the great Gilmore’s bag to the hotel. Failing in this he sat in a front seat at the concert where he could see every move of the musicians as well as marvel at their technique. Then and there he vowed that some day he would play in Gilmore’s band, the only traveling band in the country at that time.
Still thinking of Gilmore the next morning, he was up early to practice when a call from his father interrupted, “A letter for you, Herbert. Come on down!” Will, the oldest son who had remained in business in Toronto, had written glowingly of a job he had found for Herbert in a store. Mr. Clarke was sure that this was a fine opportunity for his young son, and he cited instances of many wealthy and respected citizens who had started with similar jobs. With visions of wealth and prestige, Herbert left home to try for a business career.
Upon his arrival his hopes were a bit dashed when he learned that he would be paid only ten dollars a month. So that he would not have to pay any lodging, his brother Will allowed him to sleep in the upstairs room of his boathouse. The boy was always cold, but he was too proud to ask for help from home. When summer came, he began playing with the Regimental Band and that trebled his income.
Herbert began to doubt that his career was business as his music interest grew. He said, “There is something that makes me restless and only music will overcome it.” One day at the store he was discovered working on cornet solos and drawing staves on brown wrapping paper. For this he was reprimanded by his manager and later lectured by Will. Before he could be fired, however, a telegram came for him.
He had received an offer to play at English’s Opera in Indianapolis at fifteen dollars a week. This he accepted with alacrity. Back in Indianapolis he found that his income was sufficient for him to buy the books and music he wanted for the cornet. He studied all the music magazines and Orban’s Method faithfully, and worked hard trying to devise a method of his own. He sat where he could watch good cornetists at concerts then went home to practice for hours trying to imitate them. Clarke, in writing of these years, said, “No one will ever know the many obstacles I had to overcome in the early part of my career.” But his love for the cornet kept him at work in spite of many disappointments.
The next year at the age of eighteen, Herbert won the cornet championship at the state band contest in Evansville, Indiana. Henry Dustin, celebrated instrument maker, presented him with a gold-plated and elaborately engraved baby cornet with an oval bell. Six and a half inches long and five inches high, this was the smallest cornet ever made, and it could actually be played.
Herbert went to visit his parents who now lived in Rochester, New York, and at their urging, patiently canvassed the town for a job. But when he received an offer from the Citizens Band in Toronto, who wanted him as cornet soloist, the pleas of his father fell upon a mind already made up. “My career must be music as it is so continually thrust upon me,” he decided once and for all.
Back in Toronto he reenlisted with the Queen’s Own Regiment. Then the ambitious young man organized and led an industrial band of thirty employees of the Taylor Safe Works Company. For this, his first directing work, he spent long hours before his mirror, wielding his baton with different rhythms until he could use it easily.
His reputation as a musician spread and the Toronto Conservatory of Music hired him as instructor in “violin, viola, cornet and all brass instruments.” In the fall of 1890 Clarke was honorably discharged from the Regimental Band so he could lead a forty-man band for the Heintzman Piano Company.
Clarke also formed a little company he called “The Canadian Trio.” They gave concerts all over Ontario, and in a short time Herbert Clarke was known as “Canada’s Favorite Cornet Soloist.”
But he was to receive a still greater honor—a chance to try out for a place in Gilmore’s Band. He went to New York and passed a strenuous test of both ability and endurance.
At twenty-four he had realized his teen-age dream of being a soloist with the great Gilmore and of traveling over the country with him. Two Clarke brothers occupied solo chairs—Ernest, trombone and Herbert, cornet. The band began by touring the New England States, then played a month at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Manhattan Beach was the next engagement, and then the St. Louis exposition. Here Patrick Gilmore suddenly died.
Speaking of this time Clarke wrote, “Back in New York and broke, I played at the new Manhattan Theater and any place I could get work. To avoid paying carfare, I walked many miles to and from my jobs.”
But the next year he joined Sousa’s Band for a tour of the United States and Europe and remained with him for several years. Clarke, encouraged by Arthur Pryor, twenty-three-year-old trombone soloist with the band, began writing his own solos.
Many times between tours the musicians were without work and salary. During these years Clarke played with various groups, among them Victor Herbert’s 22nd Regiment Band and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
Then he rejoined Sousa for another great tour. When they returned from Europe, Clarke took over the American Band in Providence, Rhode Island. At the same time he led the bands of three regiments. After a year he resigned and filled engagements under the name of Clarke’s Providence Band.
However, when Sousa called to ask that Clarke rejoin him for a world tour, he was greatly tempted. He was ready to play solos again and leave booking problems behind him. He consoled his wife and three children by promising to take them with him on the 1905 European tour. “My life seemed to be one of change,” wrote Clarke. “But I surely gained experience in all kinds of music.”
From 1904 till 1917 Herbert Clarke, the self-taught cornetist, was soloist and assistant conductor of Sousa’s great band. On the podium he had the same appearance and directing style as Sousa. Outstanding as an arranger of band music, Clarke was invaluable. The two men worked together through all these years in confidential relationship.
Between tours Clarke spent more time on the farm which he had bought near Reading, Pennsylvania, getting acquainted with his family and teaching and practicing. He told of his small daughter forgetting him after a long tour and running to tell her mother that a strange man was at the door.
At the age of forty-five Clarke began to think of retiring from concert work. He went to Elkhart, Indiana, to head the cornet and trumpet department of C. G. Conn’s large factory with the understanding that he be released for tours with Sousa. Clarke held this position until Mr. Conn sold his factory in 1915.
As a young man Clarke had declared that he would leave the concert field at the age of fifty. He insisted that he wanted to “quit in good standing, stay in one place, sleep in the same bed every night and quit traveling all over the world.”
In September, 1917, Clarke severed his connection with Sousa’s band and accepted an offer to conduct the band of the Anglo-American Leather Company in Huntsville, Canada. At the end of this five year contract, Clarke moved to Los Angeles, California, where he planned to spend the rest of his life. No sooner had he got well started in teaching cornet and in launching a correspondence course than he accepted the leadership of the Long Beach, California, Municipal Band, for a six-month period.
Under Clarke’s baton this band of twenty-five musicians grew to fifty-two and the six months lengthened to twenty years. Then Clarke’s physician ordered him to retire from work.
During his many years of public service, Herbert Clarke made an enviable record. The degree of Doctor of Music was conferred upon him by Phillips University in 1934. He was the author of four books on the cornet. He traveled all over the world with the greatest bands of his day, having made thirty-four tours of the United States and four of Europe. He played over 6,000 programmed concert solos.
Among his popular compositions are Aloha Oe, Whirlwind Polka, Ah Cupid, and Long Beach Is Calling. He made more phonograph records than any other cornet player, both in the United States and in Europe. Sounds of the Hudson and Debutante are among those that have inspired thousands with their flawless technique. His records were still listed in the catalogs well into the 1920’s and many cornetists play them today.
As a teacher Dr. Clarke had pupils from all over the world seeking his counsel and guidance. He told them, “You can be a great cornet player if you wish. There is no such thing as a born cornetist. Each is made by and for himself.”
Dr. Clarke had a keen interest in school and college bands and was in great demand as guest conductor and lecturer at national band contests and clinics. His kindly mannerisms and warm friendliness endeared him to young and old alike.
Bringing joy and happiness to others through his music and his encouragement had made a full life for Herbert Clarke who died January 30, 1945, in Long Beach, California.
In 1948 a monument was unveiled and dedicated to Dr. Clarke in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D. C. It was erected by the Pennsylvania Bandmasters’ Association in collaboration with the American Bandmasters’ Association and the Sousa Band Fraternal Society. On this monument not far from that of his beloved friend, Sousa, are these words: Herbert Lincoln Clarke, World’s Premiere Cornetist and Bandmaster.
This memorial was erected to a man who had never had a cornet lesson in his life, to a man who was known the world over as a great artist and a great gentleman.
