DAME CLARA BUTT

Evening Star, Issue 22248, 28 January 1936, Page 3

DAME CLARA BUTT

AN APPRECIATION [By Roi.and Foster, O.G.S.M.] Dame Clara Butt as a girl provided one of those rare instances in musical history where a young singer’s vocal and personal gifts enabled her to step right into the front rank of professional artists to occupy a position which ordinarily takes years to attain. Her first appearance in public, as a matter of fact, took place without the consent of the authorities at the Royal College of Music, where she was a student, but her success was so marked and spontaneous that official disapproval was necessarily withheld, and she was allowed to embark upon a professional career, although her studies still continued. It was nearly 20 years after that episode when I had the privilege

of being closely associated with the great singer and her husband, Mr Kennerley Rumford, and they were still studying periodically with such eminent teachers as Dr Lierhaiiniier, the Viennese lieder-singer, Mons. Bouhy, in Paris, and Madame Etelka Gerster, one of the most famous prima donnas of her dav. Like all great artists, Clara Butt and Kennerley Rumford were hard workers, thoroughly sincere and conscientious, and sparing no effort to advance themselves in their artistic career. In private life they were two of the most delightful people it would be possible to meet, maintaining the highest• British traditions in their domestic and social relationships. The title of Dame of the British Empire was conferred upon Clara Butt in . recognition of her services to the nation during- the Great War. While Mr Rumford was acting as a despatch carrier in France, Dame Clara went up and down Great. Britain singing for wounded soldiers and organising concerts in aid of war funds, by which she raised thousands of pounds, giving her own services (and her manager’s) ■ gratuitously. Few artists have ever gained so firm a hold upon the affections ot the public. She was a .national figure, and had her death not been overshadowed by that of the King, it _ would have been regarded as a national calamity. It is strange that three great figures which formed connecting links with the reign of Queen Victoria should have passed away within a few days of one •another —first Rndyard Kipling, the Poet of Empire; then the King himself, ruler over that' Empire; and finally Clara Butt, the singer of Empire, who did so much to kindle the fires of patriotism and love of Motherland wherever she went. Clara Butt loved singing. She felt that it was her mission on earth to try to uplift others by her rrift of song, which she regarded as God-given. And from personal experience of the unsolicited tributes she constantly received from humble members of that vast public to which her songs appealed, I know that she was successful in that mission. Her voice is stilled for ever, but it will live on in the memory of those who loved and admired her, as well as in the numerous records which have been made, some of which, produced in the early days of recording, do less than justice to her unique voice and powers of expression. Clara Butt felt what she sang, and was never more at home than in oratorio music, and the sacred songs, such as ‘ Abide With Me,’ which exercised such a wide appeal. The aria, ‘ God Shall Wipe Away All Tears ’ (from Sullivan’s ‘ Light of the World’), snug with great tenderness and sympathy, is fortunately one of her best recordings. Dame Clara will be greatly mourned throughout the Empire, and world-wide sympathy will assuredly go out to her devoted husband and her daughter (happily married) in their bereavement.