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T<\/span>he legendary lungs of Clara Butt breathed their last within hours of those both of King George V and Rudyard Kipling. A neat coincidence for someone used to being dubbed the Queen of Song and blessed with a huge following around the British Empire. But like that Empire, much of what Dame Clara stood for was drifting into twilight in 1936.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Clara Butt was just 63 when cancer of the spine finally defeated her long, brave resistance. She left behind little by way of a continuing musical legacy, although her Elgarian connections at least can never be erased. She premiered Sea Pictures<\/i>, kitted out as a mermaid; Elgar apparently wrote the part of the Angel in The Dream of Gerontius <\/i>and certainly the contralto contribution to the Coronation Ode <\/i>with her in mind\u2026\u00a0its \u2018Land of Hope and Glory<\/a><\/strong>\u2019 became virtually her property, belted out at all manner of national celebrations.<\/span><\/p>\n No, it\u2019s tempting to suggest instead that Butt is remembered chiefly as a cardboard cut-out figure of fun \u2013 notorious enough for Disney to lampoon as Clara Cluck. The folk memory is of a lavishly gowned and burly, shapeless six-footer who possessed a klaxon for a singing voice and whose very name seems faintly comic, the \u2018Dame\u2019 somehow making things worse. It hasn\u2019t helped that significant advances in recording technology arrived too late to show off her voice in its prime. Much of what was shown off in her case was a faded glory. The electrical recordings from the later 1920s lack\u2026 well, electricity. <\/span><\/p>\n But as much as anything else it\u2019s what Dame Clara sang that has contributed to the gentle mockery which has been her posthumous lot. Her most typical showcase once her fame was established was the ballad concert, although <\/span>oratorio also figured prominently. OK, the English <\/span>ballad tradition inspired many fine contributions from the likes of Vaughan Williams and John Ireland, but Dame Clara\u2019s repertoire contained helpings of such sentimental frippery as \u2018A Fairy Went A-Marketing\u2019 or \u2018How Pansies Grow\u2019, with texts to cringe for. Arthur Sullivan\u2019s mawkish The audiences who packed the Albert Hall<\/a><\/strong> and venues around the UK for Butt\u2019s concerts adored such stuff, but there always were those who scoffed. On one occasion Dame Clara\u2019s watery baritone husband Kennerley Rumford found himself in court after taking exception to a critic who suggested the great lady was wasting her talent. Rumford detected \u2018a gratuitous insult\u2026 so I went to the Queen\u2019s Hall<\/a><\/strong> and boxed his ears\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n The cynical view would be that ballad concerts raked in considerable receipts, but Dame Clara insisted she was \u2018\u2026a great believer in giving the public what they want. There are a number of musical snobs who consider that because a song is popular it cannot be good.\u2019 The emotional coloration of such repertoire struck a chord during the Great War (\u2018Have you news of my boy Jack?\u2019 etc) but to many it must have grated in the brash, forward-thrusting, jazz-besotted world of the 1920s.<\/span><\/p>\nWho was Clara Butt?<\/h2>\n