{"id":51522,"date":"2025-01-12T19:18:54","date_gmt":"2025-01-12T18:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2d79cbda-71cb-4059-b16a-b138ba16e06d"},"modified":"2025-01-12T21:09:22","modified_gmt":"2025-01-12T20:09:22","slug":"clara-butt-her-generations-greatest-contralto-or-the-butt-of-a-cruel-joke","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/rss_feed\/clara-butt-her-generations-greatest-contralto-or-the-butt-of-a-cruel-joke\/","title":{"rendered":"Clara Butt: her generation’s greatest contralto, or the butt of a cruel joke?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By <\/p>

Published: Sunday, 12 January 2025 at 18:18 PM<\/p>

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The 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.<\/strong><\/p>

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<\/a><\/strong> apparently wrote the part of the Angel in The Dream of Gerontius <\/i>and certainly the contralto<\/a><\/strong> contribution to the Coronation Ode <\/i>with her in mind\u2026 its \u2018Land of Hope and Glory<\/a><\/strong>\u2019 became virtually her property, belted out at all manner of national celebrations.<\/p>

Best of Elgar: seven essential works by the great British composer<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul>

<\/div> <\/figure> <p>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.<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/tv-and-film-music\/best-disney-songs\">The 15 greatest Disney songs of all time<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul> <h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">‘Sentimental frippery’<\/h3> <p>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.<\/p> <p>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 <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/musical-terms\/what-oratorio\">oratorio<\/a><\/strong> also figured prominently. OK, the English ballad tradition inspired many fine contributions from the likes of <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/ralph-vaughan-williams\">Vaughan Williams<\/a><\/strong> 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<strong>\u2019<\/strong>s mawkish \u2018The Lost Chord\u2019 was a staple, just as it was on the music stands of countless amateur warblers.<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/best-gilbert-and-sullivan-operettas\">The top 10 Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, ranked and rated<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul> <figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"> <figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"> English opera singer Clara Butt (1872-1936) with her children on board a ship. 1913 (Photo by: Universal History Archive\/UIG via Getty images) – Universal History Archive\/UIG via Getty images <\/figcaption> <\/figure> <h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Battling the musical snobs<\/h3> <p>The audiences who packed the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/royal-albert-hall\">Royal 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 <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/artists\/best-baritones\">baritone<\/a><\/strong> 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 <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/articles\/what-happened-queen-s-hall\/\">Queen\u2019s Hall<\/a><\/strong> and boxed his ears\u2019.<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/classical-voice-types\">Voice types: do you know your spinto soprano from your bass baritone?<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul> <p>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, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/jazz\/what-is-jazz\">jazz<\/a><\/strong>-besotted world of the 1920s.<\/p> <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Who was Clara Butt?<\/h2> <p>However \u2013 and it\u2019s a giant-sized \u2018however\u2019 \u2013 nothing should obscure the fact that Clara Butt was a musical phenomenon of her time, even allowing for the fact that she forsook the beginnings of a prestigious career in major European centres to concentrate on the English-speaking world\u2019s passion for the ballad concert. Some claim her as the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/artists\/best-contraltos-ever\">greatest contralto<\/a><\/strong> of the 20th century.<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"> <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"British Contralto Clara Butt: Ombra mai fu (1917)\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XX4fEC_zwck?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/> <\/div> <\/figure> <p>From her quintessentially humble origins as a seafarer\u2019s daughter, the young Clara Butt shot to stardom while still a student at the Royal College of Music. She went on to a career which dazzled audiences of many kinds, whether at mass national occasions or private concerts for royalty.<\/p> <h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u2018People went absolutely mad’<\/h3> <p>Much beloved of Queen Victoria (from whom flowed various personal favours) and indeed of Kaiser Wilhelm II, she was herself treated as all but royalty on her mammoth concert tours around the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Crowds would gather at remote railway stations just to see her pass through. She was a dab hand at prison, school, hospital and fire station visits.<\/p> <p>I once traced her regal progress around Australia and New Zealand in 1907-08, via an astounding array of newspaper reports. I\u2019d been wondering if I\u2019d find much at all, but in fact there was no mistaking the gift she presented to news, feature and gossip writers wherever she went. She adored the exposure.<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"> <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Clara Butt (contralto) - Where Corals Lie ('Sea Pictures' - Elgar) (1920)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/oyyuEuSpZH8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/> <\/div> <\/figure> <p>We also have the record of how audiences reacted to her on that trip via letters sent home by her manager, Robert Leigh Ibbs. Of the end of a Brisbane concert he wrote: \u2018People went absolutely mad, stood on the seats, waved and cheered for about 20 minutes.\u2019 Outside His Majesty\u2019s Theatre in Perth after the box office opened, \u2018people fought and struggled to get near, and the trams had to be stopped\u2026 to prevent people being killed in the streets.\u2019 It was put about that the tour grossed \u00a350,000. The England cricket squad touring Australia that winter was reported<br\/> to have been paid a total of \u00a310,000.<\/p> <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why was Clara Butt so popular?<\/h2> <p>Yes, the voice was richly coloured and warmly sympathetic in the way we associate with such contraltos as <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/artists\/who-was-kathleen-ferrier\">Kathleen Ferrier<\/a><\/strong> and Janet Baker. In a BBC interview her sister Ethel Argent emphasised that \u2018\u2026her soft singing was wonderful\u2019. Her diction was impeccable, allowing those ballad texts to hit home, for good or ill. She clearly had a natural stage presence, enhanced by her 6\u20192\u201d stature and a limitless wardrobe of gownery.<\/p> <p>But what clinched things was surely the sheer physical thrill of that cavernous voice, with its almost masculine quality. This was the weapon she had used to blast the ears of the Royal College of Music professors she thought were laughing at her during her entrance audition. In fact they were simply sharing their astonishment at what they were hearing. Sir <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/artists\/thomas-beecham\">Thomas Beecham<\/a><\/strong> suggested her voice could project across the Channel. Well, halfway, perhaps.<\/p> <h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">‘That great booming voice came across the square’<\/h3> <p>An elderly friend once described for me the sensation of hearing Butt sing in Trafalgar Square without the benefit of a microphone. \u2018I couldn\u2019t get nearer to the platform than one side of the Square, but that great booming voice came across despite the traffic going by and the noise of many thousands of people present. It was an incredible experience.\u2019<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"> <img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2025\/01\/Untitled-design-2025-01-12T180813.510.jpg\" alt=\"Clara Butt and Kennerley Rumford\" class=\"wp-image-218271\"\/> <figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"> Clara Butt and Kennerley Rumford (1870-1957), 1906. (Photo by The Print Collector\/Print Collector\/Getty Images) – The Print Collector\/Print Collector\/Getty Images <\/figcaption> <\/figure> <p>Dame Clara rather traded on the power of her lower register, little worried if getting down there involved an almightily unsubtle gear change. But in her earlier years the voice had a wide range, with a lightness of colour at the top that occasionally confuses the mind: is this really just one singer? And there\u2019s plenty of agility, too, in getting round the demands of, say, \u2018Lusinghe pi\u00f9 care\u2019 from <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/george-frideric-handel\">Handel\u2019<\/a><\/strong>s <i>Alessandro<\/i>.<\/p> <p>Which reminds us that Clara Butt\u2019s ballad concert repertoire was in fact plenty broader than might be supposed. One in the eye for the scoffers. Operatic <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/musical-terms\/what-aria\">arias<\/a><\/strong>, French <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/the-history-of-french-art-song\">art song<\/a><\/strong>, German <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/articles\/what-are-lieder\/\">Lieder<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 even Russian songs delivered in the original tongue \u2013 were fully a part of things.<\/p> <h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Throat pastilles, face cream, cigarettes… Clara’s advertising empire<\/h3> <p>Why just the one professional operatic appearance \u2013 <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/christoph-willibald-gluck\">Gluck\u2019<\/a><\/strong>s <i>Orfeo<\/i> in 1920 at Covent Garden? Well, her height would have put many a leading man literally in the shade, but it\u2019s also said that Kennerley Rumford wasn\u2019t too keen on the idea of witnessing his wife wrapped in romantic stage embraces. We do know, however, that <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/camille-saint-saens\">Saint-Sa\u00ebns<\/a><\/strong> considered the young Clara Butt as the ideal Delilah for his <i>Samson and Delilah<\/i> and was mortified when the Lord Chamberlain banned a London production on account of the opera\u2019s Biblical subject matter.<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/carnival-of-the-animals-saint-saens\"><em>Carnival of the Animals<\/em>: a guide to Saint-Sa\u00ebns’s masterpiece and its best recordings<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul> <p>One measure of Colossal Clara\u2019s household celebrity was her appeal to manufacturers as an endorser of commercial products. Not just the obvious musical fare (she somewhat promiscuously gave her seal of approval to various pianos) but for example Pep\u2019s throat pastilles (\u2018their invigorating effect on the throat and the chest\u2019), Kallos facial cream (\u2018a most excellent Skin Food\u2019) and even cigarettes, despite the fact, as her nephew John Heming once told me, \u2018She couldn\u2019t even get a cigarette alight\u2026 she couldn\u2019t suck it at all.\u2019<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"> <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Clara Butt (1916)\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Y0pVsE4E8NM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/> <\/div> <\/figure> <p>Curious to relate, Clara Butt\u2019s DBE was bestowed in 1920 not primarily for her status as a singer, but for \u2018ungrudging and patriotic service during the war\u2019. Her tireless charity work (including the bizarre feat of organising a six-day week of <i>Dream of Gerontius<\/i> performances with the same cast in the Albert Hall, raising a whopping \u00a34,500) was the tipping factor. Damehoods for \u2018mere\u2019 stage performers were then virtually unheard of.<\/p> <h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u2018She towered over us majestically and I felt afraid\u2019<\/h3> <p>A comprehensive biography of Clara Butt is long overdue to replace the informative yet fawning 1928 effort of Winifred Ponder. Sadly no one can be alive who heard her voice at its pre-1914 best. In the 1980s I appealed in some UK local newspapers for memories of her, and in they flooded. \u2018Oh that voice!\u2019 wrote a one-time Edinburgh schoolgirl who sang in Butt\u2019s \u2018backing chorus\u2019 at a 1920s concert, \u2018so deep and velvet and wonderful\u2019.<\/p> <p>Another letter recounted how on a visit to Malvern College, Dame Clara could easily be heard above a choir of 565 boys and a blaring <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/instruments\/when-was-the-organ-invented\">organ<\/a><\/strong>. Someone else recalled sitting as a child in the stalls at Victoria Hall in Bolton to hear her sing: \u2018She towered over us majestically and I felt afraid!\u2019<\/p> <p>I read that another formidable Dame, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/artists\/joan-sutherland\">Joan Sutherland<\/a><\/strong>, had heard Clara Butt sing in Sydney as a very young child, and never forgot the experience. Alas, hours after I emailed a few questions to her PA, news came through that Dame Joan had died. Had she been able to respond, I suspect she might have had a good chuckle at the old girl\u2019s caricatured image\u2026 but also have confirmed that Dame Clara was a giant of a figure in her day.<\/p> <p\/> <\/body><\/html>\n<hr class=\"no-tts wp-block-separator\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Published: Sunday, 12 January 2025 at 18:18 PM The 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. 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