Abstract: Many scholars believe that Rebecca Clarke retained a purely impressionistic style. A prominent female composer in England and America during the early twentieth century, she is best known for influencing impressionistic traditions. Clarke consistently wrote in this style as her compositional career continued. However, the gap between her compositions in the 1920s and her writings in the 1940s led scholars to falsely assume the conception of a neoclassical style.

In this paper, I aim to reject the standard view that Rebecca Clarke changed her style after her hiatus in the 1930s. Instead, I show that as she continued composing, she did not abandon her impressionistic roots but incorporated contemporaneous musical trends while retaining elements of her style.

I analyze examples from her 1919 Viola Sonata and her 1941 "Prelude, Allegro, and Pastorale" to show that she maintained her original impressionistic style. There is a change in the mood of her work, perhaps reflective of her situation at the start of the Second World War. However, her impressionistic roots are prominent in all her writing.

My findings suggest that Rebecca Clarke continued to grow and write music reflecting her life and the current climate. Her consistent use of English folk-like melodies is a constant device in her works during the shift between the two wars. While many of her works did not gain notoriety until after her death, these two works demonstrate a strong sense of security in her desired style of composition. She stayed true to her original ideas while engaging with current trends in later years. This study adds to the field by rejecting views of Clarke as a neoclassical figure in the 1940s