Herbert Lincoln Clarke

Herbert Lincoln Clarke (September 12, 1867 – January 30, 1945) was an American cornet player, feature soloist, bandmaster, and composer.

Clarke’s legacy includes composing a portion of the standard repertoire for the instrument, many recordings, as well as a seminal school of playing which emphasized not only technical aptitude, but also increased warmth and lyricism of tone. He also produced several method books that are still used by brass students to this day.

Clarke was born in Woburn, Massachusetts in 1867. The son of composer, organist, and organbuilder William Horatio Clarke, Herbert's family moved often to accommodate William's work engagements, from Massachusetts to Ohio, to Indiana, back to Massachusetts, and finally to Toronto in 1880. There were three brothers, Edwin, Ernest, and Herbert; all became prominent musicians, Edwin on cornet and flugelhorn (he also managed Sousa's Band in its 1911 world tour), Ernest on trombone (and later professor of trombone at Juilliard), and Herbert on cornet.

Clarke's early musical instruction had been on the viola; by 1881, he was a second viola in the Toronto Philharmonic Society. However, according to his autobiography, one of the formative moments in his musical upbringing was attending a concert of D. W. Reeves' American Band of Providence, Rhode Island at the Horticultural Pavilion in Toronto in 1881, and hearing Bowen R. Church play a cornet solo. He subsequently began practicing his brother's cornet and took a chair as a cornetist in the Queen’s Own Rifle band in 1882, in order to obtain his own government-issue cornet on which to practice.

Between 1884, when he graduated from high school, and 1887, Clarke drifted between playing both viola and second cornet (when required) in the pit orchestra of English's Opera House in Indianapolis, where his family had moved; working (unhappily) at the John Kay store in Toronto, while playing second chair cornetist with the Queens’s Own; and playing at the Ontario Beach lake resort in the summer. He had joined the Queen's Own at the age of 14 (even though the legal age was 18), in order to obtain his first Cornet, a band owned Courtois. In Indianapolis he would finally buy his own horn, a Boston 3-star cornet. It was with the When Clothing Store Band that in 1886 Clarke won a solo cornet contest and received a one-of-a-kind pocket cornet made by the famous instrument maker, Henry Distin of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, which can be seen at the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was in 1887 that he joined the Citizen's Band of Toronto, under John Bayley, as the band's cornet soloist. He spent the next five years playing in and leading several bands around Toronto (the Taylor Safe Works Band, Heintzman Piano Company Band, Streetsville Ontario Band) and teaching viola at the Toronto Conservatory of Music (where he also played in the Toronto Conservatory String Quartet) and at the Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario. In September 1889 he married Elizabeth (Lizzie) Loudon, with whom he had two children: Vivian (Grace) in 1890 and James (Edward James Watkin) in 1892. In the spring of 1892, he left Canada once again, after successfully auditioning for the 22nd Regiment N.Y.S.N.G Band in New York City, popularly known as "Gilmore's Band" and directed by Patrick Gilmore. He was introduced to Gilmore by his brother Ernest, who was already playing trombone with the band, and the audition took place at Gilmore's residence.

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