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For the British radical and journalist, see William Cobbett.

Walter Willson Cobbett CBE
Born	(1847-07-11)11 July 1847 Blackheath, England
Died	22 January 1937(1937-01-22) (aged 89) London, England
Occupations	Businessman amateur violinist

Walter Willson Cobbett CBE (11 July 1847 – 22 January 1937) was an English businessman and amateur violinist, and the editor/author of Cobbett's Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music. He instigated the influential Cobbett Competition for chamber music composition, and endowed the Cobbett Medal for services to chamber music.

An innovative industrialist and astute businessman. Patron.

Biography

Early years

Walter Willson Cobbett was born on 11 July 1847 at Blackheath, England. His father was a businessman "of literary and musical tastes".

Young Walter was sent to France and Germany "as a supplement to his education". His violin teacher, Joseph Dando, introduced chamber music to his young student, but his "consuming enthusiasm for it was kindled" by hearing the Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim lead a quartet performing Beethoven compositions at St. James's Hall in London. Cobbett later described the experience as akin to the opening of "an enchanted world". He wrote: "From that moment onward I became a very humble devotee of this infinitely beautiful art, and so began for me the chamber music life".

Music and business

Cobbett began his business life as an underwriter employed by Lloyd's of London.

By the late 1870s Cobbett had established his own business in London selling industrial goods. Cobbett was on vacation in Sweden where he met William Fenton, a Scotsman working as the weaving manager at a Swedish textile mill. Fenton had invented a sturdy twill woven belt for driving machinery, an improvement on the leather and canvas belts then being used on machines. Cobbett recognised a business opportunity and formed a partnership with Fenton to sell and market the product in Britain.

Cobbett played chamber music regularly at home and was involved with several amateur orchestras including the Strolling Players' Orchestral Society, formed in about 1890.

Married Ada Florence Sells.

Scandinavia Belting

In 1879 Fenton moved with his family from Sweden to Dundee in Scotland, where he established a factory to manufacture the woven belt material, which was sold from Cobbett's offices in London. The partnership was successful and within four years both men moved to larger premises. By the 1880s Fenton's two sons became involved in the business. William Fenton died in 1898, after which Cobbett and the two Fenton brothers formed the joint stock company of W. Willson Cobbett Ltd. In 1901 the business moved both its production and sales facilities to Cleckheaton in West Yorkshire, which was named the Scandinavia Mills. In 1902 Charles Treiber and George Beach formed an agency in Boston to sell Scandinavia belting imported from the United Kingdom. Treiber had emigrated to the United States several years previously, and had formerly been in a business partnership with Eugene Bartikeit, the export director of W. Willson Cobbett Ltd. In May 1904 Treiber and Beach formed the Scandinavia Belting Co. in Boston as a subsidiary of W. Willson Cobbett Ltd. The head-office was relocated to New York as trade continued to flourish.

From about 1907 Cobbett began to focus less attention on his business in favour of his musical interests. His biographical entry in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, written when Cobbett was aged about eighty, commented that "it has been humorously remarked of him that he has given to commerce what time he could spare from music". However despite the shift in focus when he turned sixty, Cobbett continued to maintain close connections with his business interests in his later life. In 1922 he was recorded as the chairman of directors of Scandinavia Belting Ltd. and a director of W. F. Stanley and Co. Ltd., manufacturers of surveying and microscopic equipment.

The years prior to World War I was the beginning of a boom period for Cobbett's company. From 1908 large quantities of belting began to be ordered by Henry Ford in the United States, used as transmission linings in the Ford Motor Company's Model T motor vehicle. Over the following years the Cleckheaton factory increased production of transmission linings, eventually producing linings for other automobile manufacturers such as Morris, Austin and Vauxhall in the United Kingdom and Renault and Bugatti in France. In 1911 the name of the British parent company was changed to Scandinavia Belting Ltd. In 1912 Beach resigned from the US subsidiary and sold his shares to the parent company, by which process Scandinavia Belting Co. became a wholly owned subsidiary of Scandinavia Belting Ltd. During World War I production at Cleckheaton was primarily switched to the supply of specialist military equipment.

In 1920 Scandinavia Belting Ltd., with Cobbett as the chairman of the board of directors, acquired a competitor named British Asbestos Co. and expanded its production facilities. In 1923 the company expanded their manufacturing capability to the United States, establishing a belting factory at Paterson in New Jersey. In 1925 Scandinavia Belting Ltd. and British Asbestos Co. formally merged under the name of British Belting & Asbestos Ltd.

Cobbett playing with his amateur ensemble; a monochrome image of The Concert Party by Frank Owen Salisbury (1929).

Music

Cobbett became an active supporter of music, and commissioned numerous works of chamber music from emerging and leading British composers of his time.

A pencil sketch of Walter Willson Cobbett by Fred Roe (January 1924).

But Cobbett's heart was in music. "It has been humorously remarked that he has given to commerce what time he could spare from music," said an article in a contemporary edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians. However, most of his chamber music patronage took place after his retirement from business at the age of 60. Cobbett played weekly in a number of amateur string quartets, was concertmaster of two amateur orchestras, and was a prolific writer and publicist for chamber music. His two-volume encyclopedia of chamber music, published in 1929, is still considered the most comprehensive work on the subject today.

In May 1905 Cobbett was elected a member of the Worshipful Company of Musicians, a musicians' guild that had originated in London in the medieval period. At the same meeting of his membership acceptance, Cobbett offered a sum of fifty guineas as first prize in a composition competition to be organised under the auspices of the Musicians' Company. The competition was named the Cobbett Musical Competition. It was open only to "British subjects" to submit for judging a musical composition called a 'phantasy', in the form of a string quartet for two violins, a viola and a violoncello. Under the terms of the competition a 'phantasy' was described as a piece of music of up to twelve minutes duration, which "may consist of different sections varying in tempi and rhythms". The stated object of the competition was "to popularise the String Quartet among general audiences, and to endeavour to bring into life a new Art Form providing fresh scope for the composers of Chamber Music".

Death

Cobbett died at his home in London on 22 January 1937 of influenza, aged 89 (during the influenza epidemic).

Legacy

Cobbett's legacy was continued by the Cobbett Association (closed 2010), an organization devoted to rediscovering forgotten works of chamber music.

Cobbett Competition

In 1905, Cobbett endowed a competition, initially under the auspices of the Worshipful Company of Musicians, for chamber music composers. The panel of judges included the composer Alexander Mackenzie, Royal Academy of Music professor Alfred Gibson (1849-1924), and the Belgian violinist Hermann Sternberg. Specifically, he asked composers to submit what he termed a Phantasy for string ensemble, meeting the following conditions:

The parts must be of equal importance, and the duration of the piece should not exceed twelve minutes. Though the Phantasy is to be performed without a break, it may consist of different sections varying in tempi and rhythm.

This idea was inspired by examples of British viol consort music from the 16th and 17th centuries that Cobbett had been studying, by William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons and others. Many new one movement Phantasies were composed as a result over the next few decades. Of them all, the Phantasy String Quintet of 1912 by Vaughan Williams was the closest to Cobbett's ideal: "so exactly the phantasy as I conceived it that it may well serve as prototype to those who care to write in this form in the future", he said.

The Cobbett Competition (1905-1919) was instrumental in advancing the careers of leading composers of the time. However, the very first winner, William Hurlstone with his Phantasy String Quartet in A Minor, unfortunately died following an asthma attack just a year after the prize was awarded. The full list of winners in the 1905 inaugural award were:

• First: William Hurlstone (50 Guineas)
• Second: Haydn Wood (£10)
• Special Prize: Frank Bridge (£10)
• Three Extra Prizes: James Friskin, Harry Waldo Warner and Josef Holbrooke (5 Guineas each)

There were six competitions between 1905 and 1919, each asking for a specific type of composition. In addition to granting prizes, Cobbett also commissioned eleven Phantasy works.

Prize winning works, 1905-1919

• 1905 (for Phantasy String Quartet): William Hurlstone, Phantasy in A Minor and A Major
• 1907 (for Phantasy Piano Trio): Frank Bridge, Phantasy Trio in C Minor, H.79
• 1909 (for Violin Sonata): John Ireland, Violin Sonata in D Minor
• 1915 (for String Quartet): Albert Sammons, Phantasy in B Major, Op. 8; Frank Bridge, String Quartet in G Minor (joint First Prize)
• 1917 (for Folksong Fantasy): James Forrester, Folksong Phantasy Trio; Harry Waldo Warner, Folksong Phantasy in G Minor (joint First Prize)
• 1919 (for Dance Phantasy, piano and strings): Cecil Armstrong Gibbs, The Enchanted Wood

Commissions, 1910-1912

• Frank Bridge: Phantasy in F-sharp Minor for piano quartet (1910)
• James Friskin: Phantasy in F Minor for piano quintet (1910)
• Benjamin Dale: Phantasy for viola and piano (1911)
• Thomas Dunhill: Phantasy Trio for piano, violin, and viola (1911)
• James McEwen: Phantasy String Quintet with two cellos (1911)
• Ethel Barns: Phantasy Trio for two violins and piano (1911)
• Ralph Vaughan Williams: Phantasy String Quintet with two violas (1912)
• Richard Walthew: Phantasy Piano Quintet in E Minor (1912)
• Bertram Walton O’Donnell: Phantasy for cello and piano (1912)
• Donald Tovey: Phantasy for clarinet quintet (1912)
• York Bowen: Phantasy for violin and piano (1912)

From 1920 until 1927 Cobbett began sponsoring a series of annual prizes for various forms of chamber music activity at the Royal College of Music. He awarded fifty guinea prizes for the study of chamber music. In 1928 these prizes were permanently established through endowments.

The New Cobbett Prize was instigated in 2014 by the Berkeley Ensemble to build on the legacy. Sequenza for string quartet by Samuel Lewis was the first winner.

Cobbett Medal and Cyclopedia

Cobbett established other prizes as well. The Cobbett Medal for services to chamber music was established in 1924 - the first recipient was Thomas Dunhill - and continues to be awarded annually by the Worshipful Company of Musicians. He also encouraged British luthiers by granting prizes for outstanding instruments.

Cobbett started a periodical on chamber music, called the Chamber Music Supplement. He established a free library of chamber music and started chamber music concert series in working-class neighborhoods of British cities.

Cobbett's Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music (1929) was the result of four years of labour. In addition to his own extensive contributions, the two-volume survey includes articles by leading musicians and musicologists of the time, including Vincent d'Indy, Donald Tovey, Ralph Vaughan Williams and others.

Publications

• Walter Willson Cobbett (1913-16), Chamber Music, a supplement to The Music Student (No. 1-22a June 1913 - November 1916), London: Home Music Study Union.

• Walter Willson Cobbett (compilor & editor) (1929), Cobbett's Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music (two volumes), London: Oxford University Press.

• Walter Willson Cobbett & Sidney Dark (editors) (1932), Fleet Street: An Anthology of Modern Journalism, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode.

See also

• Walter Willson Cobbett Medal
• Cobbett Association
• Clements Memorial Prize
• Charles Lucas Medal

References

Sources

• Walter Willson Cobbett (compilor & editor) (1929), Cobbett's Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music (two volumes), London: Oxford University Press.