Arnold Cooke

Arnold Atkinson Cooke (4 November 1906 – 13 August 2005) was a British composer.

Career

He was born at Gomersal, West Yorkshire into a family of carpet manufacturers. He was educated at Repton School and at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, where he read History, but he was already attracted to a career in music. In 1929, having taken a second degree in Music, he studied composition and piano at the Berlin Academy for Music under Paul Hindemith. He later became Musical Director of the Festival Theatre at Cambridge, and in 1933 was appointed a professor at the Royal Manchester College of Music (now merged into the Royal Northern College of Music). He moved to London in 1937.

In the 1930s Cooke carved out a reputation for himself as a promising young composer, and his music was taken up by leading interpreters. The harpist Maria Korchinska introduced his Harp Quintet in 1932; Sir Henry Wood conducted his Concert Overture No.1 at the 1934 Promenade Concerts. The Griller Quartet premiered his First String Quartet in 1935. In 1936 Havergal Brian singled out for praise a cantata, Holderneth, on a text by the American poet Edward Sweeney, which Cooke later withdrew. Louis Kentner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult premiered his Piano Concerto in 1943, which he had completed just before his call-up in 1941.