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.
In the Second World War, he served in the Royal Navy, first in the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious and subsequently as a liaison officer in a Norwegian escort vessel and a Dutch tug that took part in the D-Day Landings. After demobilization he returned to London in 1946, becoming a founder member of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain, and from 1947 until his retirement in 1978 he was Professor of Harmony and Composition at Trinity College of Music in London. In 1948, through the recommendation of E. J. Dent he obtained a doctorate from Cambridge. After a stroke in 1993 he virtually ceased to compose, but survived to the age of 98.
Two of his symphonies and other orchestral works were recorded by the Lyrita label, whilst the clarinet quartet and the clarinet concerto were recorded on Hyperion.
Read more about this topic: Arnold Cooke
Famous quotes containing the word career:
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“I began my editorial career with the presidency of Mr. Adams, and my principal object was to render his administration all the assistance in my power. I flattered myself with the hope of accompanying him through [his] voyage, and of partaking in a trifling degree, of the glory of the enterprise; but he suddenly tacked about, and I could follow him no longer. I therefore waited for the first opportunity to haul down my sails.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)