Walter Willson Cobbett

Who was Walter Willson Cobbett?

Walter Willson Cobbett CBE was a British businessman and amateur violinist, and editor/author of Cobbett's Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music. He also endowed the Cobbett Medal for services to chamber music.

Walter Cobbett was born in 1847 in Blackheath, England. He became an active supporter of music, and commissioned numerous works of chamber music from emerging and leading British composers of his time, including chamber works by Benjamin Britten, Frank Bridge, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax, Eugene Goossens.

His two-volume encyclopedia of chamber music, published in 1929, is still considered the most comprehensive work on the subject today. His insightful, wry and occasionally caustic style makes for enlightening and delightful reading.

An innovative industrialist and astute businessman, Cobbett was cofounder of Scandinavia Belting Ltd, which manufactured a new type of woven belting for machinery.

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 Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians.