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47-522: The NGS was established for the publication by subscription of classical music, recorded complete and uncut. The Society's Advisory Committee, responsible for devising the recording programme and passing test pressings, consisted of Walter Willson Cobbett , Edwin Spencer Dyke (leader of a string quartet), Gramophone contributors W. R. Anderson, Alec Robertson and Peter Latham, and the magazine's Editors Compton Mackenzie and Christopher Stone , who

94-601: A BBC Radio sound engineer, as an audio transfer and restoration business. Following its relocation from the United Kingdom to France in 2004, the company began to concentrate on the restoration and remastering of historic classical music recordings. In February 2005 Pristine Audio Direct was launched online, later to become PristineClassical.com, offering downloads of classical music both from Pristine's own remastered recordings and from other record companies. Pristine Audio came to unexpected global attention during

141-580: A business opportunity and formed a partnership with Fenton to sell and market the product in Britain. In 1879 Fenton moved with his family from Sweden to Dundee in Scotland, where he established a factory to manufacture the woven belt material, the entire output of which was sold from Cobbett's offices in London. The partnership was successful and within four years both men moved to larger premises. In 1883

188-477: A complete discography and other documentary appendices. In January 2016, Classical Recordings Quarterly Editions of Sheffield published the thesis in its series 'Studies in the History of Recording'. Walter Willson Cobbett Walter Willson Cobbett CBE (11 July 1847 – 22 January 1937) was an English businessman, amateur violinist and an influential patron of British chamber music from

235-601: 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 . The 'phantasy' was Cobbett's modern conception of an older genre, short pieces for viols called 'fancies' or 'fantasies' from

282-477: A foreign correspondent. 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

329-470: A highly idiosyncratic editorial style and some inconsistency in the level of coverage between volumes, the Cyclopedic Survey represents an important lexicographical achievement and remains a vital historical document of British attitudes towards chamber music in the inter-war years". The Cobbett Association for Chamber Music Research was founded in 1990, named in honour of W. W. Cobbett, with

376-627: A newsletter produced by the Royal College of Music . After the outbreak of World War I Cobbett served as a member of the Music in War-Time Committee which sought to safeguard the interests of British musicians during the conflict. The committee organised concerts at military camps and hospitals, providing paid engagements for musicians and entertainment for serving and wounded soldiers. Concerts were also given in social clubs for

423-434: 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". Cobbett began his business life as an underwriter employed by Lloyd's of London . He later worked in journalism, as

470-446: A regular visitor to the summer schools and "delighted to take out his violin and join in the practices". In the mid-1920s Cobbett began working on his Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music , which was published in two volumes in 1929. A writer for The Review of Reviews described Cobbett's encyclopedia as detailing aspects of chamber music "in every conceivable way, by instrument, by composer, by ensemble, and so on". Important works of

517-689: A rolling programme of remastering and issuing the results as downloads began at the Pristine Classical website in March 2008. By coincidence, that same spring the historian and discographer Frank Andrews reached the NGS in his series of articles on small British record labels in the journal of the City of London Phonograph and Gramophone Society . This was followed by an article by Jolly, now Editor in Chief, in

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564-552: A single movement of moderate dimensions". 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". Cobbett went on to sponsor five separate chamber music competitions, which took place during the period from 1905 to 1919, all but one of the competitions restricting submissions to British composers. Each composition entailed

611-468: A supplement to his education", where he received private tuition. In about 1861, when he was aged fourteen, Cobbett received a Guadagnini violin from his father and he began studying the instrument with Joseph Dando , who introduced chamber music to his young student. Cobbett was overtaken by a "consuming enthusiasm" for the musical genre when he heard the Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim lead

658-484: A year after the prize was awarded. 1907 Cobbett Competition for Phantasy Piano Trio 1909 Cobbett Competition for a Sonata for Violin and Piano 1915 Cobbett Competition for String Quartet (in Sonata, Suite, or Phantasy form) 1917 Cobbett Competition for a Folksong Phantasy 1919 Cobbett Competition for a Dance Phantasy for Piano and Strings The Free Library of Chamber Music, originally financed by Cobbett,

705-628: The London Quartet ) (1916), York Bowen (1918) and Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (1919). In 1921 he was offering further awards to Royal Academy and Royal College of Music graduates, and commissioned many new chamber works from English composers. Cobbett led his own string quartet in two productions for the NGS, which he paid for himself, but beyond this his involvement in its activities was minimal. The Society's productions were almost all recorded premieres. Issued on 10-inch and 12-inch 78rpm and 80rpm discs with distinctive yellow labels, they included

752-539: The Royal College of Music . He awarded fifty guinea prizes for the study of chamber music, encompassing both composition and performance. In 1928 these prizes were permanently established by an endowment from Corbett. In some cases his prizes led to the establishment of groups that continued to perform on a professional basis. In 1924 Cobbett established a medal through the Worshipful Company of Musicians, endowed by his initial £50 contribution. The award

799-743: The June 2008 issue of Gramophone magazine, and another by Nick Morgan in the Summer 2008 issue of Classic Record Collector . There is also a short account of the NGS by Malcolm Walker in Gramophone 's 1998 anniversary volume. In July 2013, the University of Sheffield awarded Nick Morgan a PhD for his thesis on the NGS, consisting of a detailed study of its background, history, administration, activities, record production, marketing and distribution, printed publications, members and reception in Britain, with

846-895: The New Year honours in January 1933 Cobbett was awarded a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE). In 1934 he founded the Chamber Music Association, with an initial gift of one thousand pounds, to foster chamber music activity. Cobbett "continued to play the violin into extreme old age and retained astonishing vigour and clarity of mind up till the end". On 22 January 1937 Cobbett died of influenza at his home at 34 Avenue Road, St. John's Wood in London , aged 89. He

893-643: The Spencer Dyke String Quartet and André Mangeot 's Music Society String Quartet and International String Quartet. Well-known musicians who also recorded for the Society included John Barbirolli (as both cellist and conductor), the clarinettists Charles Draper and Frederick Thurston , the oboist Leon Goossens , the violinist Adila Fachiri , and the pianists Donald Francis Tovey , Harold Craxton , Kathleen Long , and Bartlett and Robertson . The Society had members in Britain and all over

940-632: 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

987-887: 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, having become independently wealthy, 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

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1034-414: The adaption of a short musical form called a 'phantasy'. He compiled and edited the two-volume Cobbett's Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music , published in 1929, a comprehensive review of the musical genre. Walter Willson Cobbett was born on 11 July 1847 at Blackheath in south-east London . His father was a businessman "of literary and musical tastes". Young Walter was sent to France and Germany "as

1081-453: The business since 1889 and a director of the company since 1912. The Cobbett chamber music competitions were instrumental in advancing the careers of leading and emerging British composers of the time. The major prize-winners of the six chamber music competitions sponsored by W. W. Cobbett were: 1905 Cobbett Competition for Phantasy String Quartet The winner of the 1905 competition, William Hurlstone, died following an asthma attack only

1128-717: The businesses of the Fenton brothers and Cobbett were incorporated under the name of W. Willson Cobbett Ltd., with Cobbett as the chairman of directors. William Fenton died in 1898, after which W. Willson Cobbett Ltd. acquired his company (William Fenton & Co.). In 1901 the business moved both its production and sales facilities to Cleckheaton in West Yorkshire , which became known as the Scandinavia Mills. In 1902 Charles Treiber and George Beach formed an agency in Boston to sell Scandinavia belting imported from

1175-644: The company until his death in 1937. 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

1222-493: The composition of phantasies, or other chamber music forms, for different combinations of instruments or in a specific style. The Worshipful Company of Musicians assisted with funding for the first two competitions, after which Cobbett became the sole sponsor. During the period of his sponsorship of the chamber music competitions, Cobbett also directly commissioned a number of works from emerging and leading British composers. Eleven of his commissioned compositions, each of them in

1269-532: The decade before World War I until his death in 1937. He was an innovative and astute businessman with an enthusiasm for the composition and performance of chamber music. Cobbett's business successes enabled him to focus on his musical interests from about 1905. Cobbett sponsored a series of competitions for the composition of new chamber music works by British composers and endowed the Cobbett Medal for services to chamber music. He devised and encouraged

1316-542: The editor's writing style as having "a note of keen, if somewhat naïve, enthusiasm", though it was pointed out that "the actual scholarship is amply supplied by other hands". The reviewer wrote that "the cyclopedia provides the facts in a well-ordered manner", but the information is "apt to get lost in a haystack of personal opinions". Cobbett's wife Ada died in 1932. She was buried on 5 September 1932 at Charlton Kings , near Cheltenham in Gloucestershire . In

1363-706: The first-ever recordings of familiar works such as the C major string quintet of Schubert and Brahms's clarinet quintet , along with music then relatively little known by composers such as Henry Purcell , Vivaldi and even Mozart . The NGS's repertoire consisted largely of chamber music, but included some works for small orchestra and a few vocal items. The Society recorded works by several living composers, such as Ralph Vaughan Williams , Arnold Bax , Peter Warlock (first recording of The Curlew ), Eugene Goossens , Arnold Schoenberg (original sextet version of Verklärte Nacht ) and Sir Edward Elgar . The most prolific NGS recording artists were three string quartets:

1410-471: The future". Cobbett was a prolific writer and publicist for chamber music. He wrote frequent articles that were published in The Strad magazine and contributed sixty articles to Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians . In the period June 1913 to November 1916 Cobbett was responsible for the issue of a monthly series of 'Chamber Music' supplements, published with each issue of The Music Student ,

1457-479: The genre were analysed in detail and articles covered the history and aesthetics of chamber music. 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. One reviewer declared that "some of the articles in the first volume are little masterpieces". Another review of Cobbett's Cyclopedic Survey described

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1504-647: The manufacturing plant was transferred to Stanley in Perthshire . By the late 1880s Fenton's two sons became involved in the business, forming their own company. Cobbett played chamber music regularly at home and was involved with several amateur orchestras including the Strolling Players' Orchestral Society, formed in about 1890. Walter Willson Cobbett and Ada Florence Sells were married in 1889 at Lambeth in South London. In August 1897

1551-490: The medieval period. The exhibition of ancient musical instruments, rare books and manuscripts, scores and musical mementos, on loan from collectors, was held at the Fishmongers' Hall (adjacent to London Bridge ) in June and July 1904. In May 1905 Cobbett was elected a member of the Worshipful Company of Musicians. At the same meeting of his membership acceptance, Cobbett offered a sum of fifty guineas as first prize in

1598-602: The name of British Belting & Asbestos Ltd. (BB&A Ltd.). By the early 1920s Cobbett was also a director of W. F. Stanley and Co. Ltd., manufacturers of surveying and microscopic equipment. In 1904 Cobbett delivered a lecture titled 'The Violin Family and its Music' during the Music Loan Exhibition by the Worshipful Company of Musicians , a musicians' guild that had originated in London in

1645-475: The objective of disseminating information about lesser known chamber music of merit. The Association ceased operations in 2010. The New Cobbett Prize for Chamber Music was instigated in 2014 by the Berkeley Ensemble to build upon Cobbett's legacy. The first winner was Sequenza for string quartet by Samuel Lewis. Pristine Audio Pristine Audio was founded in 2002 by Andrew Rose, then

1692-475: The phantasy form, were composed and published between 1910 and 1912. By 1915 a further thirteen new chamber works "could be credited to Cobbett's activities". One of the works commissioned in 1912 was Phantasy String Quintet with Two Violas , composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams , which Cobbett later described as: "A piece of music which represents 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

1739-528: The role of recording similar repertoire, so that the Society was seen as no longer necessary. But NGS records remained available for sale after this, some until the 1950s. In 2006, the then-editor of Gramophone magazine , James Jolly, contacted audio restoration engineer Andrew Rose of Pristine Audio with a proposal to transfer and remaster the entire NGS collection of 78s still held in Gramophone's collection. The discs were transcribed by Rose in 2006 and

1786-410: The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by composers such as William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons . 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". Charles Stanford later defined a 'phantasy' as "a condensation of the three or four movements of a sonata into

1833-515: 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. Ltd. 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

1880-477: The wives of armed forces personnel. In 1916 the work of the committee was extended to factories, providing lunchtime concerts for munitions workers. In 1918 Cobbett established, at his own expense, a Free Library of Chamber Music in conjunction with the Society of Women Musicians . The library was a collection of chamber music, sonatas, trios, quartets and quintets which could be borrowed or purchased. Cobbett

1927-541: The world, mainly in the British Empire and the USA. They were invited to vote on each season's recording programme, devised by the Advisory Committee. The NGS ceased production in 1931, mainly as a result of financial difficulties faced by Gramophone (Publications) Ltd., and partly because the commercial record companies, in particular EMI with its own Society issues overseen by Walter Legge , had begun to take on

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1974-507: 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". Cobbett himself claimed that he retired "at the age of sixty" in order to "devote myself to what I consider to be my life's work" as a promoter and proponent of chamber 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. Cobbett remained chairman of

2021-492: Was also NGS Secretary. Cobbett (b 1847), a lover and amateur performer of chamber music, had founded the Cobbett Competition in 1905 for a short form of String Quartet composition or 'Phantasy', and for other short chamber works, prizes won variously by William Yeates Hurlstone (1876-1906, pianist) (1905), Frank Bridge (1908), John Ireland (1909), J. Cliffe Forrester (1916), Harry Waldo Warner (viola of

2068-672: Was buried at the Nunhead cemetery . In Cobbett's will £100 was left to the Worshipful Company of Musicians and £300 to the Society of Women Musicians, "mainly for the upkeep of the Cobbett Free Library". Cobbett's music collection was bequeathed to the Chamber Music Society. The beneficiary of Cobbett's interest in British Belting & Asbestos Ltd. was Arthur Anselm Pearson , who had been with

2115-428: Was maintained by the Society of Women Musicians until the society disbanded in 1972. The first recipient of the Cobbett Medal in 1924 was the composer Thomas Dunhill . The medal continues to be awarded annually by the Worshipful Company of Musicians (in more recent times known as the Musicians' Company). A modern assessment of Cobbett's Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music (from Grove Music Online ): "In spite of

2162-630: Was named the Walter Willson Cobbett Medal . A silver gilt medal is presented annually to a distinguished recipient in recognition of their services to chamber music. In 1928-29 Cobbett served as Master of the Worshipful Company of Musicians. Cobbett provided funding to the British Federation of Musical Competition Festivals to start the summer school of chamber music at Bangor in North Wales . He became

2209-401: Was the owner of "a fine collection of Cremona violins ". In 1918 and 1923 Cobbett sponsored competitions for violins made by British luthiers . Concerts were held at Aeolian Hall by musicians using the submitted instruments, with the audience participating in the voting. In the period 1920 to 1927 Cobbett sponsored a series of annual prizes for various forms of chamber music activity at

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