Appendix 3 - The Cooke Collection: A Brief Description

Summary

Amassed principally by Cooke during the course of his working career, the Cooke Collection (GB-Lcm MSS 807–33) at the library of the Royal College of Music in London affords an in-depth insight into the music, career and interests of Cooke. In its present form the collection comprises 2,276 leaves assembled or bound into twenty-seven volumes. Contained within are approximately 702 copies of musical works, 434 of them by Cooke. The latter constitute nearly all known Cooke works, of which there are around 276, comprising principally part songs, anthems, organ and other keyboard works, psalm settings, chants, solo songs, orchestral odes and concertos. Of the 434 copies of Cooke works, 371 are written in Cooke’s hand whilst non-autograph copies are principally the work of a small group of copyists that included Cooke’s sons Henry and Robert. On a great many of these copies Cooke annotated dates, places of composition, and performance histories, as well as references to associates and musical organisations with which he was involved, the most cited being the Catch Club and the Academy. Despite the fact that Cooke’s annotations often read like an address to future perusers, he was by no means selective in what he retained. Alongside fair copies there are early drafts as well as fragments of unfinished and sometimes barely started works.

The collection also contains 268 copies of works by other composers, revealing Cooke’s sometimes surprising musical interests, influences, and contacts. Whilst many of these are in Cooke’s hand (such as the early Tudorperiod Fayrfax Manuscript transcriptions mentioned in Chapter 6), there are also a small number of autograph manuscripts by composers such as Boyce, Greene, Geminiani, Nares, Travers, and Pepusch. Non-autograph copies of works by composers other than Cooke exist in a variety of hands, some known (including those of Cooke and his copyists) and others unknown. Notable in this regard is the variant copy of J. S. Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C major (bwv 545), copied by unknown hands and contained in GB-Lcm MS 814, fols. 42–50, a volume apparently assembled in around 1778. In an annotation entered probably at the time of the volume’s compilation Cooke attributes this work to John Robinson, his predecessor as organist of Westminster Abbey. Transposed into Bb, it constitutes an important variant of the work and is therefore assigned its own number (bwv 545b) in Wolfgang Schmieder’s Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (Wiesbaden, 1990).