Cooke, Deryck (Victor)
Cooke, Deryck (Victor)
Cooke, Deryck (Victor) , English writer on music; b. Leicester, Sept. 14, 1919; d. Thornton Heath, Oct. 26, 1976. He studied composition with Hadley and Orr at the Univ. of Cambridge (B.A., 1940; M.A., 1943; Mus.B., 1947) and then worked in the BBC music dept. (1947–59; 1965–76). He prepared a performing version of the odd-numbered movements of Mahler’s Tenth Sym. for a BBC broadcast on Dec. 19, 1960. The composer’s widow, Alma, forbade any further broadcasts or performances, but was eventually convinced of the merits of the score and supplied Cooke with 24 unpubl. pages of fragments with which he completed the sym. (new version, London, Aug. 13, 1964). Further revisions were made with the assistance of Colin and David Matthews before the work was publ. in 1976. Since then the Mahler-Cooke version has been performed throughout the world.
Writings
(all publ. in London): The Language of Music (1959); Mahler 1860–1911 (1960; rev. and enl. ed., 1980, as Gustav Mahler: An Introduction to His Music)’, I Saw the World End: A Study of Wagner’s Ring (1979); Variations: Essays on Romantic Music (1982).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire