Arnold Cooke

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Arnold Atkinson Cooke (November 4, 1906 - August 13, 2005) was a British composer.

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. After military service in the Second World War, he obtained a doctorate from Cambridge and taught at Trinity College of Music in London, retiring in 1978.