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Draft:Margaret G. Cobb

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Margaret Gallatin Cobb (16 September 1907-24 March 2010) was an American musicologist and archivist. She specialized in the life and music of Claude Debussy, publishing several books and articles on the subject. She was the founder of the Centre de documentation Claude Debussy and the scholarly journal Cahiers Debussy. In 2002, Cobb received the title Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French government in recognition for her contributions to the field of Debussy studies.[1]

Biography

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From 1935 to 1971, Cobb worked for the McGraw-Hill book company in New York City and served as editorial consultant for the 1960 edition of the Larousse Modern French-English Dictionary.[2] In 1972, she relocated from New York City to Paris and took the position of Director of the Centre de documentation Claude Debussy in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the composer’s birthplace. In this capacity, Cobb amassed an extensive collection of primary source materials related to the life and work of the composer (this collection now resides at the Bibliothèque nationale de France).[3] In her 2005 monograph Debussy's Letters to Inghelbrecht: The Story of a Musical Friendship, Cobb recalls her efforts at the Centre:

During that first year in Paris, my initial task was to acquire material for the Centre. First, I wrote to publishers of books, music, and recordings in Europe, the United States, Canada, and Japan, asking them to contribute their Debussy publications. Then came the search for the location of known Debussy manuscripts and the request for copies. The response I got was very encouraging, and material in all fields soon came in. Then I sent out the first issue of the Cahiers Debussy of 1974, which was to become the annual publication of the Centre. The first issue of the Cahiers was sent to forty periodicals. All this was certainly responsible for the visitors from forty countries that I welcomed at the Centre during my four years there.[4]

In 1975 Cobb published her Discographie de l’oeuvre de Claude Debussy.[5] Musicologist James Briscoe favorably reviewed Cobb's discography in the journal Notes, writing, "Margaret Cobb’s work is a valuable guide to all 78-rpm recordings of Debussy’s music...For each recording, she provides information on the interpreter, the date of issue, the composition on the reverse side, and the location of the particular example as it is found in four major archives of recorded sound."[6]

After relocating back to New York City, Cobb published The Poetic Debussy: A Collection of His Song Text and Selected Letters in 1982.[7] This work received positive reviews from various publications, including American Music Teacher, Notes, and The Musical Times.[8] In his foreword to The Poetic Debussy, the French musicologist and librarian François Lesure emphasizes the significance of Cobb's work:

Although few would dispute that Claude Debussy was among the most poetically sensitive of modern composers, it is always valuable to have documentary support for widely accepted and generally unchallenged viewpoint. This support is amply provided, with both taste and scholarly insight, by Margaret Cobb in this collection of song texts and letters by Debussy...Margaret G. Cobb, who organized the Centre de Documentation Claude Debussy and has previously published an extensive discography of Debussy’s music, approaches her editorial work as both a scholar and a humanist. While maintaining a very high level of accuracy, she never allows the appurtenances of scholarship to intrude upon the aesthetic enjoyment of the song texts and translations as poetry. Her commentary is always succinct, unobtrusive, and apposite.[9]

In 1989, in collaboration with translator Richard Miller, Cobb published her article "Claude Debussy to Claudius and Gustave Popelin: Nine Unpublished Letters" in 19th-Century Music, and the following year she issued a co-translation, along with William Ashbrook, of Marcel Dietchy's biography A Portrait of Claude Debussy.[10] The latter was favorably reviewed by Arthur Wenk in the December, 1992 issue of Notes.[11]

In 2002, Cobb was honored by the government of France with the title of Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for her noteworthy contributions to Debussy scholarship. In a 2004 collaboration with the New York Pubic Library, she provided a foreword on Debussy and the poet Théophile Gautier to theorist Marie Rolf's edition of the newly discovered song "Les papillons."[12] The following year, Cobb published--at the age of 97-- her final contribution to the field of Debussy's studies, the monograph Debussy's Letters to Inghelbrecht: The Story of a Musical Friendship, which elucidates the relationship between the composer and the conductor Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht.[13] In his review of the work in Notes, musicologist Simon Trezise expresses his admiration for Cobb's scholarship:

The Debussy-Inghelbrecht letters belonged to Ingelbrecht’s widow, who gave them to Cobb late in her life, in recognition no doubt of her tireless efforts on behalf of both composer and conductor. Hence the present publication...Cobb’s biographies of the main players in the letters are invaluable, as are her annotations...It is gratifying to have another of Debussy’s closer professional and personal relationships opened up in such a handsomely produced and well-researched volume.[14]

Cobb passed away in March 2010 at the age of 102.

Archival Donations

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Over the course of her long career, Cobb donated an extensive collection of manuscripts to the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City. These gifts include one hundred and forty-six letters in Debussy’s hand, seven autograph manuscript scores by Debussy (including his symphonic suite Printemps), rare first editions of Debussy’s Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire and La Mer, an alternate version of Debussy’s piano étude “Pour les arpèges composés,” as well as autograph letters by Voltaire, Albert Gallatin, Colette, Maurice Ravel, Emma-Claude Debussy and D.E. Inghelbrecht.[15] Cobb was a Life Fellow at the Morgan, which regularly sought her counsel on acquisitions and programming. In recognition of her many years of service to the Morgan, the library's president, trustees, fellows and staff placed a memorial notice in the New York Times to mark her passing in 2010.[16]

In addition to her donations to the Morgan, Cobb made archival contributions to Sibley Music Library in Rochester, NY. These gifts include photocopies of correspondence between the French musicologist and Debussy biographer Marcel Dietschy and the English musicologist Edward Lockspeiser, as well as fifty-nine items of sheet music composed by Ida Clara Bostelmann (1894-1979).[17]

Selected Bibliography

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  • Cobb, Margaret G. Discographie de l'oeuvre de Claude Debussy. Publications du Centre de documentation Claude Debussy. Geneva: Minkoff, 1975.
  • Cobb, Margaret G. Foreword to "Les papillons" by Claude Debussy. Edited by Marie Rolf. New York: New York Public Library, 2004.
  • Cobb, Margaret G., ed. The Poetic Debussy: A Collection of His Song Texts and Published Letters. Revised 2nd ed., Eastman Studies in Music. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1994.
  • Cobb, Margaret G., ed. Debussy's Letters to Inghelbrecht: The Story of a Musical Friendship. Translated by Richard Miller. Eastman Studies in Music. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2005.
  • Cobb, Margaret G. and Miller, Richard. "Claude Debussy to Claudius and Gustave Popelin: Nine Unpublished Letters." 19th-Century Music 13, no. 1 (1989): 139–48, https://doi.org/10.2307/746210.
  • Dietschy, Marcel. A Portrait of Claude Debussy. Translated by William Ashbrook and Margaret G. Cobb. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.

References

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  1. ^ “Margaret Gallatin COBB,” obituary, New York Times, March 28, 2010, https://archive.nytimes.com/query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage-980DE6DD1F3AF93BA15750C0A9669D8B63.html.
  2. ^ Marguerite-Marie Dubois et al., Larousse Modern French-English Dictionary (Paris: Librarie Larousse, 1960).
  3. ^ The Cahiers Debussy was the official scholarly bulletin of the Centre. Forty-two volumes were published from 1974 until the periodical ceased in 2015. The Centre shuttered its doors in 2018, and its extensive holdings were subsequently transferred to the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Cobb contributed to the Cahiers Debussy throughout her life. See “Centre de Documentation Claude Debussy, Saint-Germain-en-Laye; Paris,” Répertoire Internationale des Sources Musicales (RISM), https://rism.online/institutions/30077209.
  4. ^ Margaret G. Cobb, preface to Debussy’s Letters to Inghelbrecht: The Story of a Musical Friendship, collected and annotated by Margaret G. Cobb (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2005), xvi.
  5. ^ Margaret G. Cobb, Discographie de l’oeuvre de Claude Debussy, Publications du Centre de documentation Claude Debussy (Geneva: Minkoff, 1975).
  6. ^ James Briscoe, review of Discographie de l’oeuvre de Claude Debussy, by Margaret G. Cobb, Notes 34, no. 4 (Jun., 1978): 862. https://doi.org/10.2307/898056.
  7. ^ Margaret G. Cobb, ed., The Poetic Debussy: A Collection of His Song Texts and Selected Letters (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1982). Subsequently revised as Margaret C. Cobb, ed., The Poetic Debussy: A Collection of His Song Texts and Selected Letters, Revised 2nd ed., Eastman Studies in Music (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1994).
  8. ^ See Virginia Raad, review of The Poetic Debussy: A Collection of His Song texts and Letters, edited by Margaret G. Cobb, American Music Teacher 33, no.3 (1984): 62. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43543998; Karl Kroger, review of The Poetic Debussy: A Collection of His Song Texts and Selected Letters, edited by Margaret G. Cobb, Notes 40, no. 4 (Jun., 1984): 795-796. https://doi.org/10.2307/940705; Roger Nichols, “Debussy and Words,” review of The Poetic Debussy: A Collection of His Song texts and Letters, edited by Margaret G. Cobb, The Musical Times 124, no. 1686 (Aug., 1983): 487. https://doi.org/10.2307/963150.
  9. ^ François Lesure, foreword to The Poetic Debussy: A Collection of His Song Texts and Letters, 2nd ed., edited by Margaret G. Cobb (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1994), xi-xii.
  10. ^ Margaret G. Cobb and Richard Miller, “Claude Debussy to Claudius and Gustave Popelin: Nine Unpublished Letters.” 19th-Century Music 13, no. 1 (1989): 39–48, https://doi.org/10.2307/746210; Marcel Dietschy, A Portrait of Claude Debussy, ed. and trans. by William Ashbrook and Margaret G. Cobb (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1990).
  11. ^ Arthur Wenk, review of A Portrait of Claude Debussy, by Marcel Dietschy, edited and translated by William Ashbrook and Margaret G. Cobb, Notes 49, no. 2 (Dec., 1992): 574. https://doi.org/10.2307/897919.
  12. ^ Claude Debussy, “Les Papillons,” ed. Marie Rolf, (New York: New York Public Library, 2004).
  13. ^ Margaret G. Cobb, ann., Debussy’s Letters to Inghelbrecht: The Story of a Musical Friendship, trans. by Richard Miller, Eastman Studies in Music (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2005).
  14. ^ Simon Trezise, review of Debussy’s Letters to Inghelbrecht: The Story of a Musical Friendship, collected and annotated by Margaret G. Cobb, Notes 63, no. 4 (Jun. 2007): 850-852. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4487889.
  15. ^ See The Morgan Library & Museum (website), https://www.themorgan.org.
  16. ^ "Cobb, Margaret G.," memorial notice New York Times, April 1, 2010, https://archive.nytimes.com/query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage-9B06E0DB1F3AF932A35757C0A9669D8B63.html
  17. ^ See Sibley Music Library (website), https://www.esm.rochester.edu/sibley/. Also see Gail E. Lowther, “Margaret Cobb Papers,” https://www.esm.rochester.edu/sibley/files/Margaret-Cobb-Papers.pdf.
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