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 the decade before World War I until his death in 1937.

[2] 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.

[3][4] Cobbett was overtaken by a "consuming enthusiasm" for the musical genre when he heard the Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim lead a quartet performing Beethoven compositions at St. James's Hall in London.

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 was on vacation in Sweden where he met William Fenton, a Scotsman working as the weaving manager at a Swedish textile mill.

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.

[6][7] Cobbett played chamber music regularly at home and was involved with several amateur orchestras including the Strolling Players' Orchestral Society, formed in about 1890.

[6][7] In 1902 Charles Treiber and George Beach formed an agency in Boston to sell Scandinavia belting imported from the United Kingdom.

Treiber had emigrated to the United States several years earlier, and had formerly been in a business partnership with Eugene Bartikeit, the export director of W. Willson Cobbett Ltd.

[11] Cobbett himself claimed that he retired "at the age of sixty" to "devote myself to what I consider to be my life's work" as a promoter and proponent of chamber music.

[6] In 1920 Scandinavia Belting Ltd., with Cobbett chairing the board of directors, acquired a competitor, British Asbestos Co. Ltd., and expanded its production facilities.

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.

[16] The 'phantasy' was Cobbett's modern conception of an older genre, short pieces for viols called 'fancies' or 'fantasies' from the 16th and 17th centuries by composers such as William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons.

[3][19] The competition's stated object 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".

[20] 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.

[11][33] After the outbreak of World War I Cobbett served as a member of the Music in War-Time Committee, which sought to safeguard British musicians' interests during the conflict.

The committee organised concerts at military camps and hospitals, providing paid engagements for musicians and entertainment for serving and wounded soldiers.

[34] In 1918 Cobbett established, at his own expense, a Free Library of Chamber Music in conjunction with the Society of Women Musicians.

[41] Another review said the editor's writing style had "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".

[3] Cobbett "continued to play the violin into extreme old age and retained astonishing vigour and clarity of mind up till the end".

[45] The beneficiary of Cobbett's interest in British Belting & Asbestos Ltd. was Arthur Anselm Pearson, who had been with the business since 1889 and a director of the company since 1912.