- Born
- Died
- The master of melody, Eric Coates, the composer of familiar music ("Sleepy Lagoon", "Knightsbridge") worldwide, had classical training at the Royal Academy of Music with Frederick Corder for composition and Lionel Tertis for the viola, his main instrument. As a freelance violist he became principal viola by 1913 for the Queen's Hall orchestra, leaving in 1919 to devote his full attentions to composition. His music was often used in ballet although he wrote only one, "The Seven Dwarfs", in 1930. An avid dancer himself, he studied jazz and wrote syncopated music under the pseudonym 'Jack Arnold". In the 1920s he and his wife moved to a seaside home near Selsey, Sussex where he found the quietude he sought to continue his work. His music was featured regularly over the BBC and sold hundreds of thousands of records. To this day his music carries a vast and loyal fan base.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Louis Rugani
- His prolific output includes the London Suite (1932), of which the well-known "Knightsbridge March" is the concluding section; the waltz "By the Sleepy Lagoon" (1930); and "The Dam Busters March" (1954).
- Coates was born into a musical family, but, despite his wishes and obvious talent, his parents only reluctantly allowed him to pursue a musical career.
- He was an English composer of light music and, early in his career, a leading violist.
- Coates wanted to pursue a career as a professional musician; his parents were not in favour of it, but eventually agreed that he could seek admission to the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London. They insisted that by the end of his first year there he must have demonstrated that his abilities were equal to a professional career, failing which he was to return to Nottinghamshire and take up a safe and respectable post in a bank. In 1906, aged twenty, Coates auditioned for admission; he was interviewed by the principal, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, who was sufficiently impressed by the applicant's setting of Burns's "A Red, Red Rose" to suggest that Coates should take composition as his principal study, with the viola as subsidiary. Coates was adamant that his first concern was the viola. Mackenzie's enthusiasm did not extend to offering a scholarship, and Dr Coates had to pay the tuition fees for his son's first year, after which a scholarship was granted.
- With the exception of one unsuccessful short ballet, he never wrote for the theatre, and only occasionally for the cinema.
- These memories of my early youth cause in me a feeling of nostalgia, which brings in its train a drowsy desire to take my leave of noisy streets and go to the place which I used to know as my home. But I know full well that, however persistently I travelled the highways and byways in search of the romance that once lingered there, my quest would only be doomed to disappointment. - from the final chapter of his autobiography
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