The Life and Music of Eric Coates
The Life and Music of Eric Coates

Author: Michael Payne

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-03

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1317025636

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Eric Coates (1886-1957) is perhaps the most familiar name associated with British light music. Sir Charles Groves said that 'his music crackled with enthusiasm and vitality. He could write tunes and clothe them in the most attractive musical colours'. Coates won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, and from 1912 to 1919 he was principal viola of the Queen's Hall Orchestra under Sir Henry Wood. He also played under such conductors as Elgar, Delius, Richard Strauss, Debussy, and Beecham. It was, however, as a composer of orchestral music that he found his greatest success. Beginning with the Miniature Suite, written for the 1911 Promenade Concerts, he forged an enviable reputation as a composer. By the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most popular and highest-paid British composers, with a string of popular works flowing from his pen. Coates' music has become indelibly entwined with such popular radio programmes as the BBC's In Town Tonight, which was introduced by the 'Knightsbridge' March and Desert Island Discs whose signature tune for the past forty years has been By the Sleepy Lagoon. Perhaps his most memorable work was his march for the Dam Busters film. Michael Payne traces the changing fortunes of the career of the man who composed some of Britain's best-known music. In many ways, Coates' story is the story of British light music, and Payne's study offers a fascinating insight into the heyday and decline of the British light music tradition.

Suite in Four Movements
Suite in Four Movements

Author: Eric Coates

Publisher: London : Heinemann

Published: 1953

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13:

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Among the best-loved names in English music today is that of Eric Coates. As a composer, both charming and stirring, he is responsible for two of our national signature tunes - the Knightsbridge March from his London Suite, which heralds In Town Tonight, and the tune which cheered and roused countless millions to greater effort during the war years, Calling All Workers. Here now is his autobiography: a story destined to fill the gaps in those untold private pictures which form around our favorite writers, actors and composers. This book opens with an Allegretto Pastorale, the scene of the author's boyhood among the fields and lands of Nottinghamshire and in the happy circle of family and friends. The youngest son of the local doctor, Eric Coates' musical gifts showed themselves at an early age, and developed unfettered in an environment of affectionate guidance and interest. The second movement of gathering tempo - Lento-Andante-Allegro - follows the young man's career as a student at the Royal Academy of Music and his beginnings as a viola player and composer. This is a story of endless fascination, introducing names which have passed into our life and culture. There are pictures of friends, tutors and professional acquaintances, among them Lionel Tertis, Sir Thomas Beecham, Sir Henry Wood, Elgar, W.S. Gilbert, Richard Strauss, Claude Debussy and so many more. And always, the thread of a personal life, and experiences as hilarious as the episode of the "Celtic quartet". Romanza in modo variazione is the romantic third movement. This is Mr. Coates' own love story, and one of the few true examples of the fairy-story formula "and so they lived happily ever after." Through this and the final Rondo we see the development of the young composer, from his first song success with Stonecracker John to the public figure we know today, whose Knightbridge March created a sales record in gramophone recordings and is known, with his other delightful compositions, throughout the world.

Accompanying Gracie
Accompanying Gracie

Author: Andrew Everett MA

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Published: 2015-02-13

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 1496994515

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You may have heard about Gracie Fields. Harry not only accompanied her, but composed for her, eventually becoming an important British major light composer in his own right. This is his life story, discussing not only his musical achievements but his personal life.

The Life and Music of Elizabeth Maconchy
The Life and Music of Elizabeth Maconchy

Author: Erica Siegel

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2023-07-18

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1837650519

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The first full-length biographical study of Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994). The British-born Irish composer (Dame) Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994) is best known today for her cycle of thirteen string quartets, composed over five decades. And yet, her oeuvre ranges from large scale choral works, to ballets, operas, and symphonic scores. Having studied with Charles Wood and Ralph Vaughan Williams at the Royal College of Music, many of her compositions also garnered accolades from peers and established musical figures such as Gustav Holst, Donald Francis Tovey, and Henry Wood, among others. With access to a wealth of documentation previously unavailable, this book explores Maconchy's life and music within a greater consideration of the social and political context of the world in which she lived. While the influence of Bartók has been well documented, this book reveals the equally potent influence of Vaughan Williams on Maconchy's musical idiom. This book also discusses Maconchy's foray into administration and her advocacy of young composers through her work as the first woman to be elected Chairman of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain in 1959 and President of the Society for the Promotion of New Music following the death of Benjamin Britten in 1976. It will be required reading for those interested in the lives of women composers, twentieth-century British music, and musical modernism.