Life
Eric was born in Hucknall in Nottinghamshire to William Harrison Coates (d. 1935), a surgeon, and his wife, Mary Jane Gwynne, hailing from Usk in Monmouthshire. After studying at home with a governess, Eric enrolled (1906) at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he received viola lessons from Lionel Tertis and studied composition with Frederick Corder. From 1910 he played in the Queen's Hall Orchestra under Henry J. Wood, becoming principal violist in 1912, "... which post I held for seven years," he said, speaking in a 1948 BBC radio interview, "until, I regret to say, I was dismissed through sending deputies to take my place when I was conducting my works elsewhere. Henry Wood little knew what a great help he had been to me by dispensing with my services, for from that day I never touched my viola again and was able to devote all my time to my writing."
He had an early success with the overture The Merrymakers (1922), but more popular was the London Suite (1933). The last movement of this, "Knightsbridge", was used by the BBC to introduce their radio programme In Town Tonight. Amongst his early champions was Sir Edward Elgar.
Coates's autobiography, Suite in Four Movements, was published in 1953. He died in Chichester having suffered a stroke and was cremated at the Golders Green Crematorium. His son, Austin Coates (1922–1997), was a writer who lived much of his life in Asia.
Eric Coates was not related to Albert Coates, the contemporary conductor and composer.
Read more about this topic: Eric Coates
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“It is a tribute to the peculiar horror of contemporary life that it makes the worst features of earlier times—the stupefaction of the masses, the obsessed and driven lives of the bourgeoisie—seem attractive by comparison.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)
“Since the Greeks, Western man has believed that Being, all Being, is intelligible, that there is a reason for everything ... and that the cosmos is, finally, intelligible. The Oriental, on the other hand, has accepted his existence within a universe that would appear to be meaningless, to the rational Western mind, and has lived with this meaninglessness. Hence the artistic form that seems natural to the Oriental is one that is just as formless or formal, as irrational, as life itself.”
—William Barrett (b. 1913)
“His life was a sort of dream, as are most lives with the mainspring left out.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)