John Coates (tenor) - War Service and Later Career

War Service and Later Career

Coates then saw four years' war service in France as a captain in the Yorkshire Regiment (from 1916-1919). In March 1919, he signaled his return to music by giving the first of a long series of English-song recitals, with Anthony Bernard at the piano, at the Queen's Hall. His programs, his enjoyment of the work, his diction and characterization were intensely admired in them.

In 1921, he appeared again in opera as Don José in Carmen and as Lohengrin for Carl Rosa at Covent Garden, but thereafter devoted most of his efforts to concert performance. In 1921 he sang Gerontius at the memorial meeting for Gervase Elwes at the Royal Albert Hall with the Royal Choral Society. (He sang wonderfully, according to the Sunday Times, a courageous thing to do since in his own words he found the sudden death of Elwes in a train accident 'too shocking, too staggering to contemplate. It has affected me to the very depths of my nature ... it brought me to my knees.') From 1920 he began to specialise in song-recitals, of which he gave several each year, favouring all-English performances and championing English composers, but drawing from the repertoire of German and French songs also. In 1922 Roger Quilter, who had written much for Elwes and worked closely with him, dedicated his 'Morning song' (Thomas Heywood) to Coates, one of his most vibrant and characteristic miniatures, though Coates did not give the first performance of it.

As the 1920s unfurled, Coates faced competition at home from an emerging generation of British tenors led by Walter Widdop and Heddle Nash. He toured overseas energetically and in 1925 he made his only extended tour of North America, including Canada as well as the United States on his itinerary. For this trip his usual partner on the piano, Berkeley Mason, was not available. Instead, he found Gerald Moore, then a young accompanist at the beginning of his career. Moore had often heard Coates' recitals at Chelsea Town Hall, but it was through the Australian baritone Peter Dawson (with whom Moore had toured) that the contact came. Once the contact was made, Moore became Coates' sole accompanist for four or five years. Moore devotes a chapter of his memoirs to Coates. He found the tenor a hard taskmaster, but one who transformed him from a mediocre accompanist to an artist with a full realisation of the duties and possibilities of the accompanist's role, aware of the necessity of being a full participant in every living nuance and accent of the music at hand. Moore considered that Coates had laid the groundwork of whatever was truly excellent in his work. Indeed, Coates had told him that the American tour would 'kill or cure' him, and considered the result a 'cure'. The Coates-Moore partnership eventually dissolved over a rehearsal-fees' disagreement, though any cracks in the friendship were repaired by 1929.

Like his renowned British tenor predecessors Sims Reeves and Edward Lloyd, Coates had a famously protective wife. Moore refers to Coates' home life as serene, with an adorable spouse, sons and daughters; but he thought, despite Coates's good humour, he was not a happy person because he was too much of a worrier. Coates developed financial headaches, too. He wasted a good deal of money in a legal case that he launched against the Performing Right Society, in which he argued that he should not have to pay a royalty to perform music in public which had been brought to him in manuscript, and which therefore, by agreeing to sing it, Coates had encouraged the publishers to publish. He lost the case, and it preyed on his mind and finances for long after, though he refused offers of financial support from other singers. In his last years he thought of going back on the stage and started to slim, but he was seized with anaemia and became permanently confined to bed, frustrated at being unable to assist his country as the Second World War took hold. In July 1940, Gerald Moore presented a half-hour broadcast in tribute to their work together, and received a last letter from him in friendship and gratitude.

Coates died in Northwood, London in 1941, aged 76.