Composer and violist
Eric Coates, the composer of Sleepy Lagoon and The Dam Busters march
27 August 1886 – 21 December 1957
Eric Coates spent his first professional decade as principal viola of the Queen's Hall Orchestra, reading other composers' inner parts under Henry Wood, and the orchestral fluency that made his own music sound effortless was learned there.
The orchestra before the composing
Eric Coates spent the 1910s sitting in the middle of an orchestra, reading the parts that nobody whistles. He was principal viola of the Queen’s Hall Orchestra under Sir Henry Wood, which in that decade meant playing a very large quantity of new and unfamiliar music at short notice, in a section whose job is to make the harmony work rather than to carry the tune.
Eric Coates had come to it by the usual route. Born in Hucknall in Nottinghamshire on 27 August 1886, he studied at the Royal Academy of Music, taking viola with Lionel Tertis, the player who did more than anyone to establish the instrument as a solo voice, and composition with Frederick Corder. He was a capable enough violist to hold a principal chair in a first-rank London orchestra in his mid-twenties.
The playing career ended around the end of the decade, and from then on he composed. What it left him was a practical knowledge of the orchestra that very few composers acquire in that form: he knew from the inside which figurations lie well under the fingers, how a line has to be spaced to be heard through a texture, and how much rehearsal a passage will cost. His scores are notably grateful to play, and players noticed.
Songs first
The orchestral reputation came second. Coates’s earliest commercial success was in the drawing-room ballad market, which was still a substantial business in the years around the First World War, and songs such as Bird Songs at Eventide and Stonecracker John sold in quantities that supported him while the larger works were being written.
The songs are now the least performed part of his output, which exactly reverses their standing during his early career. They are worth noting for a technical reason as well as a biographical one: the melodic habit that makes his orchestral music memorable was formed writing for a single voice with piano, where a tune has nowhere to hide.
The suites, and The Dam Busters march
Coates’s characteristic form is the short orchestral suite of three or four movements, each with a title, each self-contained enough to be broadcast alone. Miniature Suite dates from 1911, From Meadow to Mayfair from 1931, the London Suite from 1932, London Again from 1936, and The Three Elizabeths from 1944. The pattern held for forty years.
The London Suite is the one that mattered most to his career. Its three movements are named for districts of the city, Covent Garden, Westminster and Knightsbridge, and the Knightsbridge march at the end of it was adopted in 1933 as the signature tune of the BBC programme In Town Tonight. That single scheduling decision made him, for a period, the most widely recognised composer in Britain, and it set the pattern by which the rest of his best-known music would reach the public.
Alongside the suites sits a smaller group of concert pieces of a different character. The Three Bears, from 1926, is a narrative phantasy rather than a suite. By the Sleepy Lagoon, written in 1930 as a serenade, is the most famous thing he ever wrote and is almost never heard in the form he wrote it.
Sleepy Lagoon, and the signature tunes
Four pieces carry his name in Britain today, and not one was composed to do the job it is now known for.
By the Sleepy Lagoon became the theme of Desert Island Discs in 1942 and has introduced the programme ever since, which makes it plausibly the most-broadcast piece of British orchestral music of the twentieth century. Knightsbridge announced In Town Tonight. Calling All Workers opened Music While You Work, the programme designed to be relayed through factory loudspeakers, and its brief was demanding in a way that is easy to underrate: the music had to sustain a steady rhythm without inviting attention, because a machinist who looked up was a hazard.
The Dam Busters March is the exception that proves the rule. It was written for the 1955 film and is the only one of the four commissioned for the purpose it is remembered for. It is also the piece of his that has had the longest independent life, arranged for military and brass bands and played regularly in contexts with no connection to the film.
The later works, and how the money worked
The suites kept coming into the 1940s. The Three Elizabeths, from 1944, portrays three English Elizabeths of different centuries in three movements, and it is the most substantial thing he wrote: longer than the London suites, more ambitious in its transitions, and closer than anything else in his output to a symphonic argument. He continued producing marches and occasional pieces through the 1950s, including work prompted by the arrival of television, and the last of the famous items, The Dam Busters March, dates from within three years of his death.
The economics behind that steady output are worth setting out, because they explain the field as a whole and not only Coates. A light-music composer of his generation earned from three streams. Sheet music sales came first historically and mattered most for the songs. Band arrangements, sold to military, brass and amateur orchestras, produced a long tail on anything with a good march in it. But the decisive stream was performing-right income: once collection societies were in place, a piece broadcast daily paid its composer every time it was transmitted, without further work and without any need for the audience to know whose it was.
That mechanism is why a signature tune was so valuable, and it changes how the adoptions should be read. Knightsbridge, Calling All Workers and By the Sleepy Lagoon did not merely make Coates famous. They gave him an income that did not depend on writing the next piece, in a profession where almost everybody’s did. It also explains why he could afford to keep writing twelve-minute suites for an orchestra rather than chasing the popular song market he had started in.
How the music is made
The consistent technical judgement on Eric Coates, from players and from later composers, concerns economy. The effects in his scores are produced by placement rather than by weight. A tune is given to the instrument that will carry it without forcing, the accompaniment is spaced so that the harmony is audible at low volume, and the orchestration is not thickened to compensate for a weak idea, because the ideas are not weak.
Two habits are worth naming. He writes counter-melodies rather than filler, so the second strain of a march is usually a genuine second subject and not a decorated repeat. And he is disciplined about registers: the melody sits where it will survive a small loudspeaker, which mattered enormously for music that was going to be heard on the wireless and hardly at all in a hall.
The result is music that sounds simpler than it is. That impression has cost him critically, because fluency reads as facility, and facility is easy to dismiss.
Eric Coates: reception, then and since
In his lifetime Coates was popular, prosperous and respected by musicians. Henry Wood programmed him. Players liked his parts. He was described as the uncrowned king of light music, a phrase that was meant as a compliment and functions now as a summary of the problem: a king of a category that the serious critical apparatus had decided not to examine.
The critical neglect was structural rather than personal. British music criticism of the period organised itself around the symphony and the string quartet, and a composer whose largest form was a four-movement suite lasting twelve minutes did not fit the frame. The reassessment that later came to other twentieth-century British composers has reached him only partly, and mostly through recording rather than through writing.
Eric Coates’s autobiography, Suite in Four Movements, appeared in 1953 and remains the principal first-hand account of his early career and working methods.
What the record does not settle
A caution for anyone working on the chronology. Coates is unusually well documented in one respect and unusually badly in another. The published works are catalogued and the broadcast adoptions are dated precisely, because the BBC kept schedules. But the circumstances around the end of his playing career, and the dating of the earliest pieces, rest largely on his own memoir, and memoirs written forty years after the events are not reliable on dates.
Where secondary accounts disagree with each other about a year in his early life, they are usually disagreeing about how to read the same paragraph of Suite in Four Movements. If you find two sources giving different dates for the same event before about 1925, that is the likely reason, and neither is necessarily wrong.
Death and afterlife
Coates died on 21 December 1957. His music went on being broadcast without interruption, which is an unusual kind of survival: not a revival, because it never stopped, and not a reputation, because for most of the audience the pieces are anonymous.
The recorded legacy has been assembled since the 1990s, when specialist labels began surveying the suites and marches in full rather than issuing the familiar items in isolation. Brass and military band arrangements keep a substantial part of the output in live performance. Details of the recorded surveys are collected under recordings, and his place in the wider field is set out under British light music.
Frequently asked questions
Who was Eric Coates?
An English composer, born in Hucknall in Nottinghamshire in 1886 and active until his death in 1957. He trained as a viola player at the Royal Academy of Music and spent his twenties as a professional orchestral musician before turning to composition full time. He is generally regarded as the central figure of British light music, and was described in his lifetime as its uncrowned king.
What is Eric Coates best known for?
For four pieces that became broadcast identifiers rather than for any concert work. By the Sleepy Lagoon has introduced Desert Island Discs since 1942. The Knightsbridge march from his London Suite announced In Town Tonight from 1933. Calling All Workers opened Music While You Work. And The Dam Busters March, written for the 1955 film, outlived it to become a standing item in the British band repertoire.
Did Eric Coates write The Dam Busters March?
Yes. It was written for the 1955 film The Dam Busters, and it is the piece of his that is most often played by military and brass bands today. The march is unusual in his output for having been commissioned for a specific film rather than written as a concert item and adopted afterwards, which is how most of his best-known music reached the public.
Was Eric Coates a professional orchestral player?
He was, and it is the most important fact about his technique. He studied viola with Lionel Tertis at the Royal Academy of Music and became principal viola of the Queen's Hall Orchestra under Sir Henry Wood, playing there through the 1910s. He gave up playing professionally around the end of that decade and composed thereafter. Years of reading inner parts in a first-rate orchestra taught him what would sound good from the inside.
What is the London Suite?
A three-movement orchestral suite of 1932, its movements named after districts of the city: Covent Garden, Westminster and Knightsbridge. The Knightsbridge march was chosen as the signature tune of the BBC programme In Town Tonight and made Coates briefly the most widely recognised composer in the country. He returned to the idea four years later with a London Again Suite.
Why is his music called light music?
Because of where it was intended to be heard rather than how it was written. Coates scored for a full orchestra with the same care as a concert composer, but the pieces are short, tonal and designed to make their point quickly, which suited broadcasting and the gramophone. The label was applied by others and he was not fond of it. Concert orchestras programme the marches and suites today without qualification.
Did Eric Coates write songs as well?
He did, and they came first commercially. Songs including Bird Songs at Eventide and Stonecracker John sold well in the drawing-room ballad market that was still substantial in the 1910s and 1920s, and they supported him while the orchestral reputation was being built. The songs are now the least performed part of his output, which reverses the position during his early career.
What did contemporaries think of Eric Coates?
Highly, and specifically about his craftsmanship. His scoring was praised for economy: the effects are produced by placement rather than by weight, and the parts are grateful to play. Sir Henry Wood, who had employed him as a player, programmed his music. The critical establishment paid less attention, on the general ground that light music did not require serious assessment, and that neglect has only partly been repaired.
Where can Eric Coates's music be heard?
Widely, and in two very different registers. The signature tunes are still broadcast daily on BBC radio. The concert works are recorded in full on CD, including complete surveys of the suites and marches undertaken by specialist labels from the 1990s onwards. Brass and military band arrangements of the marches remain in active use, which keeps a considerable amount of his music in live performance rather than only on record.
Did he write an autobiography?
Yes, published in 1953 under the title Suite in Four Movements. It is the main first-hand source for his early career, his time in the Queen's Hall Orchestra and his working methods, and it is the document most often quoted in later accounts of him. Like most musicians' memoirs it is selective about dates, which is one reason parts of his chronology remain contested.