ABSTRACT
Following the outbreak of war in 1939, Eric Coates was no longer the carefree, ‘Peter-Pan-like’ figure, who produced an endless stream of tuneful works, that he had been in the 1920s. It was a period of increasing self-doubt, conflict and struggle to continue writing music. Apart from the two suites Four Centuries and The Three Elizabeths, Coates focused entirely on miniatures, especially the march, which became exceedingly popular during the war years. During 1939 with the acceleration of rearming, the onset of war had a radicalizing effect on the British public and lead to a marked change in values. Coates declared in his autobiography that during the early months of the Second World War: ‘I could not write a note, the incessant air-raid warnings and the ‘doodle-bugs’ saw to that … . It was all too patent that my writing days were over.’1 Writing to Stanford Robinson in 1942, he mentioned a change in his compositional psyche: ‘It seemed so strange to hear some of my early music again – somehow I do not seem the same person to-day as I was in those days. A good deal of joy seems to have gone out of everything.’2
