ABSTRACT
The completion of both his autobiography and a short orchestral miniature, The Unknown Singer, marked a huge change in Coates’ life: 1952 marked a return to the halcyon days of the 1930s and throughout the remainder of the 1950s he produced a steady, albeit small, stream of attractive miniatures. This development was partially mirrored in the 1951 General Election, which brought Churchill and the Conservative party out from the wilderness. It also marked, at least outwardly, a return to the values and the ‘conventional’ style of the 1930s. Coates changed the focus of his music with a simpler approach to form and less influence from dance music. During this period, one march totally obliterated all Coates’ previous successes; no mean feat, considering the immense popularity of a number of his compositions. In addition, the publication of his autobiography in 1953 marked him out as an elder statesman of British Music, a fact heightened by the number of interviews on a variety of subjects he gave for the BBC.1
