Cecil Coles


Cecil Frederick Coles was a Scottish composer who was killed on active service in World War I.

Life and career

Coles was born in Kirkcudbright to Frederick Coles and Margaret Coles, and was educated at George Watson’s School, Edinburgh. In 1907 he went to the London College of Music on a scholarship. He later studied at the University of Edinburgh and Stuttgart Conservatory. On completion of his studies, he became assistant conductor to the Stuttgart Royal Opera and was organist of St. Katherine's, an English church in the city. In 1912, he married Phoebe Relton at St Saviour’s Church, Brockley Rise, London, and took his wife back to Germany; the couple returned to the UK the following year. When World War I broke out, he joined the Queen Victoria's Rifles and became their bandmaster. While on active service, he sent manuscripts home to his friend Gustav Holst. He was killed by German sniper fire on the Western Front, while helping recover casualties. He was buried at Crouy.
Coles' work was "rediscovered" in a 2001 recording.
His music was used as the opening and closing title music for a documentary series entitled The First World War. The piece of music was Cortège, arranged by Orlando Gough. Cortège is one of the two surviving movements of a suite composed by Coles called Behind the Lines. Cortege also appears on Artists Rifles, an audiobook CD issued in 2004 featuring war poetry read by Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, Robert Graves, David Jones, Edgell Rickword and Lawrence Binyon, as well as music by Edward Elgar, George Butterworth, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Maurice Ravel, Gustav Holst, Ivor Gurney, Ernest Moeran and Arthur Bliss.

Works

Piano