Percy Hilder Miles

Who was Percy Hilder Miles?

Percy Hilder Miles was an English composer, conductor and violinist. Among his students at the Royal Academy of Music was Rebecca Clarke, and among Miles' associates was Lionel Tertis.

Miles had earlier been a student at the Royal Academy of Music, which he joined in June 1893 and where his teachers included Battison Haynes and violinist Hans Wessely.

Miles is credited with having given Tertis the idea of taking up the viola as an instrument. Also, he proposed to his pupil Rebecca Clarke, which is believed to have led to her father's withdrawing her from that institution and enrolling her in the Royal College of Music instead

He appeared several times in The Musical Times in the late 1890s performing works of others and at least once his own also. According to a brief biography in one of these articles in 1899, he won the first Sauret prize in 1897, the Hine Exhibition composition prize in 1893, the MacFarren Scholarship in 1896 and the Charles Lucas Medal in mid summer 1898, as well as the Mendelssohn Scholarship in 1899. In 1896 he received a silver medal from the Worshipful Company of Musicians.