Life

Bate received early training in music and had composed two opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

s by age twenty. He studied under Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...

, R.O. Morris, Gordon Jacob

Gordon Jacob

Gordon Percival Septimus Jacob was an English composer. He is known for his wind instrument composition and his instructional writings.-Life:...

, and Arthur Benjamin

Arthur Benjamin

Arthur Leslie Benjamin was an Australian composer, pianist, conductor and teacher. He is best known as the composer of Jamaican Rhumba, composed in 1938.-Biography:...

, and then in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 with Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...

 and in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 with Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...

. He wrote incidental music

Incidental music

Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack"....

 for performances at German playhouses, and toured Australia and the United States as a pianist. Bate was openly gay

Gay

Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

 but was married to fellow composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks

Peggy Glanville-Hicks

Peggy Glanville-Hicks was an Australian composer.- Biography :Peggy Glanville-Hicks was born Melbourne in 1912. At age 15 she began studying composition with Fritz Hart in Melbourne...

 from 1938 to 1949, when they divorced. After several years living in America, where Bate and Glanville-Hicks had moved in 1941, he returned to London; he received less praise in his birth country than abroad, and the lack of attention his works received resulted in his decision to commit suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

 in 1959.
There has been recent interest in his music with the high profile and well reviewed recordings of his Symphonies 3 & 4 with Martin Yates

Martin Yates

Martin Yates is a British conductor.Studied at the Royal College of Music and Trinity College of Music, London where his teachers included Bernard Keeffe , Richard Arnell , Ian Lake, Jakob Kaletsky & Alan Rowlands and Douglas Moore & John Burden .Conducting debut 1983 with Israel National Opera...

 conducting The Royal Scottish National Orchestra on the Dutton Epoch label.

Dramatic

Operas

• The Forest Enchanted, 1928
• All for the Queen, 1929–30

Ballets

• Eros, 1935
• Goyescas, 1937
• Juanita (mime-ballet), 1938
• Cap over Mill, op.27, 1939
• Perseus, op.26, 1939
• Dance Variations, op.49, 1944–6
• Highland Fling, 1946
• Troilus and Cressida, op.60, 1948

Incidental music

• Electra (Sophocles
  Sophocles
  Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
  
  ), 1938
• Bodas de Sangre (Federico García Lorca
  Federico García Lorca
  Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He is believed to be one of thousands who were summarily shot by anti-communist death squads...
  
  ), ca. 1938
• The Cherry Orchard (Anton Chekhov
  Anton Chekhov
  Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
  
  ), ca. 1938
• Twelfth Night (Shakespeare), ca. 1938
• The White Guard, ca. 1938
• The Patriots (play)
  The Patriots (play)
  The Patriots is an award-winning play written in a prologue and three acts by Sidney Kingsley in 1943. It won the New York Drama Critics' Circle award for Best Play, and ran for 173 performances.-Synopsis:...
  
   (Sidney Kingsley
  Sidney Kingsley
  Sidney Kingsley was an American dramatist. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Men in White in 1934.- Biography :...
  
  ), 1944

Music for films

• The Fifth Year, 1944
• Jean Helion, 1946
• The Pleasure Garden, 1952–3
• Light through the Ages, 1953

Instrumental

Orchestral

• Concertante, op.24, 1936–8
• Concertino, op.21, 1937
• Symphony no.2, op.20, 1937–9
• Sinfonietta no.1, op.22, 1938
• Piano Concerto no.2, op.28, 1940
• Symphony no.3, op.29, 1940
• Violin Concerto. no.2, op.42, 1943
• Sinfonietta no.2, op.39, 1944
• Viola Concerto, op.46, 1944–6
• Haneen, op.50, 1944
• Pastorale, op.48a, ca. 1946
• Violin Concerto no.3, op.58, 1947–50
• Piano Concerto no.3, op.66, 1951–2
• Concerto grosso, 1952
• Harpsichord Concerto, 1952–5
• Cello Concerto, 1953
• Symphony no.4, 1954–5
• Piano Concerto no.4, ca. 1955
• Piano Concerto no.5, 1958

Chamber music

• Sonata, op.11, 1937
• 5 Pieces, op.23, ca. 1937
• Sonatina, op.12, 1938
• String Quartet no.2, op.41, 1942
• Sonata no.1, op.47, 1946
• Sonata, op.52, 1946
• Fantasy, op.56, 1946–7
• Recitative, op.52a, 1946–7
• Pastorale, op.57, ca. 1947
• Sonata no.2, 1950

Piano

• 6 Pieces for an Infant Prodigy, op.13, ca. 1938
• 2 Sonatinas, op.19, 1939–41
• Romance and Toccata, op.25, 1941
• Sonatinas nos.3–9, opp.30–6, 1942–3
• Overture to a Russian War Relief
  Russian War Relief
  Russian War Relief was an alleged Communist front group, circa 1944. According to a 1943 FBI report, the group was “infiltrated with known Communists, Communist leaders, fellow travelers, and front organizations.” The chairman of Russian War Relief was Edward C...
  
   Concert, op.37, ca. 1943
• 3 Pieces, op.38, 1943
• Sonata no.1, op.45, 1943
• Suite, op.44, 1943
• 3 Mazurkas, op.38a, 1944
• Sonata no.2, op.59, 1947
• Sonata no.3, op.62, 1949
• 17 Preludes, op.64, 1949
• Prelude, Rondo and Toccata, 1953

Vocal

• Incantations (E. Jolas), op.48
• 4 Songs (A.E. Housman), op.51, 1945
• Pomes Penyeach (James Joyce
  James Joyce
  James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
  
  ), op.53, 1946
• 3 Songs (C. Day-Lewis, E. Sitwell, Joyce), op.55, 1946
• 3 Songs (Hilaire Belloc
  Hilaire Belloc
  Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was an Anglo-French writer and historian who became a naturalised British subject in 1902. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. He was known as a writer, orator, poet, satirist, man of letters and political activist...
  
  ), op.61, 1947–8
• 6 Songs (S. Smith), 1952