In the evening I went to see Coates in his comfortable and handsome wooden house out on the No. 21 tram route. He had invited me so that I could hear his opera Assurbanipal. The first half of this opera was too full of whole-tone harmonies and progressions, but the second half was extremely entertaining , although I cannot claim to have absorbed it very precisely since the six and eight-part harmony he uses throughout does not help the ear to orientate itself instantaneously, especially in a performance on the piano that necessarily left out half of what was written. I drew attention to the whole-tome construction as a defect that could sink the whole opera. Coates agreed that he too found it oppressive; it was a tendency he would try to correct, and he asked me to come again later to hear what changes he had made.