Easdale was born in Manchester, and was educated at Westminster Abbey School and the Royal College of Music, where he was a pupil of Armstrong Gibbs (composition) and Gordon Jacob (orchestration).
[1] His London introduction as a composer came through a concert of his own music he organised (shared with Herbert Murrill) at the Wigmore Hall on 1 July 1931, which attracted press notices.
But aside from a high profile choral commission for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral in 1962[5] – where his Missa Conventrensis was inevitably overshadowed by his friend Benjamin Britten's War Requiem – his concert work gained little attention.
[1] In general his combination of lush late Romanticism mixed with "ethnic" colour and more austere Modernism suited the world of film music more than the concert hall.
[11] Other works include some chamber music, the Evening Prelude (1951) for organ, a "lyric drama" Seelkie (1954) for chorus and small orchestra, and a song cycle Leaves of Grass, setting Whitman.
It includes the full ballet sequence from The Red Shoes (from the original score, complete with Ondes Martenot), and extracts from Black Narcissus and Gone to Earth.