(b ?London, c1668; d Hampton Wick, 12 Jan 1735). English composer. The son of Henry Eccles (c1645-1711), a court musician, he was a composer for Drury Lane Theatre, where his dialogue in The Richmond Heiress (1693) was highly successful, and from 1695 he was music director at Lincoln's Inn Fields. In all, he wrote some 12 masques and operatic pieces, and incidental music for over 50 plays. He also was a court musician-in-ordinary, as Master of Musick writing court odes, 1700-1727. After Purcell's death (1695) he was the leading Restoration theatre composer. His masque The Judgment of Paris (1701) and dramatic opera The British Enchanters (1706, based on Lully's Amadis) were the last of their kinds as was his St Cecilia's Day Ode (1701). In his final stage work, Semele (1707), he created with Congreve a sensitive English recitative of the Italian secco type, but it remained unperformed.
Eccles came from a family of musicians, including Solomon (c1617-1682), a music teacher; Solomon (c1645-1710), a bass violin player at court and composer of music for several plays; and Henry (c1680-c1740), a violinist who worked in London and Paris and wrote violin sonatas.
