As a writer, composer and educator Wilfrid Meilers (1914–2008) was a major influence on several generations. He started the music department at York University in 1964 and – as he explains – its curriculum anticipated the current scene where many forms of popular and world music coexist with the Western tradition. Mellers began with a staff of composers – David Blake, Peter Aston, Bernard Rands, Robert Sherlaw Johnson and John Paynter – and soon added performers and ethnomusicologists since he didn't believe in separating theory and practice. His books included studies of Couperin, American music (Music in a New Found Land), popular music heroes such as the Beatles and Bob Dylan, and also Bach, Beethoven, Vaughan Williams, Grainger and Poulenc; there are also several anthologies of his writings. Mellers was a composer, too; his Yeibichai, commissioned by the BBC for the 1969 Proms, involved a coloratura soprano, a scat singer, an improvising jazz trio, orchestra and tape.