Percy Hilder Miles was an English composer, conductor and violinist. Among his students at the Royal Academy of Music was Rebecca Clarke, and among Miles' associates was Lionel Tertis. Miles had earlier been a student at the Royal Academy of Music, which he joined in June 1893 and where his teachers included Battison Haynes and violinist Hans Wessely. Miles is credited with having given Tertis the idea of taking up the viola as an instrument. Also, he proposed to his pupil Rebecca Clarke, which is believed to have led to her father's withdrawing her from that institution and enrolling her in the Royal College of Music instead (she later studied composition with Charles Villiers Stanford, and viola with Tertis.)