An excellent musician and amateur composer all his life, Ernest was a great patron of the arts and sciences in Coburg, often giving awards and titles to members of the artistic and scientific world, such as Paul Kalisch, a German opera singer and the English chemist William Ernest Bush. Ernest composed songs, hymns, and cantatas, as well as musical pieces for opera and the stage, including "Die Gräberinsel" (1842), "Tony, oder die Vergeltung" (1849), "Casilda" (1851), "Santa Chiara" (1854), and "Zaïre", which met with success in Germany. He could also draw and play the piano. One of his operas, "Diana von Solange" (1858), prompted Franz Liszt the following year to write an orchestral "Festmarsch nach Motiven von E. H. z. S.-C.-G.", S.116 (E. H. z. S.-C.-G. was short for Ernst Herzog zu Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha). However, its production at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1890 inspired dismal reviews, with one spectator commenting that its "music was simply rubbish". Ernest was also an avid hunter and sportsman; one contemporary remarked that he was "one of the foremost and keenest sportsman produced by the present century". In addition, Ernest was an enthusiastic patron of everything connected with natural history, for instance traveling to Abyssinia with the German zoologist Alfred Brehm in 1862. That journey was chronicled in a book, "Reise des Herzogs Ernst von Sachsen-Koburg-Gotha nach Ägypten", published in 1862. He also published his memoirs in three volumes: "Aus meinem Leben und aus meiner Zeit" (1888–1890).