Ernest John Moeran had been born in Isleworth, Middlesex, the son of an
Irish protestant clergyman, but he spent his impressionable early years on the
Norfolk coast, where his father became Rector of the remote village of Bacton.
Moerans was a middle-class background, even if it was not a wealthy
one. After prep school in Cromer he went to Uppingham, where the music master
was Robert Sterndale Bennett, grandson of the composer William Sterndale
Bennett, under whose influence Moeran played the violin and composed. In 1913
Moeran went to the Royal College of Music and became a composition student of
Stanford, but on the outbreak of war he became an army motor cycle despatch
rider and was later commissioned. In 1917 he suffered a head wound, when
shrapnel became lodged too near the brain for its removal, an injury that,
until his death, had the unfortunate effect of making him appear drunk after
even very small quantities of alcohol. He was demobilised and soon after met
the composer Arnold Bax who later recalled him as as charming and good looking
a young officer as one could hope to meet.
He became a pupil of John Ireland after service in the 1914-18 war, in
which he was wounded. East Anglia continued to influence his music, coupled
with the influence of Ireland. He enjoyed a respected if minor position in the
English music of his time.
Moeran was one of the last mainstream British composers to be
influenced by folk-song. An early hearing of Vaughan Williamss Norfolk
Rhapsody came with the force of a revelation. During his early years in the
army, when posted to Norfolk, Moeran began collecting such songs, and continued
in the 1920s. Their flavour permeates his music.
In his twenties he was prolific, and although initially still studying,
now with the composer John Ireland, he produced three orchestral
quasi-folk-song rhapsodies, emulating Vaughan Williamss example. In In the Mountain Country, and the first two
numbered rhapsodies, Moeran invented the folk-songs used. All three were
heard in 1924. In the Mountain Country was dedicated to and conducted by
Hamilton Harty, who, himself also the composer of an Irish Symphony,
commissioned a symphony from Moeran. Although Moeran several times reported
himself working on it, he found it difficult to complete and fourteen years
passed before it was heard.
Always the countryman, Moeran was long-associated with Norfolk, later
with Herefordshire, and for the last thirty years of his life with rural
Ireland, living at Kenmare, County Kerry. In 1926 he had set up house with
Philip Heseltine (the composer Peter Warlock) at Eynsford in Kent, then more
rural than now. Up to this time Moeran, though always a meticulous worker, had
been remarkably fertile, but after experiencing the hard-drinking but brilliant
company at Eynsford, where Warlock kept open house to bohemian friends, he
seemed to lose his way. His war wound meant that he never really resolved what
others saw as a chronic alcoholism.
Orchestral Music
Moeran's Violin Concerto and the cello concerto he wrote for his future
wife, the cellist Peers Coetmore, make interesting and characteristic additions
to the solo repertoire of the instruments. Other orchestral works include the
symphonic impression In the Mountain Country,
Lonely Waters for small orchestra,
a sinfonietta, the Symphony in G minor and two rhapsodies.
Chamber Music
Moeran's Cello Sonata, his last major work, is particularly effective,
with his Violin Sonata of 1923 and Fantasy Quartet for oboe and strings.
Vocal Music
Moeran wrote part-songs, with solo songs that include Ludlow Town, Six
Norfolk Folk-Songs and settings of Shakespeare songs.
