MOERAN, ERNEST JOHN  BIOGRAPHY

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.