E.J. Moeran: Fantasy Quartet for oboe, violin, viola and cello.

E.J Moeran wrote several pieces of chamber music: unfortunately, none have definitively entered the repertoire, despite several recordings of each. These include two String Quartets, a Piano Trio, a String Trio, a Sonata for cello and one for violin, and the present Fantasy Quartet. There are also a couple of short pieces for cello and piano: an Irish Lament and a Prelude. One work that is often forgotten is the rarely heard Sonata for two violins.

In 1946, the oboist Leon Goossens asked Moeran to compose a work for oboe. Geoffrey Self (1984) in his study of the composer remarks that Moeran had always enjoyed Goossens’s playing and was especially enthused by his interpretation of the beautiful ‘Intermezzo’ from Delius’ opera Fennimore and Gerda.

Moeran had visited some of his ‘old haunts in Norfolk.’ Listeners who often feel that he is at the very least an ‘honorary’ Irishman, sometimes forget that he was born and bred in East Anglia.  The Fantasy Quartet was commenced during May 1946 whilst Moeran was holidaying at the New Inn at Rockland St. Mary in Norfolk and was completed later that year whilst staying with his mother in Ledbury.

Rockland St. Mary lies on a quiet country lane between Norwich and Lowestoft and is immediately adjacent to the Norfolk Broads.  Moeran lodged in an upstairs room. In a letter to Dr Dick Jobson, the composer wrote that ‘I board and lodge in this little pub overlooking Rockland Broad... in the evening I go out rowing on these 'Lonely Waters'... this reedy neighbourhood seems to suggest oboe music.’ (Cited Moeran Database)

On 5 May 1946, Moeran wrote to his wife, Peers Coetmore, saying that ‘I have now decided that the work will be a 4 tet, definitely not a 5 tet, also I think I am getting the shape of it. Anyhow I have more or less decided its opening.

Later he told her that ‘Leon only wanted to alter one or two phrasing marks in the whole quartet.’ (August 1946).

The Fantasy Quartet was first heard on 8 December 1946 at the Cambridge Theatre, London. Leon Goossens, the dedicatee was accompanied by the Carter String Quartet.  It was given again on the following day by Goossens, with the Aeolian Quartet at the Cowdray Hall, London.

Formally, Moeran’s Fantasy was in a trajectory from the largely-forgotten instrumental ‘Fancy’ from before the time of Purcell and revived with great success in the early 20^th century by Walter Willson Cobbett.  Moeran’s example is conceived in a single movement. Self (1986) points out that the quartet falls into several sections ‘which are linked by the monothematic nature of the work.’ Listening to the Fantasy, the listener is not conscious of this ‘single theme’ constantly replaying but is led into the belief that the formal structure is a rondo – with the diverse episodes separating the recurrences of the principal refrain.

The Fantasy Quartet is a reflection on much that had happened in the composer’s life –most especially his boyhood memories of the area. A few folk tunes have been detected in this work by musicologists including ‘Seventeen come Sunday’ and ‘The Pretty Ploughboy’ – however this is not a set of variations on those tunes nor an arrangement of them. Rather, they are used as a basis for generation of themes and motifs.

The liner notes to the Chandos recording of the Fantasy suggest that some of the rhythms in the middle and latter part of the Quartet may have reflected a memory of a ‘local’ steam train. This is not as far fetched as it may seem: Moeran was a passionate railway enthusiast and had already incorporated what several critics have deemed to be the ‘rhythm of the rails’ in his Symphony in G minor.

The Oboe Quartet is balance between the economical nature of the thematic material and the composer’s ability to write superbly for the this medium. The thirteen-minute duration belies this and provides the listener with ‘a wide range of moods, from the gentle to the pastoral to the robust and energetic… (Rhoderick John McNeil, A critical study of the life and works of E. J. Moeran, 1982) The soloist presents a wide variety of technical expertise, from crisp articulation to lyrical meanderings. It is this understanding that gives the work its success.

At the time of composition, Moeran was struggling with alcoholism and the effects of his war wounds. Further, his marriage with Peers Coetsmore was in deep trouble. Perhaps the innocence of much of this mature and deeply felt work is to be understood against the composer’s troubled life and subsequent death only four years later?

Brief Discography:

Moeran, E.J., Fantasy Quartet, Two String Quartets, Piano Trio, Vanburgh Quartet, Nicholas Daniel (oboe), Joachim Piano Trio ASV CD DCA 1045 (1998)

Moeran, E.J., Fantasy Quartet, Bax, Arnold, Oboe Quartet, Jacob, Gordon, Oboe Quartet, Holst, Gustave Air and Variation, Three Pieces, Sarah Francis (oboe), English String Quartet, ABRD 1114 LP (1985); Chandos CHAN 8392 CD (1999) Re-released on CHAN10170X (2004)