Ernest John Moeran: 1894-1950 Obituary by Arthur Hutchings

Ernest John Moeran died on 1 December 1950. He had been staying at Kenmore in County Kerry. He was ostensibly working on his second symphony. No apparent progress had been made. Unfortunately, he was struggling with alcoholism and mental health problems. Moeran had left his lodgings mid afternoon and headed towards Kenmare pier. He was seen toppling into the water and although a boat was immediately launched to rescue him; he was already dead when brought ashore. The inquest found that the composer had died of a cerebral haemorrhage which had occurred before he fell.

In the immediate aftermath of Moeran’s death his music seems to have entered the doldrums. It was not until the major recording projects initiated by Lyrita, Chandos and Naxos that his work was heard. Unfortunately, this belated interest has not spread to the concert halls and recital rooms.

The present obituary by the musicologist and composer Arthur Hutchings (1906-89) is one of several published after the composer’s death. It was printed in the Monthly Musical Record May 1951.  I have lightly annotated this essay.

BAX, IRELAND, WARLOCK, GIBBS, HOWELLS and MOERAN cannot but be regarded as a group, however much the enthusiast for one of them deplores such grouping; none of them, despite works with such titles as 'A London Overture', is inspired by modern urban civilization; each has faced the task of expressing romantic emotions without using musical phraseology in which those emotions have already been adequately expressed; each has been called 'escapist'- a word which has no more right than 'conventional' to unqualified use as a term of opprobrium; each has known, and possibly shared, the unjustified criteria which demand the satisfactory fulfilment of symphonic dimensions as a proof of first-rate creative ability; each has a gentle muse, capable of impassioned expression, but not convincing in ferocity, as Vaughan Williams's can be, or in ascetic mysticism, as Holst's was. [1]

It is not the duty of the general critic, still less of the writer of an obituary tribute, to forecast the ultimate relative importance of contemporary artists. Let time do its own work. It would be churlish, however, not to recognize the ‘still fairer hopes’ of additions to the ‘rich treasure’ given us by Moeran. All but two of the six composers named are still vigorously creative; Moeran was the youngest of them. Unlike the others, but like Vaughan Williams, he did not show extraordinary brilliance and facility in boyhood and youth, and his most considerable achievement came late, notably in two works which one seems to have reviewed as ‘New Music’ only a week or so ago—the Concerto and the Sonata for cello written in 1947 for his wife, Peers Coetmore. In these pieces he seems past the stage of the G minor Symphony and the Violin Concerto, which show a determination not to let natural lyricism take the stage too easily, and we may lament Moeran's death in frank selfishness, more than we might lament the death of a more clever or more highly idiomatic artist whose work was complete. Some composers are historically or biologically necessary in the evolution of musical expression; Moeran was not, and the fact is of minor importance when set against the fact that, in an age of philosophic uncertainty and technical experiment, he left a small legacy of works which enrich us now and are likely to be treasured when we are gone.

By the sheer sincerity of his best work, Moeran gained the attention of ears already familiar with most elements of his vocabulary in the music of Warlock, Bax or Ireland, [2] with whom Moeran studied in the years following his military service in the first war. He had collected Norfolk songs, enjoyed the music of Delius, Elgar, Vaughan Williams and others, and, though he remained the sociable and bluff  ‘Jack’ Moeran when visiting friends in London, he developed a liking for seclusion, first in East Anglia and then on the wild coastline of the north-west islands [of Scotland]. He also acquired a great love of the Tudor and Stuart musicians and poets. His temperament is reflected in the String Quartet, the Violin Sonata, and the short pieces which first brought him a large number of admirers: 'In the Mountain Country', 'Lonely Waters' and 'Whythorne's Shadow'. Here are no wild oats, no weeds of carelessness to eliminate from more mature and deliberate writing. The admiration of Delius is implicit, but there is more reticence than in Delius; there is also a certain Elizabethan sophistication that distinguishes Moeran from Bax or Ireland, and it is one of the marks of his better pieces that they do not seem spiced with conscious archaisms.

Moeran wrote exceptionally well for singers, achieving excellence of part-writing and sensitive setting of words; but here again, many will prefer the spontaneous ‘Songs of Springtime’ to the second choral suite, ‘Phyllida and Corydon’, which is more mannered and madrigalian, and contains passages which many a good student could write. No song in the later suite compares with ‘Love is a sickness’ in the earlier. Moeran perfected a choral style, a development of Elizabethan phrasing and the bittersweet harmony of virtuoso madrigalists, which Warlock deployed only in accompaniments, though he suggested it in one or two short carols. Certain of Moeran's solo songs should be better known, the ‘Ludlow Town’ cycle, for instance, or the exquisite setting of ‘Tis time, I think, by Wenlock Town’ and few collectors have better arranged folk tunes.

The works mentioned take us to the thirties, before which decade Moeran did not attract wide notice. The Symphony [in G minor] of 1937 is not to be praised or condemned either because it shows labour, for so does Walton's, Rawsthorne's [3] and many another ‘single’ symphony, nor because it is ‘inspired’ by the coast of South Ireland. The great opening melody is said to contain most of the material used in the first movement, but that fact does not in itself guarantee integrity. A symphony, whether programmatic or not, must hold us by purely musical processes. There are not wanting those who consider that Moeran's Symphony does so when those processes are least elaborate and frankly lyrical, and that the continental musician whom we wish to acquaint with the best and most characteristic of Moeran's music should first hear pieces like the slow movement of the String Quartet - the musical equivalent of fine water-colour painting - and proceed to the Violin Concerto (1938) which allowed him to sing, without bothering about being symphonic - a word not yet precisely defined. Melodic beauty is always rare and grows rarer as composers are timid to acknowledge romantic impulses; violin concertos of brittle themes and fiendish virtuosity do not seem to live long. From the Violin Concerto we should turn to the engaging and vernal Sinfonietta and finally to the two cello works, the Concerto and the Sonata that were written after the second war. These alone prove that lengthy composition was possible to a sensitive lyrical spirit who strove for it, with impatience sometimes, and passed from us just as nature had bestowed mastery. [4]

Arthur Hutchings, Monthly Musical Record May 1951, p.88-90.

Notes

[1] The author is clearly alluding to such works as Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No.4 in F minor (1935) and the Mars movement from Holst’s Planets Suite (1920).

[2] Many critics have suggested that Moeran was a musical kleptomaniac, using other composer’s aesthetics and styles, but failing to develop his own voice. It is an unfair judgement. Not all composers are destined to break new ground. Even the incomparable J.S. Bach created a perfect fusion of styles derived from Buxtehude, Pachelbel and Froberger.

[3] In 1950 both William Walton and Alan Rawsthorne had only produced a single symphony each. Walton would write his second example in 1959 and Rawsthorne would compose a further two essays in the genre, in 1959 and 1964.

[4] The list of works that Arthur Hutchings suggests the listener should explore would not become available on record for many years. Furthermore, it is doubtful that they would be heard in the concert hall. Fortunately, several programmes on the BBC Third Programme did feature Moeran’s music in the 1950s.