E.J. Moeran: Overture for a Masque (1944)

It is possible to underestimate Moeran’s Overture for a Masque, quite simply because it is populist in its impact. Yet, it must be recalled that this work was written as a commission by recording executive, Walter Legge for performance at ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association) concerts as was Alan Rawsthorne’s Street Corner Overture and Arnold Bax’s Work in Progress. Moeran’s example was designed to entertain, rather than present any major ground-breaking personal statement or confession.

Moeran wrote his Overture during 1944, beginning on New Year’s Day. He was staying at this time at his parent’s house, Gravel Hill Villa, Kington, Herefordshire. Andrew Burn (Liner Notes Chandos, CHAN8577) notes that he enjoyed walks along Hergest Ridge and felt that “some measure of that delight is surely encapsulated here.” Other music produced around this time includes Six Poems by Seumas O’Sullivan written for the Irish soprano, Violet Burns. And then there were the early sketches for his Cello Concerto, which would be dedicated to his then fiancé, Peers Coetmore. One other task he had at this time was to produce his Red Army Fanfare for an event at the Royal Albert Hall in honour of the Russian Forces.

Roderick McNeill (1982, p.241) explains that at first Moeran lacked enthusiasm to compose this overture. In a letter to Peers (12 January 1944) he intimated that “…I am full of energy as regards keeping at work but, honestly, I wish the overture were finished with and I were [sic] on to something else. It is a commissioned work, as you know, and it is not my top notch; the fact is I am doing it as a duty engendered by the war, and working to a timetable I am not able to follow up my normal method of extreme self-criticism…”

However, needs must, and by 20 February 1944 he was copying out the full score. In another letter to Peers, he stated “… I think it turns out to be quite a good little work, what you might call athletic in style.” He felt that he was “going to make it really snappy and exciting for the troops.” (Letter to Peers Coetmore, 4 January 1944, cited Self, 1986, p.165).

Ian Maxwell (2021, p.248) explains that “As a short cut to get the composition of the overture completed to schedule and perhaps in some desperation, Moeran once again resorted to self-plagiarism. The music of the overture includes sections that were lifted and adapted from earlier pieces, including the First and Second Rhapsodies and two of the songs in the choral suite Phyllida and Corydon.”

Formally, this work is episodic in design, and is more of a ‘pageant’ than a ‘masque.’ Geoffrey Self (1986, p.166) suggests that “the music is nearest in structure to Moeran’s favourite form - rondo.” The composer never indicated any ‘programme’ behind the ‘masque’ title. Moeran presents the listener with lots of brass fanfares, rhythmical excitement, good tunes, and vivid syncopations. Frank Howes (Liner notes, Lyrita SRCD.247) has explained that a “four semiquaver la-la-la-la figure…pops up all over the orchestra but is also the foundation of much of the string writing as almost to create the effect of a perpetuum mobile...” This sense of motion is interrupted by the “lilting” episode in the middle of the overture. There is a deeper element here: Moeran manages to create an occasional nod towards the misty far Western shores of Eire.

The first performance of Moeran’s Overture for a Masque was given on Wednesday 5 April 1944 at the second ENSA symphony concert for war workers at the Victoria Hall, Hanley in the Potteries. Basil Cameron conducted the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. The concert was a little obscure with the rare Symphony No.32 in G, K.318 by Mozart, a transcription from a Mozart quartet movement and the Konzertstück in F minor op.79 for piano and orchestra by Carl Maria von Weber. The soloist was Phyllis Sellick. The concert concluded with Beethoven’s Symphony No.8 in F major, op.93. The Staffordshire Sentinel critic, G.T., (6 April 1944, p.3) thought that Mr. Cameron's conducting had “both Vitality and fine musicianship, and the playing of the Orchestra - in particular of the strings, who had much to do was of first-rate quality throughout. To all the music, unfamiliar as most of it was, the audience smaller than at the first ENSA concert here listened with the closest attention.” As for Moeran’s Overture, he felt that it was “full of pomp and bustle, brilliantly scored, and with a pleasant pastoral interlude, [giving] an impressive start to the concert.”

The following night, Thursday, 6 April 1944, a similar programme was given at the Birmingham Town Hall. Eric Blom, reviewing the concert for the Birmingham Daily Post (8 April 1944, p.2), in a long introduction explained that this was “the first orchestral concert for war workers [here] was a great success. Even at a shilling (about £1.80 at 2024 prices) a head, it was a great achievement to fill every seat in so large a building with people most of whom have not so far cultivated the concert-going habit. That many of them will do so in the future seemed indicated by the tense attention with which the listeners followed and the keen appreciation with which they rewarded the performances.”

Furthermore, the “programme that very properly made no concessions at all to the popular taste of the day, which shows alarming signs of favouring no music that has not been made into ballet or used as a ‘plug’ for a film. It even included - concert promoters please note! - a rather forbidding novelty, E. J. Moeran’s bleak but bracing Overture for a Masque.”

W.R. Anderson, (Musical Times, January 1945, p.19) evaluating the first broadcast performance of the Overture on 28 November 1944, noted that “…I heard it on a bad wavelength. British music, as I have some ten thousand times remarked, is rarely happy when bustling: self-consciousness supervenes in the composer, and unconsciousness, in the shape of healing slumber, in me. But this is a nicely varied piece, with some attractive wood-notes wild, piquant orchestral effects and diatonic clashery…”

This was at a concert given by the BBC Northern Orchestra, conducted by Charles Groves. Other music included Edward Elgar’s Imperial March, Saint-Saens’s Piano Concerto No.2, the slow movement from Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.4 and Verdi’s Overture: Sicilian Vespers. The solo pianist was Marjorie Blackburn.

The score was published by Joseph Williams in 1949 and was dedicated to Walter Legge. A review in the Royal College of Music Magazine (Volume 46, No.2, June 1950, p.69f) reminded the reader that “This work was composed in 1944 for E.N.S.A. and was performed a good deal to the troops. It is well scored for full orchestra and has all the essentials of a good overture, rhythmic vitality, and contrast, with sonorous themes for horns and exciting fanfares for brass. The composer has assimilated the folk-tune element for which he has a predilection so that it is a completely unself-conscious part of his style. There are one or two faint reminiscences of Gilbert and Sullivan, but the total impression is of a vigorous, easily comprehensible, and really musical curtain-raiser.”

The Ulster Orchestra/Vernon Handley recording of Moeran's Overture for a Masque can be heard on YouTube, here.

Bibliography
Maxwell, Ian, Ernest John Moeran: His Life and Music, The Boydell Press, Woodbridge (2021).
McNeill, R. J., A critical study of the life and works of E. J. Moeran. PhD thesis (1982).
Self, Geoffrey, The Music of E.J. Moeran, Toccata Press, London (1986).

Discography
Moeran, E.J., Overture for a Masque, with Symphony in G minor, Sinfonietta, London Philharmonic Orchestra/Adrian Boult, LYRITA SRCD.247 (1997) (original LP release: LYRITA SRCS.43) (1970)
Moeran, E.J., Overture for a Masque with Symphony in G minor and Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra/Vernon Handley, CHANDOS CLASSICS 10169 (2004) (original CD release: CHANDOS CHAN 8577) (1988)
Moeran, E.J., Overture for a Masque with Rhapsodies Nos. 1, 2 and 3 and In the Mountain Country, Ulster Orchestra/JoAnn Falletta, NAXOS 8.573106 (2014)