Exploring E.J. Moeran’s Chamber Music Part 3

Sonata for Cello and Piano (1947)

Critically, many commentators would state that Moeran’s Sonata for cello and piano is the highest achievement in his catalogue of chamber music. That does not imply that it is the most enjoyable or satisfactory from the listener’s point of view. The rule of thumb for approaching this dark work, is to see it as a summation of Moeran’s musical aesthetic: a backward glance, if you will. In these pages, he has successfully synthesised his romantic and developing neo-classical styles.

On 9 February 1948, Moeran wrote to Peers: ‘Now, I have just spent all yesterday on cello sonata proofs. You know I don’t usually boast, but coming back to it, going through it note by note, & looking at it impartially, I honestly think it is a masterpiece. I can’t think how I ever managed to write it.’

The sonata is written in three movements - Tempo Moderato-Allegro, Adagio and Allegro. The forms that Moeran has deployed are sonata, ternary and rondo, respectively. Allusions to the music of Arnold Bax and Béla Bartók have been proposed for this Sonata. This is a well-practiced critical game with Moeran’s music, where some commentators give little credit to his originality. Yet, much time can be wasted in trying to perform source criticism on his music. It is better to accept that all composers are influenced by their predecessors and contemporaries to a greater or lesser extent (including Bach himself). Moeran’s Cello Sonata is a mature work, that is both confident and assured. It may be that in this Sonata, Moeran was moving into a new stylistic period. Who knows where this would have led if he had not died aged only 56 years old?

Peers Coetmore gave the premiere of her husband’s Cello Sonata during a Radio Eireann broadcast on 9 May 1947. The pianist was Charles Lynch. It was not heard in London until the following year.

Listeners will find that there is little optimism in this Sonata. The ambient mood is one of darkness and gloom. A wit (unattributed) once declared that he was reminded of Irish peat bogs as the music unfolded. Yet, this is not the full story. Here and there glimmers of sunshine seem to appear in the darkness, leading to a hesitant and short-lived hopefulness. Even the most cynical listener will recognise in these pages, the complex pattern of Moeran’s deep love and devotion that he held for Peers Coetmore, with the growing recognition that his marriage was doomed.

Fantasy Quartet for oboe and strings (1946)

In 1946, the legendary oboist Leon Goossens asked Moeran to compose a work for oboe ensemble. Geoffrey Self (1986, p.199) 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’s opera Fennimore and Gerda.

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 in July of 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. In a letter (undated) to Dr Dick Jobson (the Moeran family’s doctor at Kington) 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)

Formally, Moeran’s Fantasy is conceived in a single movement. Self (1986, p.200) 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 prin

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 by musicologists, including ‘Seventeen come Sunday’ and ‘The Pretty Ploughboy’, but this is not a set of variations on those tunes nor an arrangement of them. Rather, they are used as a basis for the generation of themes and motifs.

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

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 Trio.

The Times (10 December 1946, p.6) reporting the premiere, considered that Moeran’s Fantasy Quartet was ‘almost inevitably pastoral in its general character.’ The reviewer felt that this work ‘somehow conveyed the feeling of sunshine over rural England.’ It makes a fitting tribute to E.J. Moeran’s creative achievement in chamber music.

Addendum

It has been noted (Philip Heseltine/Peter Warlock, The Chesterian, No.36, 1923 p.124) that Moeran composed several chamber works prior to the Trio in D of 1920. These seemingly included three string quartets predating the published A minor, and two violin sonatas plus some other unspecified pieces. Of these, only one would appear to have survived: String Quartet No.2 in E flat (posthumous) (c.1918-20). But see the discussion on this dating above. Geoffrey Self (1986, p.31) cites Hubert Foss (Compositions of E.J. Moeran, Novello, 1948) as mentioning a second piano trio. After diligent searching no other references to it has been found. Self suggests that Foss may have considered that the rewrite of the surviving Trio as being ‘so extensive as to constitute a new work.’

Bibliography
Cobbett, Walter Willson, ed., Cobbett's Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music Volume 2 (Oxford University Press, 1963)

Maxwell, Ian, The Importance of Being Ernest John: Challenging the Misconceptions about the Life and Works of E. J. Moeran, Doctoral Thesis, Durham University, 2014
McNeill, R. J. (1982). A critical study of the life and works of E. J. Moeran. PhD thesis, Faculty of Music, The University of Melbourne.
Self, Geoffrey, The Music of E.J. Moeran, Toccata Press, 1986
Wild, Stephen, E.J. Moeran, Triad Press, Rickmansworth, 1974
The Moeran Database (website seems to be defunct, July 2024).
The files of The Times, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, The Chesterian, Music Review, Monthly Musical Record etc.

Brief Discography

I have listed six essential recordings featuring the corpus of Moeran’s chamber music. There are several more equally rewarding discs of many of these compositions. I have included only those currently available on CD or download.

Moeran, E.J. String Quartet No.1 in A minor; String Quartet No.2 in E flat; Trio for violin, viola, and cello [in G], Maggini String Quartet, Naxos 8.554079.

Moeran, E.J. String Quartet No.1 in A minor; String Quartet No.2 in E flat, Fantasy Quartet for oboe and strings, Trio in D for violin, cello and piano, Vanbrugh String Quartet, Joachim Piano Trio, Nicholas Daniel (oboe), John Lenehan (piano), ASV CD DCA 1045.

Moeran, E.J. String Quartet No.1 in A minor, Sonata in E minor for violin and piano, Fantasy Quartet for oboe and strings, John Talbot (piano), Donald Scotts (violin), Sarah Francis (oboe), Melbourne String Quartet, English String Quartet, Chandos CHAN 10170 X.

Moeran, E.J. Prelude for cello and piano, Sonata for cello and piano, includes Cello Concerto in B minor, Peers Coetmore (cello), Erik Parkin (piano), London Philharmonic Orchestra/Adrian Boult Lyrita SRCD 299.

Moeran, E.J. Sonata for two violins, with music by Rebecca Clarke, Paul Patterson, Gordon Jacob and Alan Rawsthorne, Midori Komachi (violin), Sophie Rosa (violin), Simon Callaghan (piano) EM RECORDS EMRCD043.

Moeran, E.J. Irish Lament for cello and piano, Prelude for cello and piano, with music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Frank Bridge, Edward Elgar, Frederick Delius and Arnold Bax, Gerald Peregrine (cello), Antony Ingham (piano) Naxos 8.574035.

With thanks to Spirited, the Journal of the English Music Festival where this essay was first published.

Concluded.