Ernest John Smeed Moeran (31 December – 1 December ) was an English composer of part-Irish extraction, whose work was strongly influenced by English and Irish folk music of which he was an assiduous collector. His output includes orchestral pieces, concertos, chamber and keyboard works, and a number of choral and song cycles as well as individual songs READ A NEW ESSAY ABOUT THE USE OF FEAR-MONGERING IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. "The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal is the ultimate indignity to the democratic process." -Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson, “Self-Reliance” Key Points: Urges his readers to follow their individual will instead of conforming to social expectations.; Emphasizes following one’s own voice rather than an intermediary's, such as the church.; Encourages his readers to be honest in their relationships with others.; Posits the effects of self-reliance: altering religious practices, encouraging Americans to stay at
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Ernest John Smeed Moeran 31 December — 1 December was an English composer of part-Irish extraction, whose work was strongly influenced by English and Irish folk music of which he was an assiduous collector.
His output includes orchestral pieces, concertos, chamber and keyboard works, and a number of choral and song cycles as well as individual songs.
The son of a clergyman, Moeran studied at the Royal College of Music under Charles Villiers Stanford before service in the army during the First World Warin which he was wounded. After the war he was a pupil of John Irelandand quickly established a reputation as a composer of promise with a number of well-received works.
From to he shared a cottage with the composer Peter Warlock ; the bohemian lifestyle and heavy drinking during this period interrupted his creativity for a while, and sowed the seeds of the alcoholism that would blight his later the importance of being earnest essay. He resumed composing in the s, and re-established his reputation with a series of major works, including a symphony and a violin concerto.
From onwards he spent much of his time in Ireland, mainly in the coastal town of Kenmare. In Moeran married the cellist Peers Coetmoreand for her he composed several works for cello. The marriage was not destined to last, and Moeran's final years were lonely, the importance of being earnest essay.
He died at Kenmare on 1 Decemberhaving fallen into the water after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage. A second symphony was left unfinished at the time of his death. Composer Anthony Payne declared that "Moeran occupied a minor place in the music of his time, but his meticulously polished and ready technique is unsurpassed among his British contemporaries. This craftsmanship is evident in the clarity of his textures and processes, and in the superb sonority of his orchestral writing", the importance of being earnest essay.
Moeran was born on 31 Decemberat the Spring Grove vicarage, HestonMiddlesexthe second son of an Anglo-Irish clergyman, The Rev. Joseph William Wright Moeran, vicar of St Mary's, Spring Grove, and Ada Esther Smeed, née Whall, who came from Norfolk. He became a proficient pianist, and learned the violin sufficiently to be able to perform in chamber groups; he also began to compose.
Moeran was 19 when his studies at the RCM were interrupted in August by the outbreak of the First World War. He was reported, in Augustas performing a very demanding piano piece at a London concert, indicating that he was in a reasonable state of fitness at that time.
After a period of convalescence he returned to military duty, and saw out the rest of the war in Ireland, at Boyle, County Roscommonattached to a transport section of the Royal Irish Constabulary. Following demobilisation in JanuaryMoeran returned to England. Some accounts report that the importance of being earnest essay was briefly employed as a music master at his old school, Uppingham, [6] but there is no evidence from the school for this.
His association with the RCM did not last long, but he continued to receive tuition in composition from John Ireland in a private capacity. An allowance from his mother relieved Moeran from the necessity of earning a living, and with this financial independence he was able to devote his time to study and composition.
These early orchestral pieces indicate the influences of Delius and Vaughan Williamsbut also demonstrate the emergence of a distinct, individual voice. During this period, Moeran collected many folk tunes from rural pubs in Norfolk. His contribution to this area of work was recognised inwhen he was elected to the committee of the Folksong Society.
Moeran struggled with this challenge, but at this stage in his career was unable to deliver to his own satisfaction, and the project was set aside for the time being. The friendship between Moeran and Heseltine deepened, and in they rented a cottage at Eynsford in Kent, together with the artist Hal Collins. The cottage attracted many visitors from the musical and artistic worlds, and soon became notorious as a centre for wild parties and other extravagances, involving heavy drinking.
Furthermore, he was falling into alcoholism, and was also under the spell of Heseltine's stronger personality. Moeran later admitted a loss of faith in his abilities, finding that the longer he delayed, the importance of being earnest essay, the harder it was to resume work. The few works completed during the Eynsford years — include his single collaboration with Heseltine, a drinking song called "Maltworms", the importance of being earnest essay, written for performance at a drama festival at the nearby village of Shoreham.
Heseltine wrote a tune for the importance of being earnest essay first two lines, Moeran continued with the next lines, and so on. Parts were scored for the village brass band, but in the event the song was withdrawn from the festival and the band parts have been lost, but a piano-accompanied version survived and was performed in the village pub. Moeran left the cottage inbut the effects of his alcoholism remained. In August he was fined £10 by the Watford magistrates for being drunk in charge of a motor vehicle; [19] that same year he the importance of being earnest essay with Heseltine and others to France, ostensibly to meet Delius, the importance of being earnest essay.
The trip degenerated into a drunken binge, during which Moeran passed out in the street. He wrote to Heseltine's mother: "His loss will mean a terrible gap to me when I get back to normal life the importance of being earnest essay find he is no longer there".
After leaving Eynsford, Moeran returned to his parents' home and began to pick up the threads of his compositional career. He had not been entirely forgotten by the musical establishment; in Januarythe critic Hubert Foss wrote a reappraisal of Moeran's earlier works, referring to the composer's "over-long silence", but saw hope for the future: "One hopes that out of this corpus of early works a symphonic mind may grow, one that with intensity of form as well as intensity of utterance, will give us real music on a big scale".
An accident early in led to a period of convalescence which provided an opportunity for Moeran to reconsider his style. A choral work, Songs of Springtimea setting of seven Elizabethan poems, followed in Moeran led an itinerant life in the s, staying at his parents' various homes or with friends. In the midst of this burgeoning creativity, Moeran continued to experience problems with alcoholism. In January he was ordered to spend nine months in a nursing home, having been found guilty in Cambridge of being drunk in charge of a motor vehicle.
The years following the performance of the symphony were fruitful, and produced a number of significant works. Possibly as early asthe importance of being earnest essay, Moeran had met the cellist Kathleen Peers Coetmore. In they renewed their acquaintance, and a relationship developed, which inspired two of Moeran's important late works: the Cello Concertoand the Sonata for Cello and Piano They were married on 26 July Moeran was drinking heavily, which led to further estrangement, the importance of being earnest essay.
Bywhen Coetmore departed for an extended tour of South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, the marriage was effectively over. Moeran produced three further late works: the Fantasy Quartet for oboe and stringswritten for Leon Goossens ; the orchestral Serenade in Gand a final song collection, Songs from County Kerry In he was under further treatment for alcoholism; the first performance of the symphony had originally scheduled for the spring of but this was put back, first until and then for a further year.
In March Moeran was in Ireland, writing to Coetmore of his hopes for finishing the symphony there. He settled first in a place near Dublin, but by June he was back in Kenmare. By now his mental state was poor, and he worried that he was losing his mind.
There is no record of further work on the symphony project. On 1 Decemberduring a heavy winter storm, Moeran left his cottage and walked along the Kenmare pier, where he was seen to fall into the water. His body was retrieved; at first it was thought that he had drowned, possibly in an act of suicide, but medical evidence indicated that he had suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and had died before entering the water.
After a well-attended funeral he was buried in the churchyard at Kenmare. Moeran came late in the canon of last major British composers heavily influenced by folk-song and thus belongs to the lyrical tradition of such composers as DeliusVaughan The importance of being earnest essay and Ireland.
The influence of the nature and landscapes of Norfolk and Ireland are also often evident in his music. Some of his larger-scale orchestral pieces were composed or at least conceived whilst Moeran walked the hills of western England, particularly in Herefordshire, and Ireland, where the grandness of the mountain ranges of Kerry inspired him greatly.
Moeran was capable of conveying a wide range of emotions through his music and wasn't afraid of writing in a darker and harsher idiom when it suited him. His style is conservative but not derivative. By Moeran's time, however, such a style was already seen as somewhat dated and he never made a big breakthrough as a composer despite the success of the sombre, Sibelian Symphony in G minor — that is generally regarded as his masterpiece.
The Symphony stands along with the Symphony No. The Moeran work demonstrates a robust sonata form in the first movement, along with a questioning harmonic structure, which, on first examination, may appear orthodox, but which on deeper analysis indicates the dichotomy of the interval of the fifth which is European diatonic with the interval of the fourth, which is both the completion of the European fifth, the importance of being earnest essay, but also introduces the Irish dimension, in which the fourth can be the predominant interval.
Though he first received favourable critical attention for his chamber music and continued to compose significant works in this genre, his greatest achievements in general are to be found among his few large-scale orchestral works, including a Violin Concerto, Cello Concerto, Sinfonietta, and Serenade.
Moeran was very interested in "folk" music and used an extensive collection of songs that he had notated in Norfolk pubs as part of his creative material. He also made great use of Irish music. The Norfolk material can be sensed in the piano works of the early s. The Irish influence is seen within the second movement of the Violin Concerto Puck Fair at Killorglin?
and even more so in the second movement of the String Quartet in E-flat, as well as in the Cello Concerto, in which fragments of Irish music, in particular "The Star of County Down" also used by Vaughan Williams in his Five Variants of Dives and Lazarusare evident.
Another facet to the music of Moeran is the madrigal. He once stated to a friend that if he were ever arrested and thus forced to state his profession, he would have to say it was that of being a madrigalist.
Moeran was capable of staggering harmonic invention whilst working within the madrigal form — in Spring the Sweet Spring the harmonies progress from those of the madrigal into harmonies of a jazz style reminiscent of Duke Ellington; full of contradictions and added-note chords. The Serenade, an orchestral work, evinces madrigalist harmony re-worked by Moeran into an astringent style in which acerbic tonal and harmonic patterns are grafted onto the madrigalist basis to produce music of outstanding freshness and originality that surely places Moeran into the importance of being earnest essay genre of inventive twentieth-century music, rather than into the "English Pastoral School", which, in itself, is arguably a misnomer.
Although he was not by any means a prolific church composer, his Services in D and E-flat are still performed today. Recently, there has been more interest in and many recordings of Moeran's works, but some of them, such as the songs to poems by A. Housman and James Joycestill remain relatively unknown. Over 40 of his manuscripts, including that of his unfinished Second Symphony in E-flat, were bequeathed by his widow Peers Coetmore to the Victorian College of the Artsnow part of the University of Melbourne.
Conductor Martin Yates has realised and completed the Symphony No. A recording of the work with Yates conducting the Royal Scottish National Orchestra was released in October on the Dutton Epoch label together with the early Overture based on the G major Symphony, the importance of being earnest essay, and Yates' own orchestration of Sarnia by John Ireland.
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READ A NEW ESSAY ABOUT THE USE OF FEAR-MONGERING IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. "The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal is the ultimate indignity to the democratic process." -Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson, “Self-Reliance” Key Points: Urges his readers to follow their individual will instead of conforming to social expectations.; Emphasizes following one’s own voice rather than an intermediary's, such as the church.; Encourages his readers to be honest in their relationships with others.; Posits the effects of self-reliance: altering religious practices, encouraging Americans to stay at Ernest John Smeed Moeran (31 December – 1 December ) was an English composer of part-Irish extraction, whose work was strongly influenced by English and Irish folk music of which he was an assiduous collector. His output includes orchestral pieces, concertos, chamber and keyboard works, and a number of choral and song cycles as well as individual songs
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