I have been examining and researching the life and work of composer E. J. Moeran for more than fifteen years. During this time, my view of him as a person has transitioned through many stages. At the outset, although I had a liking for a couple of piano pieces that I had played, and I was familiar with the Symphony in G minor and the cello concerto, I knew little about the other music and almost nothing about the man himself. While Lionel Hill's Lonely Waters and Geoffrey Self's The Music of E.J. Moeran were on my bookshelf, I confess that I had not read them. Investigating Moeran's life and work had been the suggestion of Professor Jeremy Dibble, to whom I had originally proposed an entirely different subject for research. After reading Hill and Self and listening to much more of the music, a natural sympathy for Moeran was immediately established. He had suffered dreadfully, but was, nonetheless, a very personable chap, and, despite his appalling experiences, he had composed such wonderful music. However, and most significantly, there appeared to be unanswered questions about his life: how did he support himself? Who were his family? What was the truth about his wartime injury? What happened to his uncompleted second symphony? It was a visit to the National Archives at Kew to examine the composer's military record that unlocked the chest of discovery. The information I found there did not correspond with the biographical material that I had read, and it was apparent that Moeran was not who I had been led to believe he was.

As I unearthed more data, Moeran the man became more complex and, as I eventually realised, more human and more real. He was not just a composer of music. He was a person, with everything that entails for every one of us. He made decisions: some wise and some less wise. He experienced emotion: some of which we all may experience and some of a kind that most of us could not imagine. He succeeded and he failed. He dissembled and he was truthful, and he could be either pleasant and personable or thoroughly objectionable. While all this may seem self-evident, it is often the case with composers that, in the minds of enthusiastic admirers, their realities are obscured by an imagined personality that accords better with the splendour of their creation.