The Oxford & Cambridge Musical Club was established in 1899, but its form and purpose derived from the long history of informal music-making that had been a part of student and scholarly life at the two universities for several hundred years. This chapter presents an overview of the development of musical societies in the universities from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries and shows how graduates at the beginning of the 1900s established a parallel tradition that enabled them to continue and extend their undergraduate musical practices.

While the origins of student music-making are obscure, it is possible that it began through convivial singing (and occasional instrumental playing) during gatherings of scholars at mealtimes or in ale-houses, and this social tradition was probably commonplace from the early years of each university's existence. The first documented account of informal college music clubs in Oxford is dated to the 1650s, and no record of a music society in Cambridge has been discovered that predates the testimony of Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, who visited the city in July 1710:

Uffenbach's somewhat disdainful observations notwithstanding, the Christ's College Music Club was evidently a well-established and popular institution, and it may be supposed that it continued to provide the ‘bach-elors, masters and doctors of music’ with music-making opportunities in a congenial environment for many years. Later in the eighteenth century – also in Cambridge – the Black Bear Inn at Market Street hosted a musical club that promoted concerts in its first-floor assembly room.

Preamble

Robert Bridges's sonnet “To Joseph Joachim” was written in 1904 as part of the celebrations for the sixtieth anniversary of Joachim's first London performances, and its lines express the esteem in which the violinist was held in Britain. Joachim had long been a familiar figure in British musical life, and it may be asserted that he was considered by many to be as British (or more precisely English) as he was German—the fact that he was actually Hungarian being either overlooked or unknown. His annual sojourns were eagerly anticipated by both the music-loving public and the press. Tickets for his concerts and recitals rapidly sold out—not only in London but also in provincial cities throughout the country. Joachim introduced new music to concertgoers and re-acquainted them with standard concert and chamber music repertoire that had previously received limited performances, and it was as leader of his ensemble, the Joachim Quartet, that his greatest achievements were realized.

While many other foreign musicians were welcomed and celebrated in Britain throughout the nineteenth century, Joachim was more than just a German visitor, and it may reasonably be claimed that his status was unique. His relationship with the country eventually ran so deep that it could even be suggested that, when he went home to Berlin, he was merely visiting Germany. However, although the facts of Joachim's time in Britain are well-documented, there has hitherto been little academic examination of the circumstances and enduring consequences of his first visits. This chapter begins to address this lacuna by presenting a consideration of Joachim's almost lifelong commitment to the musical culture of Britain in the context of a narrative of selected events starting in the spring of 1844.

First Visits to London and the Foundations of a Relationship

Joachim's earliest years are described in detail elsewhere, most particularly by Robert Eshbach, so all that need be asserted here is that the young Joachim had little opportunity to experience what would now be regarded as a conventional childhood. At the age of about seven, he was sent away from his home to live with relatives—first in Vienna and later in Leipzig—essentially to devote his life to music. In March 1844, he had been residing with his cousin Fanny and her husband Hermann Wittgenstein for several months, and tensions between the cousins had been increasing.

Moeran would have travelled home to his parents’ recently built house in Bacton-on-Sea on the Norfolk coast in late July, just as the European political situation was entering a critical phase. A few days later, on 4 August, war was declared. Conversation in the Moeran household, just as in countless other households around the country, must have centred on the prognosis for the immediate future. When it came to the question as to whether the nineteen-year-old music student should enlist, it is likely that the attitude of his family, in common with many others with sons of a similar age, would have been one of reluctant acceptance, although it is probable that Ada Esther would not have been happy to see her younger son become a soldier so soon. However, it seems that Moeran was not swept up in the immediate post-declaration enthusiasm, and it is likely that he planned to spend his summer vacation in much the same way as he had spent it the previous year, devoting himself to music and composition and probably visiting Roland Perceval Garrod at the family home in Hampstead.

Garrod and the other members of Moeran's circle of friends had left Uppingham in July 1914, after having taking part in the Speech Day proceedings so movingly recorded by Vera Brittain. Although Brittain's future fiance Roland A. Leighton had carried off most of the Speech Day prizes, Garrod was an outstanding scholar and had been awarded an exhibition at Clare College, Cambridge. Moeran may have wished to congratulate his friend, and the two would also have been eager to renew their musical collaboration. It is inevitable that they would have discussed the prospect of enlisting, and they perhaps agreed together that they would join the army. According to his entry in De Ruvigny's Roll of Honour, Garrod was given a commission in the 6th London Regiment on 26 August 1914. He would have had to inform Clare College of his decision and request a suspension of his exhibition for the period of his service. Moeran also required the permission of the Royal College of Music to enlist, and he would written to Sir Hubert Parry to request this.

Parry was both proud of and concerned for those of his students and staff who were volunteering to serve their country.

Since September 1919, Moeran had not set foot on the island of Ireland. The abrupt termination of that visit had probably been due either to his having found himself in difficulties with some faction of the Republican or Nationalist movements or to his having become disillusioned with the increasing violence. Remaining away from Ireland may well have been a condition imposed by his mother in exchange for her supporting him in London. However, sixteen years later, the influence of his mother on his behaviour and actions was much less, and the passage of time since the establishment of the Irish Free State may perhaps have lessened any residual risk. Moeran travelled to Ireland for a visit in early January 1936, and by mid-month he was staying in The Lodge at the Lansdowne Arms Hotel in Kenmare. The letter that he had written to Harriet Cohen on 27 September confirms that his visit to Ireland had been planned some time in advance. It is, therefore, reasonable to ask why he decided after all these years to visit Ireland and with whom, if anybody, he travelled. Largely through his own fault, the previous year had been very trying for Moeran, but the possible rejection by his family may well have affected him emotionally. While a reconciliation was made later in the year, he had already made his plans to undertake an extended visit to Ireland.

According to Cunningham and Fleischmann, Moeran visited Ireland with Arnold Bax: ‘In 1936, Arnold Bax brought another English composer to the Fleischmanns who, like himself, felt very much at home in Ireland: E. J. Moeran.’1 While Bax had originally met Moeran in 1918, and they had also associated with each other during the Eynsford cottage years, it is not clear how close their friendship had become during that time. In writings on Moeran hitherto, much has been made of his friendship with Bax, but this has largely been predicated on Bax's unreliable memories as recorded in his writings. Nonetheless, it may be significant that Moeran addressed Harriet Cohen in his letters as Tania, which was Bax's private name for Cohen and was shared only with close friends. It is possible to identify at least five visits that Moeran made to Ireland in 1936, and Cunningham and Fleischmann do not specify when in that year Bax introduced Moeran to the Fleischmanns.

Early in the New Year came the news for which Moeran and his fellow officers had been waiting, and on 8 January, two trainloads comprising thirty-three officers and nearly one thousand men of the battalion travelled to Southampton, where they embarked on the SS Archangel for Le Havre. On arriving in France shortly before midnight, they marched to a rest camp. Since Moeran did not keep a personal diary, or if he did, it has not survived, and since any letters that he may have written home have been lost, it is not possible to know how he spent what free time he may have had. Although front-line soldiering was a full-time occupation, there were periods away from the trenches, and there are countless stories of soldiers occupying themselves with creative activities, such as writing poetry, stories and diaries, playing and composing music, the creation of which has become known as trench art. Thus, while none of Moeran's surviving works can be dated to the period January to May 1917, there is no reason to suppose that he gave up composition entirely. Until the publication of the war diaries, the belief had been that soldiers spent weeks or even months in rain-sodden, freezing cold muddy trenches, contending with disease, rats and the continual bombardment from German artillery. The diaries have revealed that, in practice, a rotation system ensured that most units spent no more than eight days at a time in the trenches at the front line. They were then replaced by another unit and were moved back to reserve trenches for a few days and then moved further back to a rest camp for a further few days, before taking their turn again in the front-line trenches. While this knowledge in no way diminishes the appalling conditions often experienced by many solders, it reveals that some consideration was given to enable the men to rest and recuperate regularly in safety.

At the beginning of February, Moeran's company was sent to Beaussart as a working party to assist the 252nd Tunnelling Company creating dugouts. On their return, Moeran, together with three of his colleagues, was assigned to the 5th Army Group Divisional School of Instruction for trench mortar and other specialised weapons training.

The extended families of each of his parents provided a financial, intellectual and cultural framework that established an unusually privileged and creatively fertile environment into which Ernest John Smeed Moeran was born on 31 December 1894 and within which he was brought up. Intellectual stimulus was provided both by the Trinity College and Cambridge educated relatives on his father's side and by the artistic members of his mother's family. Moreover, the musicians in both ancestries would suggest that music was an important aspect of Moeran home life. Together, these factors show that Moeran grew up surrounded by a very advantaged and influencing family. However, his father seems to have been unsettled professionally, transferring every few years from one living to another throughout the south of England. After his marriage, the Reverend Joseph William Wright Moeran remained as senior curate at St Paul’s, Upper Norwood for seven years until 1893, when he was appointed vicar of St Mary’s, Spring Grove in Middlesex. In 1898, he was appointed vicar of St Mary Magdalene, Peckham, and the family moved to nearby Camberwell. Joseph William remained there until 1901, when he became vicar of St Simon's Southsea, near Portsmouth. This incumbency lasted until 1905, when he was installed as vicar of the joint parishes of Salhouse with Wroxham in the county of Norfolk. This was some twenty miles from Bacton, on the Norfolk coast, where Joseph William's father, the Reverend Thomas Warner Moeran, had been vicar since 1873. Joseph William had spent his late childhood years living in Bacton, so it was a part of the country that he knew well. The changeable domestic life that would surely have been the consequence of regular relocations would later find reflection in Moeran's adult life as an inability to settle anywhere for an extended time.

While the Elementary Education Acts of 1870 and 1880 had provided for universal schooling for all children in England between the ages of five and twelve, including compulsory attendance at a suitable school if one was available, exceptions to actual attendance were allowed in cases where the child could be shown to be receiving an equivalent education elsewhere.

Moeran spent Christmas with Coetmore in Ledbury, and he remained there over the New Year period after she returned to London. He began the year by writing to her, once again expressing regret for his alcohol-fuelled behaviour and suggesting possible avenues for the ‘cure’ that Coetmore evidently hoped would be possible. In this, and several later letters, he mentioned either visiting Coetmore in London, or travelling to wherever her recital schedule took her. He spent a few days at 55 Belsize Lane in early February, but the premiere of the still uncompleted cello sonata had been arranged to be given in Dublin in May, and pressure to complete it was mounting, most especially from Coetmore who needed time to learn the solo part. In a letter to Victor Hely-Hutchinson dated 10 February, Moeran mentioned that he was ‘now writing the finale of a new sonata for cello and piano’, which he hoped to have ‘finished soon – within the next month or so’. He returned to Ledbury at the end of February, having found it impossible to work in the flat. He wrote to Coetmore that he was expecting to have the final movement completed in a few days and that he would then travel back to London so they could ‘spend some time together working out it's [sic] interpretation’, but he would not let himself be ‘rushed and spoil the finale’ of the sonata.

Sonata for Violoncello and Piano

The manuscript of the cello sonata bears no completion date, but it may be assumed from Moeran's end of February letter that the work was finished during the first or second week of March. Having delivered the final solo part to Coetmore in London and worked through it with her for a few days, Moeran travelled to Cork via Fishguard and Rosslare on 22 March to stay for a few days with the Fleischmanns, before journeying on to Kenmare to work on the symphony. Coetmore followed him to Ireland at the beginning of May, and the first performance of the sonata – by Coetmore and Charles Lynch – was broadcast by Radio Eireann on 9 May. Moeran and Coetmore were then able to spend a few days together in Dublin before she had to return to London, where she gave the first English performance of the sonata on the BBC Third Programme on 5 June.

The trust fund established by George Smeed's will that had been providing both Ada Esther's annuity income and the funds for William Graham's and Ernest John's education had been wound up in 1903, and the residual capital and accumulated income was disbursed to the surviving beneficiaries. Although the exact amount received by Ada Esther is not known, the evidence of the remainder of her and her husband's lives shows that they were able to live comfortably with no income beyond that provided by their investments. Thus, they were in a favourable position when it came to the selection of a public school for their sons. Marlborough College in Wiltshire had been founded in 1843 to provide ‘a public boarding school education chiefly for the sons of clergymen at a modest cost’. Moeran's father’s cousin, Edward Henry Moeran (son of the Reverend Edward Busteed Moeran), had attended the college between 1861 and 1867, and it was probably because of this family connection that the Moerans chose Marlborough as the school for their elder son William Graham, who was admitted in January 1903. Five years later, when it came to school selection for their second son, it is apparent that they had a different intention. Instead of following his brother to Marlborough College, Moeran was sent to Uppingham School in Rutland. William Graham Moeran suggested in 1962 that when his ‘parents sent [Moeran] to Uppingham, their plan was that he should become an Engineer’, but this claim does not stand up to rigorous scrutiny. There is no reason to believe that the provisions for education in science, mathematics and the other subjects appropriate for a budding engineer were any less adequate at Marlborough or any better at Uppingham during the early 1900s than they were at other schools.

Moeran had left Suffield Park Preparatory School having achieved a competent playing ability on both violin and piano and probably with a portfolio of juvenile compositions. Thus, Uppingham was chosen because Moeran's parents (or at least his mother) had the intention that his obvious musical talent should be encouraged. Although music tuition was possible at other schools – including Marlborough College – none could match Uppingham's pedigree and particularly the excellence of the violin and piano teaching that was available.

Ernest John Moeran has been one of the least written about composers that were active in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century, and who worked in the folksong-influenced pastoral style that has come to be associated with the conveniently but misleadingly labelled English Musical Renaissance. Of attempts made during the seventy years since his death to produce an authoritative and comprehensive biography, only Geoffrey Self's study The Music of E.J. Moeran was completed and published. Although some academic research has been undertaken, with some of Moeran's life and work being the subject of detailed scholarship, none resulted in a full biography. The seemingly intractable problem that prospective biographers have encountered has been an apparent shortage of credible primary source material about the composer's early life, in particular his childhood and years of education. This has led to an unsatisfactorily incomplete evidence-based picture of the adult composer, and it seems that there has been insufficient information to make an extended biography worth writing. Moreover, Moeran destroyed much of his work – including everything that he composed as a child or schoolboy – and his lifelong peripatetic existence ensured that many of his possessions, including manuscripts, were scattered and lost. Few family papers have survived, and the passage of time has meant that there are no longer witnesses to verify or contradict what has previously been claimed or stated. Perhaps inevitably, the place of evidence has been taken by a perceptual framework that has been constructed over the years, based on the compounding of rumour, unsupported assertion, exaggeration, and invention, some of which undoubtedly originated with the composer himself. Facts have been supplemented or superseded by a detailed and ostensibly credible mythology. The understanding of Moeran's personality and the reception of his music has become so rooted in this mythology that the task of separating fact from sometimes sensational fiction is now extremely difficult.

The most powerful and enduring aspect of the mythology has been the story of Moeran's experiences during the First World War.

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.

Much of Moeran's time during the last two months of 1922 was occupied with the arrangements for a chamber music recital – featuring principally his own music – that was planned to take place at the Wigmore Hall early in the New Year. The promotion of a concert of Moeran's music was facilitated by his mother's financial support. Not many young composers in 1920s Britain could hire a prestigious central London venue for a recital showcasing their music and Moeran was taking an artistic risk. Only half a dozen of his compositions – all piano pieces – had been published during the previous two years, and there had been few public performances outside the limited audiences of the musical club Thursday evening recitals. Moeran was very new on the scene, and there was no guarantee that concert goers would be attracted to a recital of mostly unknown music. Nonetheless, the fact that the project was being underwritten financially by his mother enabled Moeran to devise a programme that combined his own music with a well-known and popular work for which there would always be an audience. He could have relied on some of his musical club friends and colleagues to attend, and his personal network would have enabled him to engage performers who may well have provided their services for a reduced fee or even free of charge. The recital took place on 15 January, and it began with the Allied String Quartet giving the first public performance of Moeran’s String Quartet in A minor. This was followed by the first performance of his Sonata in E minor for Violin and Pianoforte, played by dedicatee Desire Defauw, accompanied by Harriet Cohen. Cohen then played the Three Fancies that Moeran had composed during his Norfolk summer holiday the previous August. The recital ended with the Allied Quartet playing Ravel's Quartet in F major. The coupling of his quartet with that of Ravel was a risky strategy for Moeran – given the unmistakable influence of the Ravel work on his own – but as a means of attracting an audience to a recital of new music, it was apparently successful. The beginnings of Moeran’s rapid rise in the esteem both of his peers and the music-loving public may be found at this Wigmore Hall recital.

Six Suffolk Folksongs

In February, Moeran was checking the final proofs of his Six Suffolk Folksongs, and he wrote to Roger Quilter about the set:

Moeran had long been an admirer of Quilter's songs, having accompanied many of them at the musical club, and the older composer's music had been a significant influence during Moeran's early compositional development. The set of folksong arrangements was published in late April, and he wrote again to Quilter on 8 May, enclosing a copy of the printed volume. Coming some ten years after the publication of Moeran's earlier Six Norfolk Folksongs and with his having composed music of much formal and harmonic originality during the intervening years, Quilter may have expected more complex arrangements than those delivered. The accompaniment harmonies are mostly simple, with few accidentals evident, and most of the songs have a straightforward strophic form with accompaniment for the first verse or pair of verses repeated. However, Quilter would probably have enjoyed Moeran’s characteristic stacked fourth chords, particularly in the first song of the set ‘Nutting Time’ and in the last song ‘A Seaman's Life’. Moeran's assessment that the set was ‘the best thing I have done in the way of songs’ seems very curious, given their general lack of sophistication and overall musical simplicity. However, that is perhaps what he meant.

The Day of Palms

While establishing precisely when many of Moeran's works were composed can be problematic, creative interpretation of other evidence can suggest a possible date, and the song The Day of Palms is a case in point. The song is a setting of a poem by Arthur Symons, ‘Palm Sunday: Naples’, which articulates the poet's world- weary response to the elaborate annual Palm Sunday celebrations at Santa Chiara. Moeran's setting was published in 1932, and the style of the piano accompaniment resembles that of Tilly. This information, together with the subject matter of the poem, suggests that The Day of Palms was composed on or near Palm Sunday in either 1931 or 1932.

The atmospheric pressure and temperature charts for the afternoon of Friday 1 December 1950 indicate that the weather on the south-west coast of Ireland was poor and that in Kenmare, Co. Kerry, it was especially bad. Despite the cold, wet and very windy conditions, at about four o’clock Moeran evidently left his lodgings at the Lansdowne Arms Hotel for a walk down to the town pier: a distance of about half a mile. By the time he reached the river estuary, the light would have been fading, but he was a well-known and recognisable figure. According to the report in the Irish Times:

By the time they returned, a doctor had been summoned and resuscitation was attempted unsuccessfully. Moeran's body was taken to the local mortuary, and an inquest was opened and adjourned until the next day. The report of the composer’s death was quickly communicated by telephone and telegram from that remote corner of Ireland and was printed in many newspapers in Britain as early as the following morning. Lionel Hill recalled: ‘We received the shock of [Moeran’s] sudden death in the morning papers.’ Within a few days, the composer's life and career had been summarised and celebrated by obituary writers in Britain, Ireland and around the world. The news of his death was received in Ledbury by telegram and similarly by Coetmore in Australia. Ada Esther Moeran wrote to her on 3 December: