Ernst John Moeran: Violin Concerto (1942)
Ernst John Moeran
born 31 Dec. 1894 in Heston near London
died 1 Dec. 1950 in Kenmare (Ireland)
Date of composition:
1937-1942
First performance:
09July 1942 by Arthur Catterall
CD recommendation:
Alfredo Campoli (1954),
John Georgiadis (1976),
Lydia Mordkovitch (1987/89),
Tasmin Little (2013)
One is Moeran's tragic life, the other the late romantic beauty of his music inspired by Irish folk music. It's almost unimaginable how that went together, or a message to the human
condition: how a person endures the tensions of his fate.
The tragic life: born 1894 Spring Grove Vicarage, Heston, Middlesex, his father was an Anglo-Irish clergyman, his mother was from Norfolk. At the age of 22 Moeran suffered a war wound to the
head in France during World War 1. After returning, lifelong after-effects of the head injury, the war experiences linger. Despair, alcohol orgies, wild life. An inheritance from his mother made
a life without paid work possible, Moeran began to compose, researched and collected Irish folk music. After a long period of silence and following an accident in 1930, he began to compose
seriously again. The Symphony in G minor, the Violin Concerto and a Cello Concerto are among his major works. In 1945, after a long acquaintance, he married the cellist Kathleen Peers Coetmore,
for whom he wrote his last works, a cello concerto and a cello sonata. His marriage broke up, and he repeatedly abused alcohol. The first signs of mental illness prevented him from completing a
second symphony. On a walk along the sea, he suffered a brain haemorrhage at the age of 56, fell into the water and died.
Contrast this tragic life with the beauty of his music: his late Romantic musical style is informed by his love of Ireland and its folk music, and influenced by his teacher John Ireland, by
Frederick Delius and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and by his younger contemporary William Walton. Although conservative for his time, his music is full of passion, sometimes dark, but ultimately full
of a longing for tranquillity and spiritual expansiveness, so that he also felt most creative composing while wandering through his landscapes. The following lines from the CD supplement of
Tasmin Little's recording, written by Anthony Burton, are recommended as a guide to closer and more competent listening:
Listen here:
1st movement
2nd movement
3rd movement
Listening guide by Anthony Burton:
I. Allegro moderato
"It opens with an orchestral theme that marries a curving Elgarian melody to sliding Delian harmonies. This ushers in the soloist, who extends a rising three-note scale figure into a long rhapsodic meditation. A 'resolute' idea in double stops and a virtuoso solo passage marked "quasi cadenza" lead the way to the broad seconde subject, enlivened by "Scotch snap" (short-long) rhythms, which is introduced by the solo violin in the lower register. The brief middle section led off by flutes and harp, in a subdued jig time, and culminates in the 'resolute' idea in a striding orchestral canon. What follows is a combination of free recapitulation and development: a variant of the soloist's initial meditation begins over a solemn trombone chord and timpani roll; the orchestra's opening theme reappears in different guises; the secund subject is hinted at in another 'quasi Cadenza' solo passage and continued by clarinet and the soloist; and the opening theme returns once more as the movement comes to a quiet close." (Anthony Burton)
II. Rondo. Vivace – Alla valse burlesca
"The second movement is a scherzo in rondo form which, according to Edwin Evans, 'expresses the spirit of the summer fairs of Kerry and particularly of the famous Puck's Fair of Killorglin'; it evokes the cheerful bustle of the fairs not only through folk-like melodies but also through the alternation and superimposition of different metrical patterns. An introduction in triplet rhythms, suggesting fiddles tuning up, precedes the main rondo theme, which begins with an downward octave swoop and continues in jaunty dotted rhythms. The first subsidiary episode begins in smooth double-stopped sixths; the second has dancing triplet rhythms, over which the soloist projects a singing melody, later taken up by the orchestra; the third is in lilting jig time. Each of these episodes leads into a recurrence of the rondo theme, mostly in something like its original form, but after the second episode converted into triple metre on trumpet . A further developmental episode brings back the smooth melody of the first episode and later the melody of the second, first in a other 'quasi cadenza, passage and then transformed into a 'burlesque waltz' before the brilliant ending." (Anthony Burton)
III. Lento
"The final movement is slow throughout... Geoffrey Self, in his study of Moeran's music, described it as a 'highly rhapsodic contemplation and distortion of ideas from the first movement, resolved into an epilogue of real beauty and serenity'. The opening gestures of the first movement are the basis of the initial ideas of the last, a quiet string theme followed by a solo passage beginning with a rising three-notes scale. The double-stopped 'resolute' idea of the first movement also has its counterpart here. A cor anglais melody, again beginning with a rising three-note scale, launches a warmly expressive episode with a impassioned climax. The strings recall their opening to the first movement, before the coda begins, in which murmuring strings accompany echoes of ideas from earlier in the movement, with the three note rising phrase now transformed into a haunting horn call." (Anthony Burton)