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• Symphony in G Minor
• Violin Concerto
• Cello Concerto
• Sinfonietta
• 2 String Quartets
• String Trio
• Piano Trio
• Fantasy Quartet for Oboe and Strings
• Numerous vocal and choral works
• Works for Solo piano
• 3 Orchestral Rhapsodies and assorted other orchestral works
• Arrangements of folksong collected in England and Ireland

Grew up in Norfolk, England, promising early musical career interrupted by service in World War 1 where he sustained nasty head injury. After the war resumed musical studies and composition. Main instrumental output in 1920s was chamber and solo work, though started symphony in 1924. This was finally completed in 1937 and hailed as a masterpiece. It was followed by the Violin and Cello Concertos and a number of other substatial works. Moeran was an avid collector of English and Irish folksongs, and their style is often evident in aspects of his work, both his voluminous vocal output and his instrumental works. Although English by birth and upbringing he felt strong connections to his Irish ancestry and by the latter part of his life felt he could only really work well in Ireland. He made frequent visits there, especially to Kenmare, Co. Kerry, where at one point he took his dedication to collecting folk music to the extent of spending time living with travelling tinkers.

Never completely recovering from his war injury, and with an increasing reliance on alcohol, his health deteriorated in the last two or three years of his life, and by the end he began to fear the asylum. He died on 4th December 1950, falling from Kenmare pier into the sea probably after a massive heart attack - the post mortem revealed brain haemorraging, perhaps a final effect of the shrapnel lodged there in 1917...

• the Worldwide Moeran Database

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