Most shanties followed the pattern of call-and-response, with a shantyman calling
out the line and the men joining in on the chorus – usually coinciding with a hearty
“heave, ho!” The shantyman was expected to be able to improvise, depending on
the length of the task at hand, and he was appreciated for his “salty” language, lyrical
wit, and strong voice. His solo lines were often coarse and sometimes obscene, but
wife. By the end of the 19th century, the switch to steam-powered ships and the
use of machines for shipboard tasks meant that shanties gradually ceased to serve
a practical function; they essentially became obsolete by the beginning of the 20th
century.
– Norfolk folk song, arr. Ernest John Moeran
Relatively unknown today, Ernest John “Jack” Moeran (1894-1950) composed over
150 vocal, instrumental and orchestral works. His early contact with music came
predominantly through East Anglian folk songs and hymns; even as a young man,
Moeran was inspired to collect and write down this music. As a teenager, Moeran
Norfolk Rhapsodies. This
Charles Villiers Stanford at the Royal College of Music were cut short as a result of
World War I, although he re-enrolled after the war as a pupil of John Ireland. In the
late 1920s he shared a cottage with composer Peter Warlock; although meant to
serve as an artistic commune for composers and artists, the bohemian lifestyle and
heavy drinking interrupted his creativity and made composing a laborious task. He
resumed composing in the 1930s, and re-established his reputation with a series of
major works, including a symphony and a violin concerto. In 1945 Moeran married
the cellist Peers Coetmore, and for her he composed several works for cello. Sadly,
the marriage didn’t last, and Moeran died alone in 1950, having fallen into the water
place among his contemporaries, Moeran’s legacy rests in his numerous folk songlike
themes, which capture the essence of the English and Irish countryside that was
his love and inspiration.
One of the many folk songs Moeran collected from the countryside pubs of Norfolk,
The Sailor and Young Nancy is not technically a sea shanty, although it might as well
melody in 1924 for solo voice and piano, and adapted it for four-part chorus some
25 years later for T.B. Lawrence and the famed amateur Fleet Street Choir. The
young sailor tells his sweetheart, Nancy (who appears remarkably often in these
|