ABSTRACT
I have examined Moore's work in more detail here than is usual because, more than any other source, perhaps, his publications represent the 'classic' versions of many of the 'folk' tunes used by nineteenth-century composers and illustrate the various problems in providing them with convincing settings and accompaniments. They are also of more general importance because, through them, one gets a particularly good picture of the tastes – especially, but not exclusively, literary and musical – and the preoccupations of the society that so avidly devoured them privately and publicly in the drawing room, the ballroom and the concert-hall.
