[4] Harty initially refused the dedication after he was overlooked as the conductor for the first performance (by now he was ill and had left the Hallé Orchestra).
Much of the work was written in County Kerry, Ireland, where Moeran spent most of this time, but the slow second movement was inspired by the sand dunes and marshes of East Norfolk, England,[4] and may have its roots in Moeran's 1924 arrangement of a folk-song called The Shooting of His Dear (the 5th of his Six Songs from Norfolk).
[7] The first performance was on 13 January 1938 in the Queen's Hall, played by the Royal Philharmonic Society, conducted by Leslie Heward, whom Moeran considered to be the work's finest interpreter.
[8][9]) The work and its orchestration show the influence of other composers, including Bax, Delius, Warlock, van Dieren, and most particularly Sibelius.
[8] The work was originally subject to considerable criticism, on the grounds that it was too derivative (Wilfrid Mellers said it could not have been written before Vaughan Williams had shown how to write a symphony[8]), undisciplined and showed the composer's inexperience of symphonic form.
The manuscript of that work[15] and various others were donated by his widow Peers Coetmore to the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia.