As 1920 ended, Moeran's journey from invalided war veteran and romantic Irish nationalist to established composer and artistic man-about-town was complete. While there was little possibility that he could forget his wartime experiences and the loss of so many of his friends and colleagues, he had undergone a renewal that had provided him with the possibility of looking forward. Although the previous few years may have left him unable to re-forge the kind of close friendships that characterised his time at Uppingham and the Royal College of Music, his natural charm and personal magnetism led to the construction of new and important relationships, most particularly through his Oxford & Cambridge Musical Club membership which was fundamental to his developing career as musician and composer and which facilitated his rise to prominence. The musical club was a unique institution in which the playing and enjoyment of music was of an importance equal to social interaction, whose membership comprised intelligent, educated and musically talented men, many of whom were in the professions and occupied senior positions in government, the law, academia and the colonial service. Moeran's talent ensured that he was in constant demand as performer and accompanist, and he played and heard an extensive repertoire of solo performances, songs and chamber music, an experience that would have been difficult for him to gain elsewhere and which informed and shaped significantly his own compositional style. On 10 January, Moeran paid the Town rate subscription of four guineas for his continued membership of the club, establishing that he regarded London as his principal place of work and residence and that he intended to make full use of the club facilities.

Moeran's stylistic debt to other composers is a common theme of writings about him hitherto, and it cannot be doubted that he was influenced by the music that he heard and which resonated with his own tastes. However, there was one composer whose influence on Moeran was probably stronger than any other, and this was John Ireland. Exemplars for many of Moeran's stylistic characteristics abound in Ireland's work, most particularly in the piano music, which was the genre of Ireland’s oeuvre with which Moeran would have been most familiar during his compositional adolescence.