Editing Gerald Moore (section)

===Early years===
Moore was born in [[Watford]], [[Hertfordshire]], on 30 July 1899,<ref name="NYT-obit" /> the eldest of four children of David Frank Moore, owner of a men's outfitting company, and his wife Chestina, ''née'' Jones.<ref name=dnb>[[Joseph Cooper (broadcaster)|Cooper, Joseph]]. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/39911, "Moore, Gerald Frederick (1899–1987)"], [[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]], Oxford University Press, 23 September 2004. Retrieved 17 June 2021 {{ODNBsub}}</ref> He was educated at [[Watford Grammar School for Boys|Watford Grammar School]], and took piano lessons from a local teacher.<ref name=grove>[[William Mann (critic)|Mann, William S]]. [http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/19064 "Moore, Gerald"], [[New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians|Grove Music Online]], Oxford University Press, 20 January 2001. Retrieved 17 June 2021 {{subscription required}}</ref> Though innately musical, with [[perfect pitch]], Moore was a reluctant piano student: he later said that his mother had to drag him to the piano, "an unwilling, snivelling child – I did not absorb music into my being until my middle twenties."<ref name=times>"Mr Gerald Moore", ''The Times'', 17 March 1987, p. 14</ref>

When Moore was 13 the family emigrated to [[Toronto|Toronto, Ontario]], Canada, where he studied with the pianist [[Michael Hambourg]], a former pupil of [[Anton Rubinstein]].<ref>Moore, p. 19; and Dawes, Frank and Carl Morey. [http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/12265pg1 "Hambourg"], Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, Retrieved 28 May 2013 {{subscription required}}</ref> Moore was distracted from his musical studies by a strong attraction to [[Anglo-Catholicism]]; he thought for some time that he had a vocation to become a priest.<ref>Moore, pp. 19–20</ref> In 1915 Hambourg died, after which his son, the cellist [[Boris Hambourg]], took Moore as his accompanist on a tour of forty engagements in western Canada.<ref name=dnb/>

On his return to Toronto Moore was engaged as organist at [[St. Thomas's Anglican Church (Toronto)|St. Thomas’s Anglican Church]], and later as a [[Theatre organ|cinema organist]], providing a musical accompaniment to silent films. This post was reasonably remunerative, but Moore described a cinema organ as an "instrument of torture … shar[ing] pride of place for sheer horror with the saxophone, the harmonica and the concertina."<ref>Moore, p, 24</ref> His parents concluded that Toronto was not the place for him to build the career as a pianist that they hoped for. They sent him back to England, to lodge with relatives in London, and pursue his studies with Michael Hambourg's pianist son, [[Mark Hambourg|Mark]].<ref>Moore, p. 26</ref>