Despite a compositional career spanning both World Wars, remarkably little is known about Martin Shaw’s music. It has yet to enjoy the revival of interest that has benefitted the legacies of close friends such as Ralph Vaughan Williams and John Ireland. His songs range from the whimsical and effervescent to the deeply melancholic, and will be a revelation to many. In rescuing these gems from obscurity, Iain Burnside and his singers have given new life to an unjustly neglected figure.

Shaw delighted in describing himself as a cockney, a title he could claim under Samuel Rowlands's definition of one born within the sound of the Bow Bells. He studied under Stanford at the Royal College of Music, together with a generation of composers that included Holst, Vaughan Williams and John Ireland. He then embarked upon a career as a theatrical producer, composer and conductor, the early years of which he described as "a long period of starving along".

With Gordon Craig, he founded the Purcell Operatic Society in 1899, dedicated to reviving the music of Henry Purcell and other English composers of the period, many of whose works had fallen into long neglect. In 1903, Martin joined Ellen Terry's company at the Imperial Theatre, where he composed and conducted the music for productions of The Vikings and Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Craig, Ellen Terry's son.

Shaw toured Europe as conductor to Isadora Duncan, extensively described in his 1929 autobiography 'Up to Now' published by Oxford University Press. During this period he gave music lessons and took posts as organist and director of music, first at St Mary's, Primrose Hill 1902-1920, later at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London 1920-1924. In 1918 he co-founded the League of Arts, the Royal School of Church Music and was an early organiser of hymn festivals. He did much editorial and executive work in connection with popularising music, the encouragement of community singing and raising standards of choral singing in small parish churches. In 1932 Shaw received the Lambeth degree of Doctor of Music. He was appointed an OBE in 1955 and was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Music (FRCM) in 1958.

Morning Has Broken, which Martin Shaw commissioned specially from his old friend Eleanor Farjeon, became a No.1 hit for Cat Stevens in 1972.