Frederick Delius

Frederick Albert Theodore Delius CH (29 January 1862 – 10 June 1934) was an English composer born in Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire in the north of England.

Life

Delius's parents were German. Julius and Elise Pauline Delius had moved from Bielefeld, Germany to England to set themselves up in the woolen business. Frederick ('Fritz' to his family, 'Fred' to his friends) Delius was the fourth of their fourteen children.

Although born in England and educated at Bradford Grammar School (where the singer John Coates was his contemporary), Frederick Delius felt little attraction for the country of his birth and spent most of his life abroad, in the United States and the continent of Europe, chiefly in France. Nonetheless his music has been described as 'extremely redolent of the soil of this country [i.e. Britain] and characteristic of the finer elements of the national spirit' by Felix Aprahamian. [ In introduction to revised edition of Beecham (1959), 1975, p. 6.]

Although Frederick showed early musical promise, his father was very much set against a musical career and wanted Delius to work in the family business.

In America

Julius Delius eventually sent Frederick (apparently at Frederick's request) to be the manager of a grapefruit plantation at Solano Grove on the St Johns River in Florida. There, west of St Augustine and south of Jacksonville, Delius continued to be engrossed in music and in Jacksonville met Thomas Ward, who became his teacher in counterpoint and composition.

While in Florida, Delius had his first composition published, and later put his memories into the "Florida Suite", written at Leipzig in 1887. The house he lived in from 1884–1885 in Solano Grove was given to Jacksonville University and moved on campus in 1961. The University holds the Delius Festival each year in honour of the composer. After he left Florida, Delius taught music in Danville, Virginia and eventually moved to New York.

Europe

After his stay in New York, his father finally agreed to allow him a musical education, and consented to send him to Leipzig to study at the conservatory. He was befriended there by Edvard Grieg, who encouraged him and became a lifelong friend.

In 1897 Delius met the German painter Jelka Rosen. They soon set up home in the French village of Grez-sur-Loing, near Fontainebleau, and married in 1903. Apart from a short time, when the area was threatened by the advancing German army during the First World War, he lived in Grez for the rest of his life.

In 1907 he met Thomas Beecham, who was to be the greatest champion of his music during his lifetime in the English-speaking world. Until then Delius's audience was German, principally due to the conductors Fritz Cassirer and Hans Haym.

Delius's latter years were spent chiefly at the home he and his wife set up in Grez. These years were marred by increasing ill-health. As a young man (possibly in Paris) he had caught syphilis; the long term effects of which were to rob him of his sight and to cause him to become increasingly paralysed, eventually needing use of a wheelchair. He therefore employed Eric Fenby, who originally wrote Delius a fan letter, as his amanuensis and the great works of Delius's final years were dictated to Fenby, who later wrote a book about the experience of working with Delius. [Fenby, 1936, "Delius as I Knew Him".] Fenby also wrote the screen adaptation from the book for a film, [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063628/ Song of Summer] , directed by Ken Russell, starring Max Adrian as the blind composer. [http://thompsonian.info/delius-garcia.html]

Delius was profoundly engaged in the contemplation of nature and disliked religion, though "Koanga" displays an interest in voodooism. He admired the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, and his choice of Nietzsche texts for "A Mass of Life", the determinism evident in "Irmelin" and the "Village Romeo and Juliet", and the living metempsychosis of the boy and the seagull in "Sea Drift" have prompted some to see in his work a form of pantheism.

Death and burial

Delius died at Grez in 1934 and was buried in a nearby cemetery on the Marlotte road out of Grez. The interment ceremony was unusual as there was no priest present, and there were no prayers or music. In 1935, in completion of his own declared wish to be buried in 'a quiet country chuchyard in a south of England village', his remains were exhumed and taken from France to the UK. Jelka contracted pneumonia during the crossing, and could not attend the funeral. On 24 May an Anglican interment took place at the Church of Saint Peter in Limpsfield, Surrey. Vast crowds converged, and a section of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, together with the cellist Beatrice Harrison (of Oxted, nearby), who had given early performances of his works, performed after the ceremony, and Sir Thomas Beecham gave the address. After Jelka Delius died, four days later, she was interred beside her husband. Beecham's grave is about ten yards from theirs.

Music

Delius's musical style is one of the most unusual in Western musical history. Characterized by a curious mixture of pentatonic figures and chromaticism, although still largely tonal, it reflects a move from the textbook post-romanticism of the years following the death of Richard Wagner (1883) to a style that was unique to Delius, blending Impressionism with the slightly older post-romanticism and northern European and African-American folk idioms. His use of luscious harmonies - mainly slow moving, and constantly evolving melody, with the frequent use of leitmotifs - is what prompted Sir Thomas Beecham to describe him as "the last great apostle of romantic beauty in music." His harmony and melody were influenced greatly by African-American music of the time, using blues harmony and melodic characteristics that would become distinctly jazz and blues 20 years later.

His best-known works include the brief orchestral piece "On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring"; "Brigg Fair" ('An English Rhapsody'); "In A Summer Garden"; "North Country Sketches"; "A Mass of Life" to Nietzsche's "Also Sprach Zarathustra"; "Florida Suite"; "Sea Drift", a setting of text by Walt Whitman, for baritone, chorus and orchestra; "A Late Lark", setting of text by William Ernest Henley; "Songs of Farewell", another setting of Whitman texts, for chorus and orchestra; "Cynara" and "Songs of Sunset", both settings of texts by Ernest Dowson; "Koanga", which as an opera with a black principal character antedates George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" by four decades and is roughly contemporaneous with Scott Joplin's "Treemonisha"; an atheist "Requiem"; four concertos: a violin concerto, a cello concerto, a double concerto for violin and cello, and a piano concerto (also somewhat Gershwinesque); the colourful, picturesque tone poem "Paris: Song of a Great City"; and the beautifully exuberant symphonic composition [http://www.musikmph.de/musical_scores/prefaces/A-E/delius_tanz.html "Life's Dance"] . Orchestral excerpts from his operas, for example "La Calinda" from "Koanga" — which originated in the "Florida Suite" — and "The Walk to the Paradise Garden" from "A Village Romeo and Juliet", are also played and recorded reasonably often. There are a number of chamber works (three mature violin sonatas, a cello sonata and a string quartet).

Recording projects

The difficulties which Delius experienced in obtaining adequate public performance of his works caused him (and those who admired his music) to recognise the necessity of making available good quality gramophone records, by which it should become more widely known. As in live performance, Thomas Beecham was the pioneer of this movement, although Geoffrey Toye (with London Symphony Orchestra) conducted a notable group of orchestral recordings for HMV around 1930 including "Brigg Fair", "In a Summer Garden" ("A Song before Sunrise" conducted by John Barbirolli on the fourth side), "On Hearing the First Cuckoo", and "Summer Night on the River", which were admired by the composer, among others. [Fenby 1936, 221.] There are no very early recordings of the concerti, but by 1936 [Discographical details from R.D. Darrell, "The Gramophone Shop Encyclopedia of Recorded Music", New York 1936.] the Violin Sonata No. 1 was recorded by May Harrison with Arnold Bax (HMV), and No. 2 by Albert Sammons with Evlyn Howard-Jones (Columbia); the second is also in the viola arrangement by Lionel Tertis with George Reeves, in a set that also contains the "Entr'acte" and "Serenade" from the incidental music to James Elroy Flecker's "Hassan". [Tertis had performed his arrangement (with Fenby) of the 3rd Violin Sonata for Delius at Grez (see Fenby 1936, 122).] Beatrice Harrison had recorded the "Elegie" and "Caprice" with a small orchestra under Fenby's direction. Howard-Jones also recorded several short keyboard works.The first "Sea Drift" to be issued (though soon deleted) was Decca's in 1929 with Roy Henderson, conducted by Anthony Bernard (1891-1963) (though the conductor is not named on the label). [Listed as deleted in Darrell (1936). See letter of Norman Gentieu, relating conversations with Felix Aprahamian, [http://thompsonian.info/delius-sea-drift-article.html] in "The Delian" (Philadelphia), 2005; also Lionel Carley's "Jelka Rosen Delius: Artist, Admirer and Friend of Rodin. The Correspondence 1.1900-1914 and 2.Concluded" (Nottingham French Studies, Vol IX, 1970, pp. 16-30, 81-102), in which Bernard's conducting is specified: the S. Upton and M. Walker 1969 "Delius discography" states that the conductor was Stanley Chapple.] Decca was founded in 1929, and this was one of its earliest releases, a "succès d'estime" for the company's founder, Sir Edward Lewis. Thomas Beecham had made the first recording of the work a year previously, with baritone Dennis Noble, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Manchester Beecham Opera Chorus (Columbia), but poor acoustics caused it to remain unpublished. Beecham began his Delius recordings with the old Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, for Columbia, with the "Walk to the Paradise Garden" and the "First Cuckoo", in December 1927, and "Summer Night on the River" (July 1928), but had two failed attempts at "Brigg Fair" in July and November 1928 before fully achieving his intentions in a December session. In 1929 he accompanied at the piano a series of Delius song recordings with Dora Labbette, only some of which were issued.

Delius Society recordings
In April 1934 Beecham recorded "Paris: The Song of a Great City" (with the London Philharmonic Orchestra), and as Fenby sat with the dying Delius they waited in vain for the test pressings to be released by the French Customs. Delius told Fenby he wanted Beecham to record all his best music. [Fenby 1936, 220-222. ] Soon after Delius's death, Beecham persuaded Jelka (who knew that she was in failing health) that a "Delius Trust" should be created to make possible a model edition of his works and to provide for them to be recorded. To the latter purpose a Delius Society was formed, initially as a private organization, and at the request of Beecham and the Society Committee it was taken over in 1934 by Columbia Records, [Douglas Pudney, "The Beecham-Delius Recordings" in World Record Club LP Delius Society recordings reissue (Cat. SHB 32, 1976), "The Music of Delius" Vol I, leaflet accompanying records.] for the issue of records outside the normal monthly listings, which could be obtained by members of the public who paid a subscription to the Society. Three volumes were issued before the war, all conducted by Beecham. [Beecham 1959, revised edn 1975, 212 and discography ff. p 228.]
Volume 1 (recorded 1934, issued 1934/5): "Paris"; "Koanga", closing scene; "Eventyr"; "Hassan", Interlude and Serenade; songs 'To the Queen of my Heart' and 'Love's Philosophy' (with Heddle Nash).
Volume 2 (recorded 1936): "Sea Drift" (with John Brownlee); "Over the Hills and Far Away"; "In a Summer Garden"; Intermezzo from "Fennimore and Gerda".
Volume 3 (recorded 1938): "Appalachia"; "Hassan", "La Calinda", and "closing scene" (with Jan van der Gucht); the prelude from "Irmelin". Several other titles recorded in 1938 remained unpublished.

After the war Beecham resumed the project, but now under the HMV label. [See Discography in Beecham 1959, revised edition 1975, ff p. 228.] Four titles, including the Piano Concerto with Betty Humby Beecham, made in October 1945 remained unpublished, but a year later the concerto was successfully re-recorded, a fine version of the Violin Concerto with Jean Pougnet was made, and also "First Cuckoo", "Song of the High Hills", "Brigg Fair", "Marche Caprice" and the "Irmelin" prelude. The "Songs of Sunset" with Nancy Evans and Redvers Llewellyn were recorded but not issued. However, May and July 1948 saw a complete "Village Romeo and Juliet" (12 discs). After a failed "Sea Drift" with Gordon Clinton in January 1951, there was a successful one with Bruce Boyce in April 1954. In January and April 1953, the celebrated recording of "A Mass of Life" (with Rosina Raisbeck, Monica Sinclair, Charles Craig and Bruce Boyce) was made. [n.b. The soprano role in this recording includes some takes recorded by Sylvia Fisher, who was replaced by Rosina Raisbeck for the remainder.] A substantial recording of incidental music for Flecker's "Hassan" was made by Beecham for CBS Columbia in October 1955, and other Delius Trust recordings continued to appear on that label. He cut many other records of shorter works between 1946 and April 2 1957; meanwhile Sir Anthony Collins was recording some of these for Decca. [See EMG, The Art of Record Buying - 1960, pp. 51-52.] A powerful account of the violin concerto by Robert Gerle (conducted by Robert Zeller) was recorded by Westminster and issued by World Record Club (CM 59) about 1960; the work was again chosen, together with the Double Concerto, conducted by Meredith Davies and performed by Yehudi Menuhin with Paul Tortelier, for an EMI Quadrophonic release in 1977 (ASD 3343), produced in consultation with Eric Fenby. At about the same time the World Record Club (having become a branch of EMI) reissued the early Beecham Delius recordings in two box set volumes on its 'Retrospect' label, also under Fenby's supervision.

List of works

Operas

* "Irmelin" (1890-92; premiere 1953)
* "The Magic Fountain" (1893-95; concert premiere 1977, stage premiere 1997)
* "Koanga" (after George Washington Cable's "The Grandissimes") (1895-97; UA 1904)
* "A Village Romeo and Juliet" (after Gottfried Keller's "Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe") (1900-01; premiere in Berlin 1907, London 1910 )
* "Margot la rouge" (1902)
* "Fennimore and Gerda" (1909-10; premiere 1919)

Incidental music

* "Zanoni" (1888)
* "Folkeraadet" (1897)
* "Hassan" (1920-23)

Concertos

* Suite for Violin and Orchestra (1888)
* "Légende" for Violin and Orchestra (1895)
* Piano Concerto in C minor (1897)
* Double Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra (1915-16)
* Violin Concerto (1916)
* Cello Concerto (1921)
* "Caprice and Elegy" for Cello and Orchestra (1930)

Orchestral works

* "Florida Suite" (1887)
* Three Pieces ("Schlittenfahrt" and "March caprice") (1887-88)
* "Hiawatha" - tone poem (1888)
* "Idylle de Printemps" (1889)
* Little Suite (1889-90)
* Three Small Tonepoems ("Summer Evening", "Winter Night", "Spring Morning") (1890)
* "Paa Vidderne (Sur les cimes)" - Symphonic Poem after Ibsen (1890-92; version with speaker 1888))
* "Over the Hills and Far Away" - Fantasy Overture (1895-97)
* "Appalachia" for Orchestra (1896)
* "La Ronde Se Déroule" - Symphonic Poem (1899)
* "" (1899)
* "Brigg Fair: An English Rhapsody" (1907)
* "In a Summer Garden" - Rhapsody (1908)
* "Dance Rhapsody no. 1" (1908)
* "Life's Dance" (1908?)
* Two Pieces for Small Orchestra ("On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring", 1912; "Summer Night on the River", 1911)
* "North Country Sketches" (1913-14)
* "Air and Dance" for Strings (1915)
* "Dance Rhapsody no. 2" (1916)
* "Eventyr (Once Upon a Time)" (1917)
* "A Song Before Sunrise" for Small Orchestra (1918)
* "A Song of Summer" (1929-30)
* "Irmelin Prelude" (1931)
* "Fantastic Dance" (1931)

Vocal works

* Six "German Partsongs" for Choir (1887)
* "Sakuntala" for Tenor and Orchestra (1889)
* "Maud" for Tenor and Orchestra (1891)
* "Mitternachtslied" for Baritone, Male Choir und Orchestra (1898)
* "Appalachia" for Choir und Orchestra (1898-1903)
* "Sea Drift" for Baritone, Choir and Orchestra (1903-04)
* "A Mass of Life" for Soloists, Choir and Orchestra (1904-05)
* "Songs of Sunset" for Mezzo-soprano, Baritone, Choir and Orchestra (1906-07)
* "Cynara" for Baritone und Orchestra (1907; completed 1929)
* "On Craig Dhu" for Choir and Piano (1907)
* "Midsummer Song" for Choir and Piano (1908)
* "Wanderer's Song" for Male Choir and Piano (1908)
* "An Arabesk" for Baritone, Choir and Orchestra (1911)
* "A Song of the High Hills" for Choir and Orchestra (1911)
* Two "Songs for a Children's Album" (1913)
* "Requiem" for Soprano, Baritone, Choir and Orchestra (1914-16)
* Two "Songs to be sung of a Summer Night on the Water" for Choir (1917)
* "The splendour falls on castle walls" for Choir (1923)
* "A Late Lark" for Voice und Orchestra (1925)
* "Songs of Farewell" for Choir and Orchestra (1930)
* "Idyll: Once I passed through a populous city" for Soprano, Baritone and Orchestra (1930-32)

Chamber music

* String Quartet (1888)
* "Romance" for Violin and Piano (1889)
* Violin Sonata B-major (1892)
* String Quartet (1893)
* "Romance" for Cello and Piano (1896)
* Violin Sonata No. 1 (1905-14)
* String Quartet (1916)
* Cello Sonata (1916)
* Violin Sonata No. 2 (1923)
* Violin Sonata No. 3 (1930)

Piano and harpsichord music

* Pensées Mélodieuses (no. 2) (1885)
* Two Pieces for Piano (1889-90)
* "Dance" for Cembalo (1919)
* Five Pieces for Piano (1922-23)
* Three Preludes for Piano (1923)
* Zum Carnival
* Badinage
* Presto leggiero

ongs

* Five "Songs from the Norwegian" (1888)
* Seven "Songs from the Norwegian" (1889-90; 2 orchestral songs)
* Three "English Songs" (1891)
* Two Songs after Verlaine (1895; with orchestra)
* Seven "Danish Songs" (1897; with orchestra)
* Four Songs after Nietzsche (1898)
* "Im Glück wir lachend gingen" (1898)
* "The Violet" (1900; with orchestra)
* "Autumn" (1900)
* "Black Roses" (1901)
* "Summer Landscape" (1902; with orchestra)
* "The nightingale has a lyre of gold" (1910)
* "La lune blanche" (1911; with orchestra)
* "Chanson d'automne" (1911)
* "I-Brasil" (1913)
* Four "Old English Lyrics" (1915-16)
* "Avant que tu ne t'en ailles" (1919)
* 18 unpublished songs

Literature

("in chronological order")
* Philip Heseltine (= Peter Warlock), "Frederick Delius" (Bodley Head, London 1923).
* Eric Fenby, "Delius as I knew him" (orig. G. Bell & Sons Ltd, London 1936). (repr. Cambridge University Press). ISBN 0-521-28768-5
*Arthur Hutchings, "Delius" (Macmillan, London 1949)
* Thomas Beecham, "Frederick Delius" (orig. Hutchinson 1959; revised edn. Severn House Publishers 1975). ISBN 0-7278-0099-X
* Gloria Jahoda, "The Music Maker of Solano Grove", Ch.13 in Florida Classics Library, "The Other Florida" (Charles Scribner's Sons, Port Salerno 1967). Library of Congress cat. no. 67-21339
* Gloria Jahoda, "The Road to Samarkand: Frederick Delius and His Music," (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1969), Library of Congress cat. no. 69-17063.
*Eric Fenby, "The Great Composers: Delius" (T.Y. Crowell Co., 1972).
*Christopher Redwood, "A Delius Companion: A 70th birthday tribute to Eric Fenby" (John Calder 1976, 1980). ISBN 0-7145-3826-4
* Lionel Carley (ed.), "Delius: A Life in Letters" (2 vols) (Scolar Press, 1983, 1988). ISBN 1-85928-178-8
* Anthony Payne, 'Frederick Delius', in "The New Grove Twentieth-Century English Masters" (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986) pp. 69-96. (Reprint of article from "The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians", ed. Stanley Sadie (London and Washington, D.C.: Macmillan, 1980).)

As an inspiration for other artists

* The song "Delius" by Kate Bush (from her 1980 album Never For Ever). A specially-recorded video for the song was played for a bemused Fenby on the Russell Harty Show on the 25 November 1980.
* The characters Robert Frobisher and Vyvyan Ayrs appear to have been loosely inspired by Fenby / Delius in the 2004 Booker-nominated novel Cloud Atlas (ISBN 0-340-82277-5) by British author David Mitchell
* In the song, "Business On You" by Richard Thompson (from the 1996 album You? me? us?), the narrator, in collecting items of mojo to influence the object of his affection, notes "I've got Frederick Delius' finger, Wordsworth's tattoo".
* Ken Russell's 1968 television film "Song of Summer", produced for the BBC's "Omnibus" series, documents Fenby's working relationship with Delius.

References

External links

* [http://home.earthlink.net/~llywarch/del01.html synopsis of Delius's life and musical style by musicologist J. Marshall Bevil, with specific comments on "Florida Suite", "Koanga", and "A Late Lark"]
* [http://www.delius.org.uk/ Official site of The Delius Trust and The Delius Society]
* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=22014 Photo of Delius' grave]
* [http://thompsonian.info/delius.html "The Music of Frederick Delius" - reference information, discography, sound files, photos, links, & more]
* [http://www.tasminlittle.net/pages/02_pages/02_delius-info_white_main.htm Welcome to the website of violinist Tasmin Little ] at www.tasminlittle.net A page on Tasmin Little's site relating to the Delius festival held in Bradford in July 2006
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/works/s3/delius/index.shtml The Lost Child] A BBC film suggesting that Delius had a mistress in Florida who bore him a child and profoundly influenced his music
* [http://www.steenslid.com/music/delius/index.htm Delius page by Tore Frantzvåg Steenslid]
* [http://thompsonian.info/gower/delius.html Delius page by guitarist Jeff Gower]
* "A Summer Garden" by playwright, Steve Newman, is a drama about the meeting in 1933 between Sir Edward Elgar and Delius. The play is published by Humdrumming Ltd [http://www.humdrumming.co.uk/]
* [http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_mobility/documents/pdf/dft_mobility_pdf_503832.pdf Circumstantial evidence suggesting that the music of Delius was particularly effective in deterring troublemakers in the Newcastle Metro]
*YouTube|FgL8xfonIuM|Delius Cello Concerto Part 1 Performance of Cello Concerto by Julian Lloyd Webber and the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley
*YouTube|2Yb3DnPg6MM|Delius Cello Sonata performance
*