Classical Music / Composers Datebook: January 29
Brief biography of Frederick Delius, English composer of the late Romantic Era and early 20th-century, known for his passion for nature and his compositions reflected them into his music. He is famous for the lovely piece "On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring".
Early Years: Training and Influence
Frederick Theodore Albert Delius (b. January 29, 1862, Bradford - d. June 10, 1934, Grez-sur-Loing), was an English composer. Born in Bradford in the north of England to a wealthy mercantile family, he resisted attempts to recruit him to business. His father, a domineering German wool merchant, lent him money to set up a citrus-grower in Florida before eventually studying music in Leipzig when he was 26 years old. There he met the Norwegian composer Grieg who greatly influenced his Romantic approach to composition. He also assimilated influences of Wagner (in particular, Lohengrin) and Debussy, but found his own voice in Paris, in his music "Song of a Great City".
Career Highlight
The lyricism in Delius's early compositions reflected the music he had heard in America and the influences of European composers such as Grieg and Wagner. Having been influenced by African-American music during his short stay in Florida, he began composing. After a brief period of formal musical study in Germany beginning in 1886, he embarked on a full-time career as a composer in Paris, where he lived mainly from 1890 and in 1903 married the German painter Jelka Rosen. In nearby Grez-sur-Loing, he and his wife Jelka lived for the rest of their lives, except during the First World War. He met the great conductor Sir Thomas Beecham who conducted his masterpiece, "A Mass of Life" in 1909.
Delius's first successes came in Germany, where Hans Haym and other conductors promoted his music from the late 1890s. In Delius's native Britain, his music did not make regular appearances in concert programmes until 1907, after Sir Thomas Beecham took it up. Aside from conducting the full premiere of "A Mass of Life" in London in 1909 (he had premiered Part II in Germany in 1908); Sir Beecham staged the opera "A Village Romeo and Juliet" at Covent Garden in 1910 and mounted a six-day Delius festival in London in 1929, as well as making gramophone recordings of many of the composer's works. After 1918, Delius began to suffer the effects of syphilis, contracted during his earlier years in Paris. He became paralysed and blind, but completed some late compositions between 1928 and 1932 with the aid of an amanuensis, Eric Fenby.
Delius developed a style uniquely his own, characterised by his individual orchestration and his uses of chromatic harmony. His music has been only intermittently popular. The Delius Society, formed in 1962, continues to promote knowledge of the composer's life and works, and sponsors the annual Delius Prize competition for young musicians.
Delius's Legacy
Frederick Delius's haunting, richly harmonious works
include the opera "A Village Romeo and Juliet", the choral pieces "Appalachia", "Sea
Drift", based on a poem by poet Walt Whitman and "A Mass of Life", an orchestral work
"In a Summer Garden", tone poems "A Song of the High Hills and Summer Night on the
River", and "On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring", considered to be his most
famous work. Delius also composed chamber music and songs.
In a broad historical view point, Frederick Delius' music belongs between the Late Romantic period spanning the end of the 19th-century and the early part of the 20th-century. Unlike other composers, his music or himself, did not really belong to any school or movement. One needs only to remember that he has given us a reminder to appreciate and enjoy nature’s beauty - its landscapes, seasons, wildlife and climates - translated through his music.
List of works by Frederick Delius:
Florida Suite 1887
Koanga, including 'La Calinda', opera 1896
Paris, the Song of a Great City, nocturne for orchestra 1899
A village Romeo and Juliet, including 'Walk to the Paradise Garden', opera 1901
Appalachia, for voices and orchestra 1902
Sea Drift, for baritone and orchestra 1905
A Mass of Life, for soloists, chorus and orchestra 1905
Brigg Fair: And English Rhapsody 1907
In a Summer Garden 1908
Fennimore and Gerda, opera 1910
Song of the High Hills 1911
Summer Night on the River 1911
On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring 1912
Violin Concerto 1916
A Song of summer 1930
Link:
Delius: 20 facts about the great composer. www.classicfm.com
Photo Credit:
Frederick Delius. NNDB.com. Accessed January 29, 2008.
Resources:
Frederick Delius. www.delius.org.uk/
The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd Edition, edited by Stanley Sadie (2000)
The Oxford Companion to Music, edited by Alison Latham (2002)
(c) January 2008. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the child prodigy and musical genius, turns 252 today, January 27 2008.
Constanze Weber was born on January 5, 1762, in Zell im Wiesental. Her mother was Cäcilia Weber, nee Stamm. Her father Fridolin Weber worked as a "double bassplayer and music copyist." His half-brother was the father of composer Carl Maria von Weber.