Frederick Delius

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, 2^nd Edition, edited by Stanley Sadie (2000)

The Oxford Companion to Music, edited by Alison Latham (2002)

 

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