Frederick Delius

[Florestan]

Wouldn't the first African-American opera be Treemonisha (1910) by Scott Joplin, who was an actual African-American person? We don't call Dvorak's Ninth an African-American symphony, after all (nor do we call Porgy and Bess an African-American opera, in some ways). And I believe Louis Moreau Gottschalk had a head start on Delius for blues, spirituals, Afro-Caribbean rhythms, folksons, and band tunes, although not the dissonance.

This whole thing of who did what first... Who cares? Music isn't a horse race. Doing it first (or last) has no bearing on doing it best (or worst) --- and viceversa. 

Thread duty: two documentaries on Delius:

Discovering Delius - A Portrait of Frederick Delius


Ken Russell - Delius - Song of Summer (1968) 1/5 (check out the rest of the series)

[North Star]

I'm still on page 15 of this thread, but I suddenly wondered if anyone has created a Time-Line for the works of Delius? You know, what was written when, etc?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Frederick_Delius#Chronological_list_of_principal_works

[Mirror Image]

Wouldn't the first African-American opera be Treemonisha (1910) by Scott Joplin, who was an actual African-American person? We don't call Dvorak's Ninth an African-American symphony, after all (nor do we call Porgy and Bess an African-American opera, in some ways). And I believe Louis Moreau Gottschalk had a head start on Delius for blues, spirituals, Afro-Caribbean rhythms, folksons, and band tunes, although not the dissonance.

Nope, the first African-American opera was Koanga written in 1896 which clearly predates Joplin. It doesn't matter if the composer was a European or African-American, Delius was the first to do it. You're probably right about Gottschalk, I forgot about that guy (he didn't live long!), but Delius didn't have the same kind of influences and his music, as you pointed out, was much more chromatic. Perhaps Gottschalk needs to be given more credit for things he did too!

[Mirror Image]

This whole thing of who did what first... Who cares? Music isn't a horse race. Doing it first (or last) has no bearing on doing it best (or worst) --- and viceversa. 

In the end, you're quite right, but I was just pointing what I thought were some of Delius' innovations. Right now, I'm believe I'm still right about three of my points, but the using the Negro spiritual music may have to go to Gottschalk who used all of these American idioms in a classical context.

[huntsman]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Frederick_Delius#Chronological_list_of_principal_works

Thanks North Star!

BTW Was the 'Discovering Delius' link from Florestan the same documentary Scots John referred to ten or twenty page ago? I was faced with a dead link by the time I tried to read it...

[Mirror Image]

Thanks North Star!

BTW Was the 'Discovering Delius' link from Florestan the same documentary Scots John referred to ten or twenty page ago? I was faced with a dead link by the time I tried to read it...

The link Scots John gave us was to a recent BBC documentary titled Delius: Composer, Lover, Enigma. Unfortunately, it is unavailable. I was one of the lucky ones who was able to save it to my computer before he disabled the link.

[mahler10th]

The link Scots John gave us was to a recent BBC documentary titled Delius: Composer, Lover, Enigma. Unfortunately, it is unavailable. I was one of the lucky ones who was able to save it to my computer before he disabled the link.

It took me until last night to watch that Documentary at last.  Very interesting so it was, I'll post it again somewhere so huntsman can get it...well, I found out some stuffs, including Delius pioneered the use of Banjo in the orchetsra!  I have also been listening to Delius's music, which is very freestyle, woven on finest silk.  His soundbase is completely natural, giving his music a kind of life rhythm which is almost organic.  I'll keep listening...

[Mirror Image]

It took me until last night to watch that Documentary at last.  Very interesting so it was, I'll post it again somewhere so huntsman can get it...well, I found out some stuffs, including Delius pioneered the use of Banjo in the orchetsra!  I have also been listening to Delius's music, which is very freestyle, woven on finest silk.  His soundbase is completely natural, giving his music a kind of life rhythm which is almost organic.  I'll keep listening...

Excellent, John! Yes, I forgotten about that banjo (used in Koanga). Very pioneering indeed.

[huntsman]

Thanks John...and you, John! 

I'm watching the Ken Russell documentary from 1968 and enjoying every minute. Were there any further episodes, or are those of other composers in the same series?

[Mirror Image]

Thanks John...and you, John! 

I'm watching the Ken Russell documentary from 1968 and enjoying every minute. Were there any further episodes, or are those of other composers in the same series?

Nope, this Delius film is the only one of its kind. It's actually based off Eric Fenby's book titled Delius As I Knew Him. This Ken Russell film was also made with some assistance from Fenby as well. Personally, I don't think too well of the film as I don't think the actors were right for the parts. This aspect of the film should have been better thought out I think, but I've never been a fan of these types of film anyway.

Onto other Delian matters, I'm stuck on the movement titled Pale amber sunlight falls from Songs of Sunset right now. I've played it several time over and over. There's something so ethereal and otherworldly about this movement. I particularly love the woodwind parts: flute, oboe especially.

[Mirror Image]

Another Delius masterpiece: Songs of Sunset -

Composed in 1907, Songs of Sunset belongs to Delius' most opulent period, coming after his testament, A Mass of Life (1905), and conceived in the same incandescent burst which brought forth Brigg Fair, the Dance Rhapsody No. 1, In a Summer Garden, Fennimore and Gerda, and Cynara. In fact,Cynara was originally sketched as part of Songs of Sunset, but outgrew its plan to become an independent composition which Delius did not complete until some two decades later. Both works set poems by Ernest Dowson (1867-1900), and are laced with nostalgia for the bohemian life Delius led from the early 1880s into the late 1890s -- the age of Beardsley, Wilde, Strindberg, Munch, Gauguin, and the young Ravel. Indeed, the luxuriant weariness of the Songs of Sunset is meant to be heard against Cynara's call for "madder music and for stronger wine," and its notorious profession of constancy -- "I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion."

Scored for soloists, mixed chorus, and large orchestra, these evocations of passion and lost youth set the lone personal voice among melting choral paeans to nature's mirroring moodiness. The first of the Songs of Sunset is, appropriately, "A song of the setting sun!" which brings "All too soon . . . the cynic moon." Upon this choral scene painting, the baritone breaks in to plead "Cease smiling, Dear! A little while be sad," joined by a contralto (or soprano) voice in a duet -- "O red pomegranate of thy perfect mouth!" -- yet lamenting "the reach of time and chance and change, / And bitter life and death, and broken vows, / That sadden and estrange." Chorus and orchestra call up "The pale amber sunlight" of autumn in a classic instance of late Romanticism's "dying fall," a poignant celebration of sweetness in decay presaging the inevitable farewell. "Exceeding sorrow / Consumeth my sad heart!" the contralto cries in a sustained aria of mourning. In the baritone's answering lullaby, "By the sad waters of separation," she is already a distant memory -- "Hardly can I remember your face." A sensuously winsome chorale conjuring of the buzz and hum of springtime, in "See how the trees and the osiers blithe," is rounded by the contralto and baritone lamenting separately that "the spring of the soul / Cometh no more for you or for me." In the baritone's final solo, he muses that "I was not sorrowful, I could not weep, / And all my memories were put to sleep." Rain and shadow fall together -- "I was not sorrowful, but only tired / Of everything that ever I desired." At last, "the evening came, / And left me sorrowful, inclined to weep / With all my memories that could not sleep." In this quiet series of recognitions the work's emotional high point is reached. The chorus enters with a muted hymn, an atheist's ode to décadence -- "They are not long, the days of wine and roses, / Out of a misty dream our path emerges for a while, then closes / Within a dream."

In marked contrast to the religious works which were the staple of choral festivals at the time, Songs of Sunset still bears the seeds of controversy. After conducting a performance by its dedicatees, the Elberfeld Choral Society, Delius' German champion, Hans Haym, wrote that "this is not a work for a wide public, but rather for a smallish band of musical isolates who are born decadents and life's melancholics."

This work was premiered by (not yet Sir) Thomas Beecham at Queen's Hall, London, June 16, 1911.

parts / movements -

1. A song of the setting sun!
2. Cease smiling, Dear! a little while be sad
3. Pale amber sunlight falls across the reddening October trees
4. Exceeding sorrow consumeth my sad heart!
5. By the sad waters of separation
6. See how the trees and the osiers lithe are green bedecked
7. I was not sorrowful, I could not weep
8. They are not long, the weeping and the laughter

[Article taken from All Music Guide]

[Mirror Image]

Another Delius masterwork: Idylle de printemps -

The pastoral atmosphere of Idylle de printemps is largely beholden to Grieg, the ecstasy suffusing it is Delius' own. Composed in 1889 after an 18-month course of study at the Leipzig Conservatory, the Idylle is similar in style and method to the four numbers of the Florida Suite of 1887, though where the latter bespeaks the tropical humidity of Dixie, the mood and geste of the Idylle possess a northern cast redolent of clear open spaces. It is hardly coincidental that Delius met Grieg in Leipzig in 1887, and that the two immediately hit it off. Grieg certainly recognized the vein of poetry in Delius' early works and offered what encouragement he could. The formal style of his letter of February 28, 1888, to Delius -- quite different from the offhand confidences of their remaining correspondence -- is a frank testimonial of the sort employed in gaining entry to publishers and performing societies. "I was pleasantly surprised, indeed stimulated, by your manuscripts and I detect in them signs of a most distinguished compositional talent in the grand style, which aspires to the highest goal." The music shown to Grieg was probably the Florida Suite. "If you will permit me, in the interests of your future, to offer you a piece of advice...it would be this, that you devote yourself now, while you are still young, fully to the pursuit of your art, rather than accept a formal position, and that you follow both your own true nature and the inner voice of your ideals and your inclinations." From a composer he loved and respected, this was heady stuff, though -- taken at face value -- it mainly served to confirm the course Delius had followed since his first trip to Norway in 1882 awakened in him the desire to compose. Its actual intent, however, was the persuasion of Delius' father to continue to support him in the pursuit of a compositional career, even though his triumphs at Leipzig had been more social than academic. Grieg's music was then in vogue across Europe, and Julius Delius, impressed by his endorsement, provided Fritz with an allowance that continued off and on until the elder Delius' death in 1901. Idylle de Printemps exhibits both an incipient Delian magic and how much Delius would have to unlearn of rule-of-thumb compositional technique and formal procedures, relying on repetition to free and concentrate that magic with the consummate artistry he would achieve a decade later in A Village Romeo and Juliet.

[Article taken from All Music Guide]

[Mirror Image]

So I've been listening to Songs of Sunset like crazy. This is one of the most outstanding pieces of music I ever heard. Leo K. if you're out there give this work a listen sometime. You'll love it.

[Mirror Image]

Another Delius masterwork: Brigg Fair -

Delius hit his stride as a composer around the turn of the twentieth century in such works as Mitternachtslied (1898) (a setting of the "Night Song" from Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra which he later incorporated into A Mass of Life); the tone poem Paris-The Song of a Great City (1899), and the opera A Village Romeo and Juliet (1900-1901). Those works and others, moreover, had been performed in Germany with marked success and established Delius' reputation on the continent, though little of his music had been heard in England.

In the spring of 1907, he was in London arranging for performances of his Piano Concerto and Appalachia. It may have been at the home of the painter John Singer Sargent that he met Percy Grainger, a kindred spirit in his inveterate roaming of Scandinavia, friendship with Grieg, and intense dislike of the conventional attitude which identified genuine music only with the German classical tradition. Grainger, meanwhile, had been assiduously collecting Scandinavian and English folk song, which he used as the basis of many of his compositions.

One of the pieces he showed Delius was a setting of "Brigg Fair" for tenor and a cappella chorus, the words and music of which Grainger had gleaned two years before from one Joseph Taylor, a Lincolnshire man in his early seventies. Not only was Delius much taken with the tune, but he recognized that he and Grainger also shared an affinity for a similar sort of post-Wagnerian, meltingly chromatic harmony. Sealing their friendship, which was to remain lifelong, Grainger gladly gave permission for Delius to use "Brigg Fair" as the basis of a large orchestral work.

Brigg Fair: An English Rhapsody was composed over the summer of 1907 and dedicated to Grainger; it received its first performance at Liverpool under Granville Bantock on January 18, 1908 (though the premiere has been widely and incorrectly ascribed to Hermann Suter at Basle the preceding year). Further performances followed quickly by Landon Ronald and the Hallé Orchestra in Birmingham on February 19 and Beecham with the New Symphony Orchestra in Queen's Hall, London, on March 31. For the latter occasion, Grainger brought Joseph Taylor to town to sit with him and Delius for the performance.

After the brief, atmospheric introduction, as the oboe introduces the theme, Taylor is said to have stood and sung the opening verse of "his" tune--"It was on the fifth of August, the weather fine and fair, /unto Brigg Fair I did repair, for love I was inclined...." In his little book on Delius, Philip Heseltine -- known to all lovers of English song as Peter Warlock -- notes that "he has, quite unconsciously, harked back to the very form in which the old English composers of the time of Queen Elizabeth were in the habit of adumbrating the popular melodies of the day -- that is to say the cumulative variation form which afterwards grew formal in the passacaglia, in which the theme is repeated, intact or with very slight rhythmical modifications, in each variation, always surrounded with a new harmonic, contrapuntal, or rhythmic embroidery. In Delius' work there is a brief and lovely interlude--a kind of happy love-song, which is not derived from the main theme: otherwise the form is identical with that employed by John Bull, William Byrd, Giles Farnaby, and many another more than three hundred years ago."

[Article taken from All Music Guide]

[Mirror Image]

Another Delius gem: Irmelin Prelude -

Based on themes from Delius' 1892 opera, Irmelin, this prelude is actually a freestanding orchestral piece, not an introduction to the stage work. Delius dictated it in 1931 to his amanuensis, Eric Fenby, and it was first performed when Sir Thomas Beecham used it as an interlude in a 1935 production of another early Delius opera, Koanga.

The prelude begins with a small, rising motif with a little fall at the end, whispered by individual woodwinds and passed to the strings. (The woodwinds, indeed, play a central role through this piece.) The themes are wispy and fragmentary; the second and third main sections contain pastoral melodies that seem more extended, but they merely rely on gently repeated small gestures. The opening theme returns in a string duet, seeming especially nostalgic and nocturnal, and the prelude ends with the clarinet crooning the melody on a soft bed of strings.

[Article taken from All Music Guide]

[Mirror Image]

Another Delius treasure: To be sung of a summer night on the water -

Some of Delius' most transcendently ecstatic moments are entrusted to a wordless chorus, as if no words could adequately convey the peculiar fullness of the moment. One thinks of Zarathustra's encounter with Life and Wisdom in the third part of A Mass of Life, or, preeminently, of the attainment of the summit in A Song of the High Hills. Apart from the title, there is no programmatic suggestion underscoring the gratuitous blithesomeness of these two brief yet beguiling choral pieces To be sung of a summer night on the water. Composed in late spring 1917 at Grez-sur-Loing, one would hardly guess from them that the Great War was still rampant, or that Delius was a very sick man. The String Quartet (1916) was thoroughly revised during the winter, and a Scherzo added, while the major compositional achievement for the year was the bracing symphonic poem Eventyr. An inveterate walker, Delius had been active outside, taking long strolls and helping his wife tend their garden, in the back of their house facing the river Loing, characteristically a riot of wildflowers. Meanwhile, in America, his friend Percy Grainger was promoting his works, though Delius' publishers were German and Austrian and the war left copies of his music in short supply. Nonetheless, Delius harbored plans for a trip to the United States, cut short in early summer by a return of syphilitic symptoms that nearly crippled him, forcing him to a spa in Normandy. Numbness in hands and feet responded slowly to treatment, but by July 24 he was able to take a 10 kilometer stroll, and by August he was well enough to go on holiday in Brittany with his wife. Apart from health-related interruptions, Delius' uncharacteristically scaled-back production is attributable to a turn toward works attempting to accommodate his essentially rhapsodic inspiration to sonata form -- e.g., the Double Concerto for violin and cello (1915-1916), the Violin Concerto (1916), the Cello Concerto (1921) -- giving way to a spate of miniatures in which matter and manner dovetail more successfully. Piano pieces, the Dance for Harpsichord, the Air and Dance for Strings, a generous bag of surprises in the incidental music for James Elroy Flecker's play Hassan (1923), and, more richly, To be sung... are Delius at his most fleetly charming and least alloyed. The latter were premiered by Charles Kennedy Scott and his Oriana Madrigal Society in London on June 28, 1921. Eric Fenby arranged them for string orchestra in 1932 as Two Aquarelles.

[Mirror Image]

Reading the above article made me realize just how courageous Delius was in dealing with the disease that ended his life. Even though he became weaker and weaker, he remained strong in spirit and this alone is the testament to the power of music and what it can do inside of us all.

[Mirror Image]

Re: On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring

I may have mentioned this but my new favorite performance of this masterpiece is with Norman Del Mar conducting the Bournemouth Sinfonietta. Absolutely gorgeous from start to finish. Nothing is too fast (Lloyd-Jones/RSNO) or too slow (Barbirolli/Halle). Anybody else familiar with this recording:



A must-have recording of Delius 'miniatures'. This recording has been reissued under the 'Chandos Collect' guise, but if you can find the original then don't hesitate to buy it.

[J]

A quite ravishing performance of those two little pieces "To be Sung of a Summer Night on the Water" in their original setting for wordless voices alone is by John Rutter and the Cambridge Singers on a CD titled "There is Sweet Music: English Choral Songs 1890-1950".  The whole program is outstanding.

Just in passing, my own two very favorite Delius works are without question "Appalachia" and the "Songs of Sunset" - though if you took away the unsurpassed Hickox/RPO version of "Appalachia" that judgement might be a bit less definitive, (BTW, the fairly recent Andrew Davis led issue of this piece is simply a travesty, - just listen to the wreckage he makes out of the gorgeous 6th movement Lento, - in other hands one of the great epitomal movements in all of Delius in its "ecstatic melancholy", but played here far to rapidly and twisted all out of shape without any of the proper experessive nuances that Hickox nails to perfection). 

[Mirror Image]

A quite ravishing performance of those two little pieces "To be Sung of a Summer Night on the Water" in their original setting for wordless voices alone is by John Rutter and the Cambridge Singers on a CD titled "There is Sweet Music: English Choral Songs 1890-1950".  The whole program is outstanding.

Just in passing, my own two very favorite Delius works are without question "Appalachia" and the "Songs of Sunset" - though if you took away the unsurpassed Hickox/RPO version of "Appalachia" that judgement might be a bit less definitive, (BTW, the fairly recent Andrew Davis led issue of this piece is simply a travesty, - just listen to the wreckage he makes out of the gorgeous 6th movement Lento, - in other hands one of the great epitomal movements in all of Delius in its "ecstatic melancholy", but played here far to rapidly and twisted all out of shape without any of the proper experessive nuances that Hickox nails to perfection).

Welcome! I don't think we've ever spoke before, but it's good to have another Delian around, especially in this hyper-modernistic crowd (as Seinfeld would say "Not that there's anything wrong with that." ) I'll have to check out that Rutter recording. The Cambridge Singers are simply an outstanding group and I recall going over to my grandfather's house and he was, in fact, playing one of their recordings. Sounded very nice. Thanks for the suggestion.

My favorite Appalachia is Barbiolli/Halle Orchestra. I do like Hickox's a lot and considered it the most well-balanced of all the performances I've heard. I do agree with you about the new Andrew Davis in that it doesn't really get to the bottom of the work and is played, in my opinion, rather superficially. I do recall that Lento movement being disappointing. I do like his The Song of the High Hills, but I'm afraid Mackerras and Fenby have him beat here. The Bo Holten performance on Danacord is also excellent. I LOVE Songs of Sunset. Such an outstanding work. My favorite performance is Bo Holten/Aarhus SO on Danacord. He completely nails the ethereal, transient quality of this work.

If I was pushed into a corner and forced to pick three favorite Delius works they would be: 1. In A Summer Garden, 2. Songs of Sunset, and 3. North Country Sketches.