Frederick Delius

Frederick Delius, known as Fritz in his youth, was an English composer of German descent, born in Bradford in 1862 and died in Grez-sur-Loing in 1934. He spent much of his life abroad, above all in France, although his first successes came in Germany and Norway. He is today regarded as one of the most distinctive voices in English music. He combined the continuity of Wagner, the luminous chromaticism of Grieg and the colour of Strauss into a language of his own, marked by flowing melodies and bold harmonies. He wrote operas, concertos and sonatas, but his most enduring legacy lies in his tone poems, imbued with a nostalgia for nature, and in his choral works of an ecstatic, secular spirit.

His parents, who came from Bielefeld, had taken British nationality before his birth, in a household of notable musical tradition. He received lessons in piano and violin, but nobody contemplated a musical career: his father, prosperous in the Yorkshire wool trade, expected his son to join the business. After rather undistinguished studies in Bradford, he attended concerts and operas in London from Isleworth. As an apprentice in the wool trade he travelled through France, Germany and Sweden, and the discontent that this occupation caused him led to family friction. During these journeys he discovered Norway, which he soon felt to be a spiritual home.

In 1884 his father agreed to let him try his luck with an orange plantation on the banks of the St Johns River, in Florida. There he met Thomas F. Ward, a devout Catholic and a musician of great talent, who gave him the discipline he needed and whom he always regarded as the only truly valuable teaching he had received. Delius eagerly absorbed the musical turns of phrase of the Black workers on the plantation, an imprint that would reappear in his work. He then taught in Virginia, until his father agreed to finance a complete training in Leipzig.

In Leipzig (1886–1888) Reinecke did not see in him an outstanding pianist, but Jadassohn valued his dedication and his command of counterpoint and fugue. Delius disdained the academic atmosphere, although the city's musical life greatly widened his knowledge of the repertoire. Most decisive was his friendship with Grieg, to whom Sinding introduced him in 1887. Thanks to this bond he grew close to Sinding and to the painter Edvard Munch, and Augener published his Five Songs from the Norwegian in 1890. From the summer of 1888 he lived in Paris, where for almost a decade he frequented Fauré, Ravel and Florent Schmitt, as well as Gauguin, Mucha and Munch. In 1895 he contracted the syphilis that would overshadow the rest of his life.

His great ambition was opera. With libretti of his own he composed Irmelin (1890–1892) and The Magic Fountain (1893–1895), the latter with the memory of Florida preserved in the name of its hero. Koanga, inspired by the songs of enslaved Black people, was staged in Elberfeld in 1904. Shortly before marrying the German painter Jelka Rosen in 1903, with whom he had shared a house in Grez-sur-Loing since 1897, he had anglicised his name to Frederick. His most accomplished work in the genre was A Village Romeo and Juliet (1899–1901), based on a novel by Gottfried Keller: two young lovers, unable to live together because of family feuds, spend a day together before they die. The work is organised into brief scenes centred on moods rather than on action.

In orchestral music, Delius heard little of his work in those years, but Norway offered him notable opportunities. His symphonic poem on Ibsen was performed in Christiania in 1891, and the music he wrote for Gunnar Heiberg's satire Folkeraadet provoked a scandal in 1897. In Germany, by contrast, his success grew thanks to the conductor Hans Haym, who premiered Over the Hills and Far Away in Elberfeld. In England, the first concert devoted to his music took place in 1899, financed by the composer himself. The decisive impetus came with Thomas Beecham, whose sensitivity to the character of Delius's music made him his most important interpreter; in 1909 he conducted the first complete performance of A Mass of Life.

During the First World War, Delius moved away from the rhapsody to explore more traditional forms, such as the violin sonatas and the concertos for strings. His health, however, deteriorated through illness, and by around 1920 he could barely hold a pen. His greatest commercial success came with the incidental music for James Elroy Flecker's Hassan, performed 281 times in London from 1923 onwards. Blind and almost paralysed, he seemed to have ended his career until the young musician Eric Fenby, an admirer of his work, offered in 1928 to act as his amanuensis. Thanks to him Delius enjoyed a final period of creativity, with works such as Cynara and the Songs of Farewell (1930). In 1933 he received a visit from Edward Elgar. He died in Grez in 1934, and his remains were transferred to Limpsfield, in Surrey, the following year.

Delius occupies a singular place in British music. His art, centred on the transience of things and on nature as consolation, combines the legacy of Wagner and Grieg with an unmistakable voice. His music, rescued from neglect through Beecham's efforts, remains a reference point for the English sound identity of the early twentieth century.