Delius: Florida Suite / Over The Hills And Far Away

Description

Frederick Delius (1862 - 1934) Florida SuiteDaybreak-DanceBy the RiverSunset- Near the PlantationAt Night Over the Hills and Far AwayIdylle de PrintempsLa QuadrooneScherzoFinal Scene from Koanga Fritz Delius was born in the Northern English city ofBradford, where his father Julius had moved from Germany to take advantage ofthe opportunities offered there by the then flourishing wool trade. The familywas a large one and established in comfortable circumstances. In ancestry itwas once suggested that Delius was descended from Julius Caesar, but the moreprobable descent was from Dutch forebears, who had by the sixteenth centuryadopted the Latin form of the family name. Although Delius as a composer hasoften been associated with the essentially English, he boasted, in fact, a muchwider genetic and cultural heritage, German, Dutch and by adoption French, withmarked influence from Scandinavia and from Florida. It was to this last that hisfather sent him, when it seemed clear that he had no inclination for the familywool trade. Julius Delius saw a possible future for his son in the Florida orangegroves and in 1887 Delius set sail from Liverpool, bound for New York andthence south to reach Solano Grove, a plantation of a hundred acres of orange orchardson the banks of the St Johns River. Here there was a substantial enough houseand Delius, showing more inclination to music than to business, was able hereto acquire a grand piano and to embark on lessons in counterpoint from ThomasWard in Jacksonville. He later moved to Danville in Virginia, abandoning hisplantation and seeking now to earn his living as a musician, teaching violin,piano and theory and taking part in local musical activities. It was at this time, in the summer of 1886, that JuliusDelius allowed his son to return to Europe to enter Leipzig Conservatory, wherehe studied with Reinecke, Jadassohn and Sitt and formed an important friendshipwith Grieg. It was through the last that his father was persuaded to continueto support him, allowing him, therefore, to move to Paris. His meeting therewith the young painter Jelka Rosen led to a liaison. In 1897 they set up housetogether in Grez-sur-Loing and married in 1903. Much of the rest of the life of Delius was spent at Grez-sur-Loing.During the war years it was necessary to take refuge in England, a time of somedifficulty in view of the absence of the usual royalty payments from Germany,where he had already made something of a name for himself as a composer. Afterthe war he returned to France, but gradually succumbed to effects of syphilis, possiblycontracted in America, suffering blindness and paralysis. For the last sixyears of his life he was helped in his work by the young Yorkshire musician EricFen by, who served as his amanuensis. He died in 1934. As a composer Delius owed much to the conductor SirThomas Beecham in England, while in Germany he had been helped in his earlyyears by the particular support of Hans Haym,