Frederick Theodore Albert Delius CH (born Fritz Theodor Albert Delius; /ˈdiːliəs/; 29 January 1862 – 10 June 1934) was an English composer. He was born in Bradford, a city in northern England, to a wealthy business family. He refused to work in business, as his family had hoped. In 1884, he was sent to Florida in the United States to manage an orange plantation. However, he did not focus on managing the plantation and returned to Europe in 1886.
During his short time in Florida, Delius was influenced by African-American music. This inspired him to begin composing. He later studied music formally in Germany starting in 1886. After this training, he worked as a composer in Paris and then in the nearby town of Grez-sur-Loing, where he and his wife, Jelka, lived for most of their lives, except during World War I.
Delius’s first successes were in Germany, where conductors like Hans Haym promoted his music from the late 1890s. In his home country, Britain, his music was not regularly played in concerts until 1907, when Thomas Beecham began supporting his work. Beecham conducted the first full performance of A Mass of Life in London in 1909 (he had previously performed Part II in Germany in 1908). He also staged the opera A Village Romeo and Juliet at Covent Garden in 1910 and organized a six-day Delius festival in London in 1929. He also recorded many of Delius’s works on gramophone.
After 1918, Delius developed syphilis, a disease he had contracted earlier in Paris. This illness caused him to become paralyzed and blind. However, he completed some of his final compositions between 1928 and 1932 with the help of an assistant named Eric Fenby.
The melodic style of Delius’s early works was shaped by the music he heard in America and by European composers like Grieg and Wagner. As his skills improved, he created a unique style, known for his original orchestration and use of chromatic harmony. Delius’s music has been only sometimes popular and has often faced criticism. The Delius Society, formed in 1962 by his supporters, continues to share information about his life and works and sponsors the annual Delius Prize competition for young musicians.
Life
Delius was born in Bradford, Yorkshire. He was baptized as Fritz Theodor Albert Delius and used the name Fritz until he was about 40. He was the second of four sons, and there were also ten daughters in the family. His parents were Julius Delius (1822–1901) and Elise Pauline, née Krönig (1838–1929). Delius’s parents were born in Bielefeld, Westphalia. Julius’s family originally came from the Netherlands and had lived for several generations in German areas near the Rhine. Julius’s father, Ernst Friedrich Delius, had served with Blücher during the Napoleonic Wars. Julius moved to England to work as a wool merchant and became a British citizen in 1850. He married Elise in 1856.
The Delius household was musical. Famous musicians like Joseph Joachim and Carlo Alfredo Piatti visited and played for the family. Although Delius had German parents, he preferred the music of Chopin and Grieg over the Austro-German music of Mozart and Beethoven. This preference lasted his entire life. Delius first learned the violin from Rudolph Bauerkeller of the Hallé Orchestra and later studied with George Haddock of Leeds.
Although Delius became skilled enough to teach violin later in life, his greatest joy was improvising on the piano. A Chopin waltz was the first piece that made him feel a deep connection to music. From 1874 to 1878, he attended Bradford Grammar School, where John Coates, a slightly older student, was also a pupil. Delius then studied at the International College in Isleworth, near London, from 1878 to 1880. He was not especially quick or hardworking as a student, but the college’s location allowed him to attend concerts and operas in the city.
Julius Delius believed his son would join the family’s wool business. For three years, he tried to persuade Delius to do so. Delius’s first job was as a representative in Stroud, Gloucestershire, where he performed moderately well. Later, he was sent to Chemnitz but neglected his work to visit German musical centers and study with Hans Sitt. His father then sent him to Sweden, where Delius focused on art instead of business. He was influenced by Norwegian dramatists Henrik Ibsen and Gunnar Heiberg. Ibsen’s criticism of social norms made Delius feel even more distant from his family’s business background. Delius was then sent to France to represent the firm but often left his duties to visit the French Riviera. Eventually, Julius Delius realized his son would not succeed in the family business, but he still opposed music as a career. Instead, he sent Delius to America to manage an orange plantation.
It is unclear whether Julius or Delius suggested moving to America. A Florida property firm had offices in several English cities, including Bradford. William Randel, a writer about Delius’s time in Florida, suggested that either Julius visited the Bradford office and decided to send Delius to Florida, or Delius proposed the idea to escape the family business. Delius lived in Florida from spring 1884 to autumn 1885 at a plantation called Solano Grove on the Saint Johns River, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Jacksonville. He continued to focus on music and met Thomas Ward, who taught him counterpoint and composition. Delius later said Ward’s lessons were the only useful music instruction he ever received.
Delius described his home at Solano Grove as a "shanty," but it was a four-room cottage with space to entertain guests. Ward and Delius’s brother Ernest sometimes stayed there. The house was cool in summer due to river breezes and oak trees. Delius paid little attention to growing oranges and continued pursuing music. Jacksonville had a unique musical culture, with African-American waiters singing in hotels and ship crews singing while working. Delius was deeply influenced by the music he heard.
While in Florida, Delius published his first composition, a piano polka called Zum Carnival. In late 1885, he left Solano Grove and moved to Danville, Virginia. He advertised piano, violin, theory, and composition lessons, as well as French and German instruction. Danville had a strong musical community, and some of Delius’s early works were performed publicly there.
During his time in Florida, Delius is said to have had a son with a local African-American woman named Chloe. When Delius returned to Florida years later to sell the plantation, Chloe reportedly fled with the child to avoid Delius taking him away. In the 1990s, violinist Tasmin Little searched for descendants of Delius’s alleged son, believing this event influenced his later music.
In 1886, Julius Delius finally allowed his son to pursue a musical career and paid for formal studies. Delius left Danville, traveled to Europe via New York, and enrolled at the Leipzig Conservatoire in Germany. Leipzig was a major musical center, with conductors like Arthur Nikisch and Gustav Mahler. Delius made little progress in piano studies under Carl Reinecke but received praise for his counterpoint skills from Salomon Jadassohn. He also studied with Hans Sitt again. His early biographer, Patrick Hadley, noted that Delius’s academic training had little influence on his mature music, except in some weaker sections. Meeting composer Edvard Grieg in Leipzig was more important for Delius’s development. Grieg, like Ward before him, recognized Delius’s talent. In 1888, Sitt conducted Delius’s Florida Suite for Grieg, Christian Sinding, and the composer. Grieg and Sinding became strong supporters of Delius. At a London dinner party in April 1888, Grieg convinced Julius Delius that his son’s future was in music.
After leaving Leipzig in 1888, Delius moved to Paris, where his uncle, Theodore, supported him socially and financially. Over the next eight years, Delius befriended writers and artists like August Strindberg, Edvard Munch, and Paul Gauguin. He had little contact with French musicians, though Florent Schmitt arranged the piano scores for Delius’s first two operas, Irmelin and The Magic Fountain. Later, Ravel did the same for Delius’s opera Margot la rouge. As a result, Delius’s music did not become widely known in France.
Music
After the 1929 London festival, The Times music critic wrote that Delius "belongs to no school, follows no tradition, and is like no other composer in the form, content, or style of his music." This "extremely individual and personal idiom" came from years of musical training during which Delius studied and absorbed many influences. His earliest artistic experiences, he later said, came from hearing plantation songs carried by river to his home at Solano Grove. These songs, he told Fenby, inspired him to create music. Fenby wrote that many of Delius's early works sound like "Negro hymnology and folk-song," a style "not heard before in the orchestra, and seldom since." Delius may have known "black" music before his time in America. In the 1870s, a group called the Fisk Jubilee Singers from Nashville, Tennessee, toured Britain and Europe, performing in cities like Bradford. When Delius wrote to Elgar in 1933 about the "beautiful four-part harmonies" of black plantation workers, he might have been thinking of the spirituals sung by the Fisk group.
In Leipzig, Delius became a strong follower of Wagner, studying Wagner’s method of creating continuous music. According to Delius scholar Christopher Palmer, Delius’s ability to write long musical passages is his lasting influence from Wagner. From Wagner, Delius also learned complex harmonic techniques and a "sensuousness of sound." Grieg, however, may have influenced Delius more than any other composer. Like Delius, Grieg found inspiration in nature and folk melodies. Grieg’s style helped shape the Norwegian sound in Delius’s early music. Music writer Anthony Payne noted that Grieg’s "airy texture and non-developing use of chromaticism" showed Delius how to make Wagner’s style lighter. Early in his career, Delius was inspired by Chopin, later by Ravel, Richard Strauss, and the younger composer Percy Grainger, who introduced Delius to the tune of Brigg Fair.
According to Palmer, Delius may have found his direction as a composer from his French contemporary, Claude Debussy. Palmer points out similarities between the two, including their shared admiration for Grieg, Chopin, and their use of the sea and wordless voices in music. The opening of Brigg Fair is described by Palmer as "perhaps the most Debussian moment in Delius." In a review of Delius’s Two Danish Songs, Debussy wrote that the music was "very sweet, very pale – music to soothe convalescents in well-to-do neighborhoods." Delius admired Debussy’s orchestration but thought his works lacked melody, a criticism often aimed at Delius’s own music. Fenby noted Delius’s "flights of melodic poetic-prose" but also said Delius disliked giving the public what they wanted in the form of simple tunes.
Over time, Delius moved away from the traditional forms of his early music, developing a style that was "unlike the work of any other," according to Payne. As he matured, Delius replaced his early methods with a more complex style that Payne describes as having "increasing richness of chord structure" and "subtle means of contrast and development." Hubert Foss, a musical editor at Oxford University Press, wrote that Delius imagined sounds first and then found ways to create them. Delius’s full maturity as a composer began around 1907, when he started writing the works that made his reputation. Foss noted that Delius’s later music rejected traditional forms like the sonata or concerto, instead resembling "painting, especially the pointilliste style of design." This idea was also supported by Cardus.
Delius’s first orchestral compositions, as Christopher Palmer wrote, were the work of "an insipid if charming water-colorist." His Florida Suite (1887, revised 1889) combined elements of Grieg and American folk music, while his first opera, Irmelin (1890–1892), showed little of Delius’s unique style. Its harmony and structure were conventional, influenced by Wagner and Grieg. Payne said none of Delius’s works before 1895 were of lasting interest. The first major change in style appeared in Koanga (1895–1897), with richer chords and faster harmonic changes. Here, Delius "felt his way toward the vein that he was soon to tap so surely." In Paris (1899), the orchestration owed to Richard Strauss, though Payne said its quiet beauty lacked the deep emotion of Delius’s later works. Foss called Paris "one of the most complete, if not the greatest, of Delius’s musical paintings."
After Paris, Delius began combining orchestral and vocal elements in his major works. His first such work was A Village Romeo and Juliet, a music drama that told a tragic love story in a series of scenes rather than traditional acts. Musically, it showed a big improvement over his earlier operas. The entr'acte "The Walk to the Paradise Garden" was described by Heseltine as having "all the tragic beauty of mortality … concentrated and poured forth in music of overwhelming, almost intolerable poignancy." In this work, Delius began to achieve the sound texture that defined his later compositions. Though Delius’s music is often thought to lack melody and form, Cardus argued that melody was present, "floating and weaving itself into the texture of shifting harmony" – a feature he believed was shared only by Debussy.
Delius’s next work, Appalachia, introduced a recurring feature in his later music: the use of wordless singing to depict distant plantation songs that inspired him at Solano Grove. While Payne said Appalachia showed limited technical progress, Fenby noted an orchestral passage that expressed Delius’s idea of "the transitoriness of all mortal things mirrored in nature." After this, entire works rather than brief passages would reflect this idea. The transitional phase of Delius’s career ended with three vocal pieces: Sea Drift (1903), A Mass of Life (1904–05), and Songs of Sunset (1906–07). Payne called each of these masterpieces, in which Delius’s style began to fully develop. Fenby described A Mass of Life as "a vast parenthesis," unlike anything else Delius wrote, but still an important part of his growth.
Brigg Fair
Memorials and legacy
Before his death, Delius added a part to his will that said money from future performances of his music would help fund annual concerts featuring young composers. Delius died before this plan could be made official. Fenby said that Beecham convinced Jelka to change her will, so the money would instead be used to edit and record Delius's main works. After Jelka died in 1935, the Delius Trust was created to manage this task. As stated in Jelka's will, the Trust worked mainly under Beecham's guidance. After Beecham died in 1961, advisers were added to help the Trust. In 1979, the Musicians' Benevolent Fund took over the Trust's management. Over time, the Trust's goals expanded to include promoting the music of other composers who lived during Delius's time. The Trust now helps fund the Royal Philharmonic Society's Composition Prize for young composers.
Herbert Stothart arranged parts of Delius's music, especially "Appalachia," for the 1946 film The Yearling.
In 1962, fans of Delius's music who attended a centenary festival in Bradford formed the Delius Society. Fenby was its first president. With about 400 members, the Society is separate from the Trust but works closely with it. Its goals include sharing knowledge about Delius's life and works and encouraging performances and recordings. In 2004, the Society started an annual Delius Prize competition, offering £1,000 to the winner. In June 1984, the Delius Trust sponsored a performance of A Village Romeo and Juliet by Opera North at the Grand Theatre in Leeds, marking the 50th anniversary of Delius's death.
Public interest in Delius grew in the UK in 1968 after the BBC Television broadcast of Ken Russell's film Song of Summer. The film showed the years Delius and Fenby worked together; Fenby helped write the script with Russell. Max Adrian played Delius, Christopher Gable played Fenby, and Maureen Pryor played Jelka.
In America, a small memorial to Delius is located in Solano Grove. The Delius Association of Florida has organized an annual festival in Jacksonville every year to celebrate Delius's birthday. At Jacksonville University, the Music Faculty gives an annual Delius Composition Prize. In February 2012, Delius was honored by the Royal Mail as one of ten notable Britons in the "Britons of Distinction" stamp series.
Beecham said Delius was an innovator who "created his own forms" instead of following classical traditions. Fenby agreed, saying Delius was a person who "discovered new ways to make life more beautiful." Palmer wrote that Delius's lasting influence is his music's ability to inspire creativity and help people notice the beauty in life. Palmer ended by quoting George Eliot's poem The Choir Invisible: "Frederick Delius … belongs to the company of true artists for whose life and work the world is a better place to live in, and of whom surely is composed, in a literal sense, 'the choir invisible/Whose music is the gladness of the world.'"
Recordings
In 1927, Beecham conducted the first recordings of Delius's music for the Columbia label. These included a short musical piece from A Village Romeo and Juliet called "Walk to the Paradise Garden" and a piece titled On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, performed by the Royal Philharmonic Society's orchestra. This started a long series of Delius recordings conducted by Beecham that continued until the end of his life. Other conductors also recorded Delius's works. For example, Geoffrey Toye recorded Brigg Fair, In a Summer Garden, Summer Night on the River, and the "Walk to the Paradise Garden" between 1929 and 1930. Fenby wrote that on his first day in Grez, Jelka listened to Beecham's recording of First Cuckoo. In May 1934, when Delius was near death, Fenby played him Geoffrey Toye's In a Summer Garden, which Fenby said was the last music Delius ever heard. By the end of the 1930s, Beecham had recorded most of Delius's major orchestral and choral works for Columbia, along with several songs in which he played piano for soprano Dora Labbette. By 1936, Columbia and His Master's Voice (HMV) had released recordings of Delius's Violin Sonatas 1 and 2, the Elegy and Caprice, and some shorter pieces.
Full recordings of Delius's operas were not available until after World War II. Beecham, now working with the HMV label, led the first complete recording of A Village Romeo and Juliet in 1948, performed by the new Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus. Later recordings of this opera include versions by Meredith Davies for EMI in 1971, Charles Mackerras for Argo in 1989, and a German-language version conducted by Klauspeter Seibel in 1995. Beecham's former student, Norman Del Mar, recorded a complete version of Irmelin for BBC Digital in 1985. In 1997, EMI reissued Meredith Davies's 1976 recording of Fennimore and Gerda, while Richard Hickox conducted a German-language version of the same work for Chandos in the same year. Since World War II, recordings of Delius's major works and many of his individual songs have been released regularly. Many of these recordings were made with the help of the Delius Society, which has created several lists of Delius's recorded music.