Devious Delius

From high atop beautiful downtown Delhi New York, it's time once gain for Sadko's World of Music. This week we feature the work of composer Frederick Delius.
Fritz Theodor Albert Delius was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England, on 29 January 1862 to parents who had come to England from Bielefeld, Germany. Julius, his father, was a prosperous businessman in one of Yorkshire's great Victorian industries, wool. The home was a musically cultured one, and, as a boy, Fritz learned to play both violin and piano proficiently before he reached his teens. After attending Bradford Grammar School (1874-8), he spent two years studying at the International College near London, and then some apprentice years in his father's business.
These were characterized by a growing frustration with business life, and in March 1884, Fritz persuaded his father to let him try his hand at cultivating oranges in Florida, USA. His plantation, Solano Grove, was some hours upstream from Jacksonville on the banks of the St. John's River. Once there, he quickly secured a piano and found a local source for theory lessons, a Jacksonville organist named Thomas Ward, an important early influence. He also absorbed the sounds of the singing of negro workers, which were to be documented in his Florida Suite of 1886-7. Delius stayed there for a year and a half, before moving on to Danville, Virginia, with sufficient confidence to teach music in his own right.

Delius, Frederick, 1862-1934.  Florida suite; Dance rhapsody no. 2 ; 

Over the hills and far away Rev. & edited by Beecham. Seraphim, 1973? 
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Sir Thomas Beecham, conductor. 

Delius's high musical summer, which was to last from 1901, when he completed 

his operatic masterpiece, A Village Romeo and Juliet, to almost the end of the 

first World War. Appalachia dates from 1902, Sea Drift from 1903/4 

Sea drift (text by Walt Whitman).  A song of the high hills. Angel [1974] 
John Noble, baritone (1st work); Liverpool Philharmonic Chorus; 

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra; Sir Charles Groves, conductor.  

North country sketches. Life's dance.  A song of summer. Angel 1975. 
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Sir Charles Groves, conductor.  

Delius suffered severe health problems by 1910 – manifestations of the 
syphilitic infection he contracted in Florida which culminated in 
blindness and complete paralysis, although his speech and his mind 
remained unimpaired. In 1928 Delius, who had continued to compose, met a
young man who thought he could assist the stricken composer. Eric 
Fenby, a Yorkshire-born composer who greatly admired Delius' music, 
moved into the Delius home and spent the next six years taking the elder
composer's dictation. After several vain attempts at cures, Delius died
 in 1934