Frederick Delius
Frederick Delius was an English composer, pianist and violinist. He was born in Bradford on 29 January 1862 to German immigrant parents. His father, a successful wool merchant who also owned a citrus plantation in Florida, expected him to join the family business. Delius taught himself piano as a child and later took violin lessons, but pursued music despite his father's view that it was only a pastime.
At 22, Delius left for Florida to grow oranges, but concentrated instead on making music and studying theory with a local organist. After about a year and a half he moved to Virginia, where he taught music, mainly to the children of tobacco-planters. In the United States he encountered the music of Black Americans, which became one influence on his later work. He entered the Leipzig Conservatory in 1886, studying with Carl Reinecke and meeting Edvard Grieg and Christian Sinding.
After his studies Delius moved to Paris, where he developed from writing songs and small instrumental pieces to composing for orchestra. His Paris works included the operas Irmelin, The Magic Fountain and Koanga, the symphonic poem Life's Dance, and the orchestral nocturne Paris. His music of this period drew on English, Scandinavian and French literature and landscapes, as well as plantation workers' songs heard in Florida. Although he composed six operas, opera did not suit him well: his stage works were considered insufficiently dramatic.
In 1903 he married the German painter Jelka Rosen, whom he had met in Paris, and they settled at her house in Grez-sur-Loing. Her inheritance gave them financial security, and her literary interests and knowledge of languages helped her find texts for his vocal music. During his most productive years after 1901, he composed A Village Romeo and Juliet, Appalachia, A Mass of Life, Brigg Fair, Dance Rhapsody and Songs of Sunset. Jelka also designed the sets for Thomas Beecham's 1920 production of A Village Romeo and Juliet.
Delius later wrote a violin sonata, string quartet, Violin Concerto, Cello Concerto and Double Concerto for Violin and Cello. His health declined severely from 1921; Parkinson's disease left him completely blind and almost entirely paralysed by 1926. Jelka gave up her own work to care for him. Eric Fenby later assisted him, taking dictation for such final works as Songs of Farewell, Caprice and Elegy, Deux Aquarelles and the Third Violin Sonata.
Delius had a highly individual, impressionistic style, marked by refined harmony, flexible rhythm and a preference for orchestral colour. He also used wordless chorus as an orchestral colour, notably in A Song of the High Hills (1912). His music often proceeds in a loose, rhapsodic sequence of themes rather than through strict formal construction. He received the Royal Philharmonic Society's Gold Medal in 1925 and was appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1929. Delius died in Grez-sur-Loing on 10 June 1934, aged 72; Beecham championed his music throughout his conducting career.