Delius, an Englishman who settled in France, was one of these names that kept popping up in the books I was reading about Debussy. Oddly enough, the first piece of his I listened to remains my favourite, the Songs of Farewell for chorus and orchestra. This is a truly beautiful and uplifting setting of five poems by Walt Whitman, a man whose poetry has inspired several of my favourite works. There is sadness but also optimism in both music and poems.

Perhaps the best way to begin exploring Delius's music is to buy one of the many available compilations of his orchestral miniatures. These are short, easy to “get into” and in my opinion contain much of Delius's finest music. Here you will find the likes of In a Summer Garden, where a sort of Walt Disney animation music meets Impressionism. You will find excerpts from full-blown operas like the utterly sublime Walk to the Paradise Garden, La Calinda, the supremely sweet Intermezzo from Fennimore and Gerda, the timeless Intermezzo and Serenade from Hassan and the Irmelin Prelude. And they will surely contain the pair of pieces Summer Night on the River and its popular sister On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring.

This last piece is really relaxing, and features in a superb radio play by Carole Rosen, which was broadcast in about 1984, called The Brass Cuckoo. (Click to see my own transcript.) It was about the correspondence between Delius and the young Philip Heseltine. Indeed Delius's life makes very interesting reading, and one of my favourite books is Eric Fenby's “Delius as I Knew Him” which led me to visit Grez-sur-Loing during a visit to France in 1985. What Fenby did and the help he gave to Delius was remarkable, and the marvellous Ken Russell film about his stay “A Song of Summer” is now available to purchase in the UK.

A Song of Summer is also the title of another fine, short, Nature-inspired work which begins tranquilly but grows more animated, a property it shares with the folk-song based Brigg Fair. There are many fine, varied moments in the Florida Suite, which I think Beecham said was the finest orchestrated of Delius's works. His concertos are not like those of other composers. I like the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra best, and have seen the Concerto for Violin and Cello at the Proms. The early Suite for Violin and Orchestra appeals to me more than the proper concertos.

Delius wrote several large-scale works for chorus and orchestra, and his tour de force is the rousing A Mass of Life, which I hitch-hiked to London to see at the Proms in 1988. It's a lengthy piece which I still don't know thoroughly enough, but there are two totally fantastic, joyful sections you can't fail to miss when chorus and orchestra give it everything - one the very first movement and one which erupts from a peaceful pastoral section. The Whitman setting Sea Drift is a fine piece. I like A Song of the High Hills too, but don't yet know the Songs of Sunset. Delius was greatly inspired by Nature and wrote a few more “hill” pieces. Over the Hills and Far Away is a tuneful piece with a particularly memorable introduction and there are interesting passages in the North Country Sketches which well mirror the landscape.

Delius wrote some gorgeous Part-Songs. There is something special about unaccompanied voices. I like The Splendour Falls and On Craig Dhu a lot, not to mention the infectious pair To be Sung of a Summer Night on the Water, which my head was full of as I had the pleasure of strolling along the banks of the Loing. One of my Delius favourites is a short and simple piece which ought to be on more of the compilations of his miniatures, the lyrical Air and Dance for strings.

The Requiem is a fairly good piece. I like the gentle rocking motif on woodwind at the end, but I am maybe more keen on the anti-religious words than the music:

• View the words
• Download them as a three page Corel Wordperfect file (12KB)

Lastly, click here to visit the ultimate Delius page.