Frederick Delius: Music "Carried Sweet And Clear"

Frederick Delius was born on this day in Yorkshire, England, in 1862. At 24, he lived the classic story of breaking away from the family business - wool, no less - to pursue a love for the arts, in this case, music. The break was interesting for it took him first to Solano Grove and an orange plantation on the banks of the St. Johns River south of Jacksonville, Florida. Later, he would teach music in Danville, Virginia, before returning to Europe for formal education in Germany. He took the sounds of American culture with him. In 1888, he settled in Paris, later married the painter, Jelka Rosen, and devoted his life to composition.

In the last sixteen years of his life he was tortured by the pain of a slow death from syphilis contracted during his early years in Paris. In the four years before his death in 1934, he was blind and essentially paralyzed from the neck down. He composed and completed some of his most significant work during this period, all of it reaching paper through the notations of his loyal amanuensis, Eric Fenby.

In 1968, Ken Russell directed a biography of Frederick Delius for the BBC. OTR saw the program by chance in its U.S. premier during the summer of the following year. He was in full cultural rebellion against the West at the time, but the unique lyric quality of this English composer's music was like a magnet. There was no escape from the compelling soundscapes with such rich, complex imagery and depth.

OTR would outgrow his bitterness over the lost decade (1964-74) of the Johnson-Nixon years, but he never outgrew his fondness for the music of Delius. Today, he's pleased to report a wave of renewed international interest in that music in the last twenty years. In fact, the Delius recording catalog has never been larger in spite of the music being some of the most difficult to realize in performance.

This post opened with Song of Summer, written in 1930 when Delius was blind and paralyzed. To conclude, here are two earlier compositions. The first is from the Florida Suite, written when he was twenty years old. Music historians agree that this piece represents the first use of black American folk idioms in classical form by a European composer. He also composed the first black opera, Koanga. (George Gershwin is most often erroneously credited with this accomplishment, but his opera, Porgy and Bess, premiered fifty years later.) Delius influenced a number of popular music composers well  into the 20th century.

Duke Ellington composed In A Blue Summer Garden  as a tribute to Delius. And here is the work that inspired Ellington to honor one of the most lyrical composers in western music.

Music is a cry of the soul. It is addressed and should appeal instantly to the soul of the listener. It is a revelation, a thing to be reverenced.           

                                                                                                 Frederick Delius


Photo: Portrait of Frederick Delius by his wife, Jelka Rosen.

Acknowledgments:
The Delius Society
Before the Champions: Frederick Delius' Florida Suite for Orchestra, Mary E. Greene., M.A. Thesis, University of Miami, 2011
Radio Swiss Classic, Frederick Delius
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Frederick Delius

This is a revision of an earlier post from 2012.

Favorite Scenes From A Century Of Cinema - 7

What a great film. Don't know one man who can ignore the powerful memories emerging from this scene.

The original "field of dreams" in Dyersville, Iowa, has been a sacred destination for almost twenty-five years now. Here is some recent news about the field's preservation and future plans for its surroundings.

Reunions Ubique

OTR's high school reunion - the big 5-0 - takes place in about eighteen months, but the phenomenon relative to his older friends has been swirling around him these last few years. Frankly, he's looking forward to returning to Chesapeake Country and the Eastern Shore where he will see old classmates. Thanks to Facebook, about a hundred of them will not be strangers although they have gone unseen for most of those five decades. Perhaps he would have stayed closer to the Class of 1964 had he been a native and a product of twelve years of school there. Either way, it's going to be interesting, especially after reading this article that tells us we never really leave high school at all.

A Jazz Birthday: Stephane Grappelli (1908-1997)

Stephane Grappelli in rehearsal                                      Photo: Murdo MacLeod   

Today marks the birthday of one of OTR's favorite jazz artists, the violinist, Stephane Grappelli. He was born is Paris, grew up poor and made a marginal living playing the violin in the streets and accompanying silent films on the piano. In 1934 he met a gypsy guitarist named Django Reinhard and, with him,, formed a quintette - Hot Club de France -  that would make history in the world of jazz and popular music.

Grappelli made his American debut in 1960, long after the Hot Club dissolved, and enjoyed a second career playing to admiring fans around the world until his death in 1997.

Here is a one-hour interview he made for NPR's Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz in 1990. It's lively and full of warm conversation,  humor, and some wonderful, intimate performances. If readers don't have an hour to enjoy this jazz master  at work, here is a taste of his contribution to music. OTR hopes that music is a song without end.

Do You Nestor?

"The Chicane" and Mormon Temple, Kensington, Maryland     Photo: Evan Glass

Most news junkies know Jonah Goldberg for his political commentary. Beyond the politics, he often provides us with interesting and  humorous anecdotes about life inside the Beltway. His National Review post today may deal with gun control, but OTR thinks the real gem therein is the concept of nestoring.

Anyone who has driven the Capital Beltway across eastern Montgomery County is quite familiar with  planned nestoring. A portion of that stretch is fondly referred to as "the chicane" by local drivers. When you drive it at 80 mph in a crisp Saturday sunrise and no traffic - probably impossible these days - you'll understand. Some rules are just made to be broken.

Roe v. Wade Turns Forty

Norma McCorvey, plaintiff, "Jane Roe," in Rove v. Wade

Today is the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a Supreme Court decision that has done little to settle the question of abortion in American society. OTR abhors the practice along with the decision guaranteeing its universal right, and he would have opposed a decision ensuring its universal denial as well. From a legal perspective, he believes a decision on this matter is best reserved for the states. The best decision, however, does not reside in the courts at all for this is a matter reserved for the heart.

The American experiment has a rather questionable record when it chooses the legal extremes of universal permission or denial in moral matters. Two glaring examples of failure in this arena include the prohibition of alcohol (1919-1933) and the so-called War on Drugs (1914-present, but enhanced since 1970). Although Roe v. Wade brought, among other outcomes, access and safety to the practice of abortion, it gave rise to program abuse, deep social division, and the ethnic cleansing of black America that, sadly, rivals the best intentions of the eugenics movement of a century ago. Indeed, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

This is an emotional issue - "a matter reserved for the heart" - and its subjective nature arouses broad opinion. William Katz has a post at Urgent Agenda that shares/shadows the observations above.  Our friends at Real Clear Politics have provided links to Jeffrey Toobin's comments in The New Yorker and those of Gail Collins from The New York Times. The editors at National Review also spoke on the issue earlier today.

As The Blue Model Of Government Fades, What Will Take Its Place?

Columbus Crossing the Atlantic                                              N.C. Wyeth, 1927

The old adage, the more things change the more they remain the same, finds serious reinforcement in a Walter Russell Mead article posted yesterday at The American Interest. Mead is a traditional liberal schooled in English, history, and American foreign policy. In that respect he is an "old school Democrat" with  strong beliefs in our Constitution as well as an understanding and respect for the traditions that have guided the nation and its foreign policy over two centuries. He understands that our government structure may change, but the principles that have made it exceptional will remain strong:

The state will transform but it will not disappear. We may change the way the educational system works, but the goal of the changes will be to ensure more and better universal education. We may change the policies aimed at helping low income people move up the ladder of life, but American society does not want to write off the poor. We may liberalize drug laws and look for alternatives to imprisonment for non-violent offenders, but we won’t abandon the effort to protect the public from unsafe or impure drugs and we won’t turn law and order over to the private sector. We may look for ways to reduce the bureaucratic delays when it comes to permitting processes, but we will not abandon the effort to impose safety and environmental standards. The state will go high tech, its processes will accelerate, bureaucracies will become flatter and more open, but it won’t wither away.

Full Fathom Five: 5.0 Liberalism and the Future of the State  is a short lesson in the traditions that have shaped our national character. It is a hopeful and satisfying approach to the question of change, an ever-present challenge and opportunity that Mead sees as new beginnings without end:

The old America I grew up in and the new America growing up around me now are very different places. Some of the changes are for the better and others are for the worse. Yet somehow the America in which my grandfather was born in 1897 is connected to the country my youngest great-nephew (born in 2012) will come to know. The lasting values that were the best things about the America of 1897, or of 1776 for that matter, will still matter in 2097 and beyond. They will be embodied in different institutions and will deal with more complex realities than we knew in earlier times, but the spirit of ordered liberty that has brought the American experiment so far, so fast, will, if we get things right, still be at the core of American life—and we will still, I suspect, be quarreling about how to organize and limit government in ways that the founding fathers would recognize.

OTR thinks readers will enjoy this uplifting commentary from someone well-grounded in the American story and equipped with exceptional writing skills, two elements we find sorely lacking among our political elite today.

On that note...it is always a good day when this blogger can link politics, history, economics, literature and music into a coherent post.

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.