0:00:10 > 0:00:15Burials in Britain are not normally held after dark.
0:00:16 > 0:00:18But nothing in the life and music
0:00:18 > 0:00:21of the composer Frederick Delius was normal.
0:00:24 > 0:00:30He was buried in May 1935, yet he'd actually died almost a year earlier.
0:00:32 > 0:00:36The short ceremony took place at midnight in a Surrey churchyard,
0:00:36 > 0:00:40yet Delius himself had nothing but contempt for the Church of England
0:00:40 > 0:00:42and all religion.
0:00:44 > 0:00:48And the village, Limpsfield, was a place Delius had never even visited.
0:00:50 > 0:00:53He was a Northerner by birth,
0:00:53 > 0:00:56but hadn't actually lived in Britain for 50 years.
0:00:59 > 0:01:01It was supposed to be a secret burial,
0:01:01 > 0:01:02but the press got wind of it,
0:01:02 > 0:01:05and the next day's papers reported that,
0:01:05 > 0:01:10"Delius was buried with owls hooting in an age-old yew tree."
0:01:12 > 0:01:14This nocturnal assignation
0:01:14 > 0:01:17was the final twist in the tale
0:01:17 > 0:01:20of one of Britain's most mysterious composers.
0:01:20 > 0:01:24Indeed, it's hard to know whether he was British at all.
0:01:25 > 0:01:29For the last nine years of his life he'd been blind and paralysed,
0:01:29 > 0:01:32and almost silent.
0:01:33 > 0:01:38But in his glory days, he'd lived life to the full and beyond.
0:02:46 > 0:02:48What is it about the music that speaks to you, then?
0:02:48 > 0:02:51Its sensuality, no question about it.
0:02:56 > 0:02:59It's passion. It's just aliveness.
0:03:10 > 0:03:13Colourfulness, vitality
0:03:13 > 0:03:15and sensuality.
0:03:15 > 0:03:17There's always an underlying
0:03:17 > 0:03:18eroticism in Delius.
0:03:23 > 0:03:27I get the feeling that I'm floating, floating in space, almost.
0:03:27 > 0:03:29And it's an airy kind of experience.
0:03:29 > 0:03:30It's not earthbound.
0:03:30 > 0:03:32It's up there, somewhere.
0:03:32 > 0:03:34It's always been borne aloft.
0:03:53 > 0:03:56Fritz Delius - that's how he was christened -
0:03:56 > 0:03:59was the fourth of fourteen children.
0:03:59 > 0:04:01His parents were devout Germans,
0:04:01 > 0:04:06who'd recently settled in the Yorkshire town of Bradford,
0:04:06 > 0:04:10home to the prosperous wool trade in the 1860s.
0:04:10 > 0:04:15That, in his father's view, was Fritz's destiny.
0:04:15 > 0:04:19But from an early age, Fritz was the despair of his father.
0:04:21 > 0:04:24On Sunday, the whole family would go to church.
0:04:24 > 0:04:29And Delius would abscond just as everyone was going into the church.
0:04:29 > 0:04:31And his sister would then
0:04:31 > 0:04:33have to rescue him at Sunday lunch
0:04:33 > 0:04:37when his father would quiz Fritz,
0:04:37 > 0:04:39in particular,
0:04:39 > 0:04:40about the contents of the sermon
0:04:40 > 0:04:42to see if he'd been paying attention.
0:04:42 > 0:04:44Of course, young Fritz had been sitting outside
0:04:44 > 0:04:46looking across the moors
0:04:46 > 0:04:49thinking about nature and other matters of philosophy, perhaps.
0:04:49 > 0:04:53But, sort of, shows early that church wasn't really his thing.
0:05:01 > 0:05:05This student setting of the Ave Maria, in German,
0:05:05 > 0:05:09was the only piece of religious music Delius ever wrote.
0:05:09 > 0:05:14The sceptical writings of Friedrich Nietzsche were more to his taste.
0:05:19 > 0:05:24The family wool business was in the district of Bradford
0:05:24 > 0:05:27known, even today, as Little Germany.
0:05:27 > 0:05:30The straight lines, ordered structures
0:05:30 > 0:05:33and formal motifs of his childhood
0:05:33 > 0:05:36were the exact opposite of everything that would unfold
0:05:36 > 0:05:39in Fritz's life and music.
0:05:40 > 0:05:44Various biographers have tried to piece together
0:05:44 > 0:05:46the disjointed strands of Delius's early life.
0:05:46 > 0:05:50Among them, the conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham,
0:05:50 > 0:05:53his foremost champion.
0:05:53 > 0:05:56We had a book by his sister,
0:05:56 > 0:06:00devoted mostly to his childhood,
0:06:00 > 0:06:02what sort of jam he liked for tea,
0:06:02 > 0:06:06and what kind of rod he was beaten with by his parents
0:06:06 > 0:06:08when he was a naughty boy.
0:06:08 > 0:06:12That does little justice to his sister, Clare,
0:06:12 > 0:06:14who published her book in 1935
0:06:14 > 0:06:18against the wishes of the Delius circle.
0:06:18 > 0:06:23She says that their father Julius had no interest in Fritz's music,
0:06:23 > 0:06:26and almost succeeded in wrecking his career
0:06:26 > 0:06:29and robbing the world of his genius.
0:06:29 > 0:06:31She was writing the year after her brother's death,
0:06:31 > 0:06:36and two years after Hitler had come to power in Germany.
0:06:36 > 0:06:38"What Hitler is to Germany today," she said,
0:06:38 > 0:06:42"so my father was to our family".
0:06:42 > 0:06:45This iron disciplinarian required all his children
0:06:45 > 0:06:49to spread their hands on the dining table before each meal,
0:06:49 > 0:06:52so that he could inspect their finger nails.
0:06:52 > 0:06:58Yet, he was generous with his money, and a keen patron of local music.
0:06:58 > 0:06:59Delius grew up
0:06:59 > 0:07:02in a very cultured, very Germanic, background,
0:07:02 > 0:07:04where I suppose the three Bs
0:07:04 > 0:07:06will have been worshipped -
0:07:06 > 0:07:08Bach, Beethoven and Brahms.
0:07:08 > 0:07:13I think, though, that it just stifled him in the end,
0:07:13 > 0:07:15because there was this thing that, yes, you can like music,
0:07:15 > 0:07:19you can appreciate it, you can learn the violin, learn the piano,
0:07:19 > 0:07:23but you mustn't be a musician because really that's just not on.
0:07:23 > 0:07:28Fritz, the wool trader, made several fairly fruitless expeditions
0:07:28 > 0:07:31to Scandinavia, France and Germany.
0:07:31 > 0:07:33So, instead, he persuaded his father
0:07:33 > 0:07:36there was money in citrus fruit in Florida.
0:07:36 > 0:07:40"Set me up in an orange plantation", he said, "and I'll manage it.
0:07:40 > 0:07:43"Not much help to the family firm, admittedly,
0:07:43 > 0:07:45"but at least I'll learn to be a businessman."
0:07:45 > 0:07:49So, in 1884, at the age of 22,
0:07:49 > 0:07:53Fritz Delius made his escape, and it changed his life.
0:08:02 > 0:08:04He arrived in Jacksonville,
0:08:04 > 0:08:08then I imagine he took a river steamer on south of here.
0:08:09 > 0:08:12Then undoubtedly took a wagon of some kind, you know,
0:08:12 > 0:08:15about four and a half miles on south to Solano Grove.
0:08:17 > 0:08:20Jacksonville was a lively, cultured city,
0:08:20 > 0:08:23but Delius's hundred-acre plantation
0:08:23 > 0:08:26at Solano Grove was a remote spot
0:08:26 > 0:08:30in the Florida swamp, prey to rattlesnakes and alligators -
0:08:30 > 0:08:33a far cry from the Pennines he'd left behind.
0:08:34 > 0:08:36And the house that he lived in
0:08:36 > 0:08:40was only about 75ft or so away from the river itself.
0:08:47 > 0:08:51It was a little cottage with four rooms and a detached kitchen.
0:08:54 > 0:08:57Upstairs there was a sleeping loft.
0:08:57 > 0:09:03So, all the breezes from the river would waft through the house,
0:09:03 > 0:09:07you know, and keep Frederick and whoever else happened to be
0:09:07 > 0:09:11with him, you know, comfortable.
0:09:11 > 0:09:14Young Fritz was, by all accounts, a charmer.
0:09:14 > 0:09:16Much later in life,
0:09:16 > 0:09:20he told one or two friends that he'd fathered a child at Solano Grove.
0:09:20 > 0:09:24It was quite likely, you know, I mean, my God,
0:09:24 > 0:09:27we've got a 22-year-old young man here,
0:09:27 > 0:09:30and he's out there in the woods
0:09:30 > 0:09:34and randy as a billy goat
0:09:34 > 0:09:37and so, he'll take whatever he finds.
0:09:37 > 0:09:42The idea we have of him in his bath chair, paralysed,
0:09:42 > 0:09:45doesn't tell you what he was like when he was younger.
0:09:45 > 0:09:48A bit of a sportsman, played cricket at school and that sort of thing.
0:09:48 > 0:09:49Got about the world.
0:09:49 > 0:09:51A vigorous, physical kind of man,
0:09:51 > 0:09:55He was a very handsome man, tall.
0:09:55 > 0:09:57He has lots of...
0:09:57 > 0:09:59female admirers.
0:09:59 > 0:10:04Fritz was soon captivated by his exotic surroundings.
0:10:04 > 0:10:07The sights, smells and, above all, sounds of Florida
0:10:07 > 0:10:11were pleasures that lasted his whole life.
0:10:11 > 0:10:13Commerce didn't stand a chance.
0:10:13 > 0:10:18Right behind the cottage were orange groves.
0:10:18 > 0:10:19That was a total flop.
0:10:19 > 0:10:22You know, he was too interested in the music that he found here
0:10:22 > 0:10:24and heard here.
0:10:24 > 0:10:26And so the orange growing was a flop.
0:10:26 > 0:10:30His main interest was not oranges or money or anything like that,
0:10:30 > 0:10:34it was the singing of the black workers at the farm.
0:10:34 > 0:10:38Delius would sit on the veranda of his orange plantation,
0:10:38 > 0:10:40listening to the blacks down the river,
0:10:40 > 0:10:43singing in an apparently improvisatory way,
0:10:43 > 0:10:47coming from afar, floating on the evening breeze.
0:10:48 > 0:10:51And he said he heard the most lovely harmony
0:10:51 > 0:10:54and the most lovely tunes. He'd never heard anything like that.
0:10:59 > 0:11:03In England he had visited and heard minstrel shows,
0:11:03 > 0:11:07and so he was not totally ignorant of the music
0:11:07 > 0:11:10of African Americans. He had already heard some.
0:11:17 > 0:11:21But when he was here in this environment, a semi-tropical place,
0:11:21 > 0:11:24enormous oaks, you know, magnolia trees,
0:11:24 > 0:11:26it was totally different.
0:11:26 > 0:11:31He was here where the music was being made and where it originated.
0:11:31 > 0:11:37This was Florida only twenty years or so after the American Civil War.
0:11:37 > 0:11:39Some of the men on his plantation
0:11:39 > 0:11:41had started their working lives as slaves.
0:11:41 > 0:11:46And the work songs and spirituals grew out of that environment.
0:11:46 > 0:11:51He has this tune, # da-da di-da da-da dee daa dar. #
0:11:51 > 0:11:54And when you play that in a European way, as you would,
0:11:54 > 0:11:57# Da-da-da-da-da-da-dee-daa-daa. #
0:11:57 > 0:11:59You've missed the point.
0:11:59 > 0:12:01The whole idea with Delius
0:12:01 > 0:12:04is that he heard it probably sung there at the plantation,
0:12:04 > 0:12:08# La-da li-da di-da dei daa da. # like that.
0:12:08 > 0:12:11And it should be played like that.
0:12:13 > 0:12:17Many spirituals were mostly pentatonic.
0:12:17 > 0:12:21You know, if you play all the black notes, that's a pentatonic scale.
0:12:21 > 0:12:27You hear that in his music all the way to almost his very last works.
0:12:27 > 0:12:30Every single Delius chord, you can hear black music-making,
0:12:30 > 0:12:32you can hear
0:12:32 > 0:12:36bluesy things, you can hear,
0:12:36 > 0:12:39all this, sort of, joy and suffering at the same time,
0:12:39 > 0:12:41which is dominating in Delius's music.
0:12:41 > 0:12:45So, we have in the Florida Suite,
0:12:45 > 0:12:47in the third movement we have a,
0:12:47 > 0:12:50we have a slave song, we have with the,
0:12:50 > 0:12:52# Dun dun dun dun dun duuun barabam
0:12:52 > 0:12:54# Baram bam bam bum baaam baaam. #
0:12:54 > 0:12:56We have a blue note here.
0:13:05 > 0:13:08You think, my goodness, it reminds you a little bit of Gershwin
0:13:08 > 0:13:10and that sort of thing.
0:13:10 > 0:13:13I mean, Delius was the first big composer
0:13:13 > 0:13:16to get that blues thing into his music,
0:13:16 > 0:13:18and you can hear it all the time, from then on.
0:13:22 > 0:13:28I think it's the first time in European music that we have a dance
0:13:28 > 0:13:32which sounds like it's black people dancing.
0:13:32 > 0:13:35It's very un-European.
0:13:35 > 0:13:41The singing of black workers in Florida was Fritz's musical epiphany.
0:13:41 > 0:13:43He asked a local church organist, to teach him
0:13:43 > 0:13:45harmony and counterpoint.
0:13:45 > 0:13:47Those lessons, he said,
0:13:47 > 0:13:51were far more useful than anything he learned later.
0:13:51 > 0:13:53After a year at Solano Grove,
0:13:53 > 0:13:56he left the oranges to grow by themselves
0:13:56 > 0:13:57and set off to earn his living
0:13:57 > 0:14:00further north, in the town of Danville.
0:14:00 > 0:14:04He was in Virginia,
0:14:04 > 0:14:06when he taught the violin and the piano,
0:14:06 > 0:14:10and instructed all the young ladies of the town
0:14:10 > 0:14:13in the mysteries of music-making.
0:14:13 > 0:14:16And possibly other things besides.
0:14:16 > 0:14:20With the exception of that brief period, he never made any money.
0:14:20 > 0:14:24He was kept by his father and his uncle.
0:14:24 > 0:14:28His family barely knew where he was, or what he was up to.
0:14:28 > 0:14:32They had no idea he wanted to turn the pleasures of Florida
0:14:32 > 0:14:34into a piece of orchestral music.
0:14:34 > 0:14:37By the time he wrote it down,
0:14:37 > 0:14:38he'd moved back to Europe,
0:14:38 > 0:14:41and enlisted as a music student in Leipzig.
0:14:41 > 0:14:44There his Florida Suite caught the ear
0:14:44 > 0:14:48of the famous Norwegian composer, Edvard Grieg.
0:14:48 > 0:14:51Delius became his protege.
0:14:51 > 0:14:52Because, at that time,
0:14:52 > 0:14:56he hadn't heard any of his own music played by an orchestra,
0:14:56 > 0:15:01he engaged a local band to play through his suite.
0:15:01 > 0:15:05Grieg was there, and Delius apparently bribed,
0:15:05 > 0:15:07or not bribed,
0:15:07 > 0:15:09but the payment for this performance,
0:15:09 > 0:15:12because he had no money as a student, was a barrel of beer.
0:16:25 > 0:16:29I can certainly see why that piece, especially,
0:16:29 > 0:16:30would have appealed to Grieg
0:16:30 > 0:16:33because there's something
0:16:33 > 0:16:36relatively simple about
0:16:36 > 0:16:38its structure
0:16:38 > 0:16:41and, at the same time, it's very songful,
0:16:41 > 0:16:45and also it's incredibly evocative, cos I think something
0:16:45 > 0:16:47that the two composers really had in common
0:16:47 > 0:16:50was this ability to paint a picture.
0:16:50 > 0:16:53The next time Grieg was in London,
0:16:53 > 0:16:56he invited Fritz's father to lunch, and pleaded with him,
0:16:56 > 0:17:01to keep funding Fritz's musical career, despite his misgivings.
0:17:01 > 0:17:05Grieg took a tremendous liking to this young man
0:17:05 > 0:17:09who had already visited Norway and knew it quite well.
0:17:10 > 0:17:15And he became almost a musical father to him.
0:17:15 > 0:17:18He put in a good word for Delius
0:17:18 > 0:17:20at the right moment,
0:17:20 > 0:17:23and Delius senior was quite impressed.
0:17:23 > 0:17:26So, Delius Senior was won over,
0:17:26 > 0:17:28in the fond hope that with a proper training,
0:17:28 > 0:17:32his son could return to America and earn a decent wage as a teacher.
0:17:34 > 0:17:38Fritz, however, had different ideas.
0:17:45 > 0:17:49For a man like Delius, Paris was a fantastic place.
0:17:51 > 0:17:54When he was really feeling his oats,
0:17:54 > 0:17:56if you like,
0:17:56 > 0:17:57he wanted to enjoy life,
0:17:57 > 0:17:58he wanted to celebrate life
0:17:58 > 0:18:00and find his own path.
0:18:03 > 0:18:07He threw himself into, not only music, but all aspects of art.
0:18:07 > 0:18:12He knew painters, he knew writers, he knew philosophers.
0:18:12 > 0:18:15A real melting pot of culture.
0:18:17 > 0:18:21In Paris Delius had the space to find his own voice.
0:18:21 > 0:18:26His themes feel as contemporary today as they were a century ago.
0:18:26 > 0:18:29Lovely melody on the violas,
0:18:29 > 0:18:33the first loneliness of a big city ever written in music.
0:18:48 > 0:18:52He wrote his great Nocturne about the nightlife of Paris.
0:18:54 > 0:18:59And it's about what happens of an evening, through the night,
0:18:59 > 0:19:02Montmartre, Pigalle, that sort of area, that he knew so well.
0:19:14 > 0:19:17I don't think it's ever played in Paris, which,
0:19:17 > 0:19:21which is in a way strange because it's such a flashy
0:19:21 > 0:19:24and very flamboyant piece.
0:19:28 > 0:19:33The music builds up and up, more impassioned.
0:19:57 > 0:19:59And it changes, doesn't it, into a vivid,
0:19:59 > 0:20:00outdoors sort of tread.
0:20:15 > 0:20:17But then the pulse changes. The music dances.
0:20:17 > 0:20:19The Bohemian life perhaps.
0:20:27 > 0:20:32What he wants to describe, is the energy, the human contact,
0:20:32 > 0:20:34the sense of devil-may-care.
0:20:36 > 0:20:38Some of it, I would say, is raucous,
0:20:38 > 0:20:41in fact I've often encouraged orchestras
0:20:41 > 0:20:43to go further and make it seem more vulgar,
0:20:43 > 0:20:46which is not a quality that normally you associate
0:20:46 > 0:20:49with a composer of On Hearing The First Cuckoo In Spring.
0:20:57 > 0:21:02I have discovered the music by Delius when I was 20,
0:21:02 > 0:21:03and Delius became
0:21:03 > 0:21:08a kind of secret garden in my life.
0:21:12 > 0:21:14I have become an extremely passionate Delian,
0:21:14 > 0:21:16really, in the last even five years.
0:21:16 > 0:21:19And I'm incredibly excited about it.
0:21:21 > 0:21:24I bought this green LP of Barbirolli conducting
0:21:24 > 0:21:27In A Summer Garden
0:21:27 > 0:21:29and several other pieces.
0:21:29 > 0:21:31And I totally fell in love with that.
0:21:33 > 0:21:35It's love at first sight.
0:21:35 > 0:21:36There's nobody else like it.
0:21:39 > 0:21:42Actually felt, when I listened to it,
0:21:42 > 0:21:46that it was almost as if I had composed it myself.
0:21:51 > 0:21:55He draws you into a magic world by use of very rich chords
0:21:55 > 0:21:58in extraordinary sequences.
0:22:00 > 0:22:02That sense of the idyllic
0:22:02 > 0:22:04in Delius's music,
0:22:04 > 0:22:07the way that it just seems to hold time still.
0:22:08 > 0:22:10And that, for me, as a young musician,
0:22:10 > 0:22:13was something really magical and enchanting.
0:22:15 > 0:22:18It is the music of nature,
0:22:18 > 0:22:20it is the music of love,
0:22:20 > 0:22:26of life, which is both very subtle and very simple.
0:22:34 > 0:22:371890s Paris was full of musical life,
0:22:37 > 0:22:42and Delius knew composers such as Faure, Messager, and Ravel.
0:22:42 > 0:22:45But he spent more time in the company of painters
0:22:45 > 0:22:48and writers, often sitting in
0:22:48 > 0:22:51Mere Charlotte's Cremerie at number 13 Rue de la Grande Chaumiere
0:22:51 > 0:22:53in Montparnasse.
0:22:55 > 0:22:58All the artists were storming to Paris.
0:22:58 > 0:23:02So, he wanted to be right in the eye of the cyclone,
0:23:02 > 0:23:04having all these close friends
0:23:04 > 0:23:08like Strindberg, who came down from Sweden, of course,
0:23:08 > 0:23:11and Gauguin, the painter and Edvard Munch,
0:23:11 > 0:23:13the Norwegian painter.
0:23:13 > 0:23:15He was more in touch with
0:23:15 > 0:23:17what was going on in the world
0:23:17 > 0:23:19of painters and artists
0:23:19 > 0:23:22and writers than musicians.
0:23:23 > 0:23:27For Fritz, the decade in Paris was the making of him -
0:23:27 > 0:23:31and eventually, the breaking of him.
0:23:34 > 0:23:37Delius was, in French we say, "bon vivant".
0:23:37 > 0:23:41It is in his music, he celebrates the woman,
0:23:41 > 0:23:44he celebrates the trees, he celebrates the water.
0:23:44 > 0:23:47So, he celebrates nature in all his forms.
0:23:47 > 0:23:52He had many things in common with Gauguin and, particularly,
0:23:52 > 0:23:55the passion for women.
0:23:55 > 0:24:01And he shared a passion for exotic women.
0:24:01 > 0:24:05You know he owned, he bought the famous picture, Nevermore.
0:24:05 > 0:24:09He bought that from Gauguin himself, and...
0:24:09 > 0:24:11Why, do you think?
0:24:11 > 0:24:12I think he loved it.
0:24:12 > 0:24:14It's one, one gorgeous naked girl
0:24:14 > 0:24:16from Tahiti lying there,
0:24:16 > 0:24:18he would have adored that picture.
0:24:34 > 0:24:36Nevermore represents the sexual appeal.
0:24:36 > 0:24:41In these years, Delius has numerous sexual activity.
0:24:41 > 0:24:45And so this picture represents the numerous adventures
0:24:45 > 0:24:47he had in Paris.
0:25:08 > 0:25:09It's like Debussy.
0:25:12 > 0:25:15Maybe that's the modernist idea of his time.
0:25:15 > 0:25:17You know, I think Debussy's religion
0:25:17 > 0:25:20is late hours in the morning
0:25:20 > 0:25:22with his girlfriend in bed.
0:25:39 > 0:25:45Metaphysical anxiety about age and death, all that,
0:25:45 > 0:25:48to be resolved in the late morning in bed with his lover.
0:25:48 > 0:25:50And I feel this sensuality,
0:25:50 > 0:25:54I feel this longing and this lust
0:25:54 > 0:25:56for life in Delius' music,
0:25:56 > 0:25:58that's why I'm attracted to it, I have to admit.
0:26:10 > 0:26:12But there's nothing facile about it.
0:26:12 > 0:26:16Nothing for the pure enjoyment.
0:26:16 > 0:26:17It's something profound.
0:26:29 > 0:26:32The evidence for Delius's compulsive interest in pleasure
0:26:32 > 0:26:34comes from his friend,
0:26:34 > 0:26:37the Australian composer, Percy Grainger.
0:26:37 > 0:26:40Delius, he said, "was a sex-worshipper,
0:26:40 > 0:26:45"and practised immorality with puritanical stubbornness."
0:26:45 > 0:26:48In a letter to a biographer of Delius,
0:26:48 > 0:26:50several years after his death,
0:26:50 > 0:26:53Grainger, who was no sex-slouch himself,
0:26:53 > 0:26:56said, "Delius was never lewd about sex.
0:26:56 > 0:26:59"He never joked about it in my hearing.
0:26:59 > 0:27:03"He worshipped sex, and practised it as part of a cultured
0:27:03 > 0:27:05"and yea-some life."
0:27:05 > 0:27:07"'I am a bejahender Natur',
0:27:07 > 0:27:13"Delius was always saying." Meaning a man who by nature always says yes.
0:27:13 > 0:27:16He wanted to enjoy life extremely,
0:27:16 > 0:27:20by trekkings in his beloved mountains, in Norway,
0:27:20 > 0:27:28by extremely nice and refined food and wine.
0:27:28 > 0:27:33Of course, he was a great amateur of women,
0:27:33 > 0:27:36and in that, perhaps, was not careful enough,
0:27:36 > 0:27:41if we referred to the sad disease, who darkened his last years.
0:27:41 > 0:27:47But all in his life shows that always he,
0:27:47 > 0:27:50he pursued the pleasure, first of all.
0:27:52 > 0:27:56With his "puritanical stubbornness", Delius responded
0:27:56 > 0:28:02without inhibition to Ernest Dowson's florid poetry in Songs of Sunset.
0:28:02 > 0:28:06The cycle opens with a choral movement, which is soft.
0:28:06 > 0:28:09And then suddenly we have this eruption
0:28:09 > 0:28:12in the second song of two singers -
0:28:12 > 0:28:15a man and a woman singing about love and sex.
0:28:15 > 0:28:18That's what it's about.
0:29:28 > 0:29:32Very melancholic, very elegiac pieces.
0:29:32 > 0:29:35It's always lovers who are thinking back on,
0:29:35 > 0:29:38"Oh, it was wonderful then."
0:29:38 > 0:29:41All the agony and the pain that you had afterwards.
0:31:16 > 0:31:20An almost completely unknown piece by Delius,
0:31:20 > 0:31:23and, for me, incomprehensible why.
0:31:24 > 0:31:28The work's sense of rapture paralysed in death,
0:31:28 > 0:31:31was an uncanny foretaste of his own fate.
0:31:31 > 0:31:36Indeed, its original title was Songs of Twilight and Sadness.
0:31:36 > 0:31:39In 1895, at the age of 33,
0:31:39 > 0:31:41Fritz was diagnosed
0:31:41 > 0:31:44with the ultimately fatal disease of syphilis -
0:31:44 > 0:31:46the plague of the artistic world at that time.
0:31:48 > 0:31:52Soon afterwards, he felt the urge to go back to Florida.
0:31:52 > 0:31:55His pretext was that, after ten years of neglect,
0:31:55 > 0:31:58he needed to sort out the oranges.
0:31:58 > 0:32:01He crossed the Atlantic with a violinist friend,
0:32:01 > 0:32:05Halfdan Jebe, who shared his taste in exotic women.
0:32:10 > 0:32:13But the real purpose of his three-month trip
0:32:13 > 0:32:16may have been to trace the child he'd fathered twelve years before,
0:32:16 > 0:32:21with the woman he described to Percy Grainger more than once
0:32:21 > 0:32:24as his Negro mistress in Florida.
0:32:24 > 0:32:28If so, he never found them.
0:32:28 > 0:32:31But his renewed interest in the pleasures of the American South
0:32:31 > 0:32:33bore fruit in his opera Koanga,
0:32:33 > 0:32:35which sometimes sounds like a film score,
0:32:35 > 0:32:38thirty years before such a thing had been invented.
0:32:51 > 0:32:55He was actually the first one in the European music tradition to,
0:32:55 > 0:32:57to write a black opera.
0:32:57 > 0:33:01I mean it's about 25 years before Porgy And Bess, I think.
0:33:55 > 0:34:02He needs to go to remote places to find his own creative voice.
0:34:02 > 0:34:06And I think he's the first composer to explore that new world of sounds
0:34:06 > 0:34:08and of instrumental colours.
0:34:08 > 0:34:10And he does it through his American operas.
0:34:48 > 0:34:51He wanted to embrace the world,
0:34:51 > 0:34:52and he make no difference
0:34:52 > 0:34:53between the races.
0:34:53 > 0:34:57In this respect, I think he is
0:34:57 > 0:35:00a very visionary man.
0:35:09 > 0:35:13He'd already written an opera about the Indian population
0:35:13 > 0:35:15set in the Florida Everglades.
0:35:15 > 0:35:17He called the hero Solano,
0:35:17 > 0:35:21after his own tropical home at Solano Grove.
0:35:21 > 0:35:25In this next opera, an African prince, Koanga,
0:35:25 > 0:35:31comes in chains to the American plantations as a resentful slave,
0:35:31 > 0:35:35where he will fall in love with a local girl, Palmyra.
0:36:41 > 0:36:44This dance which is in it, La Calinda,
0:36:44 > 0:36:46which is famous as a single piece,
0:36:46 > 0:36:50but Palmyra is singing on top of that in the opera.
0:36:50 > 0:36:52There's a wonderful moment
0:36:52 > 0:36:56when she embellishes this dance with a lovely tune on top of it.
0:37:42 > 0:37:44Delius even wrote a part for banjos -
0:37:44 > 0:37:48their first appearance in a European classical score -
0:37:48 > 0:37:52an instrument he'd heard in minstrel shows as a boy.
0:38:13 > 0:38:15Koanga was an early work,
0:38:15 > 0:38:19but it opened the door for the pieces of his maturity.
0:38:19 > 0:38:23By his late thirties, Fritz's knowledge of the orchestra
0:38:23 > 0:38:26was still largely dependent on concerts he'd been to.
0:38:26 > 0:38:29He'd never played in an orchestra himself,
0:38:29 > 0:38:32and he'd heard little of his own music professionally performed.
0:38:32 > 0:38:35So, in May 1899, he splashed out
0:38:35 > 0:38:37and put on a four-hour Delius concert in London,
0:38:37 > 0:38:42in Piccadilly, with selections from Koanga as the finale.
0:38:42 > 0:38:46It nearly bankrupted him, but it was a revelation.
0:38:46 > 0:38:51He went out and actually bought himself a hall, St James's.
0:38:51 > 0:38:53And I think that's the first promotional job
0:38:53 > 0:38:55he'd done for himself, it's extraordinary.
0:38:55 > 0:38:57I don't know how people got to hear about him.
0:38:57 > 0:39:00He heard these works for the first time.
0:39:00 > 0:39:03It was an incredible experience for, for him, I think.
0:39:03 > 0:39:06The morning papers carried reviews.
0:39:06 > 0:39:09His music was seen as controversial.
0:39:09 > 0:39:13Indeed one of the solo singers had put his fingers in his ears
0:39:13 > 0:39:16to try to blot out the outlandish noises coming from the orchestra.
0:39:18 > 0:39:21In Bradford, Julius Delius, now 77,
0:39:21 > 0:39:26read his copy of The Times from front to back, put it down,
0:39:26 > 0:39:28and ate his breakfast in silence,
0:39:28 > 0:39:31with his daughters watching anxiously.
0:39:31 > 0:39:36"I see Fritz has given a concert", was all he eventually said.
0:39:38 > 0:39:40No, with one exception,
0:39:40 > 0:39:42no large work of his
0:39:42 > 0:39:45had ever been heard by him.
0:39:45 > 0:39:49His music for him was music on paper.
0:39:49 > 0:39:53This concert was, as I'd said, was a revelation.
0:39:53 > 0:39:54He heard his own music.
0:39:54 > 0:39:56It's a difficulty, actually,
0:39:56 > 0:39:58not hearing your music performed.
0:39:58 > 0:40:01It's very, very different.
0:40:01 > 0:40:02Some people think that
0:40:02 > 0:40:04when you write a piece down, on the page,
0:40:04 > 0:40:06there is the music in your head,
0:40:06 > 0:40:07and you've put it down on the page,
0:40:07 > 0:40:11so the, the job is done, and when you hear it, it will be like that.
0:40:11 > 0:40:13But that's psychologically so wrong.
0:40:13 > 0:40:17There's something very different about the actual physical thing
0:40:17 > 0:40:19of the music hitting your eardrum.
0:40:19 > 0:40:24It was just Delius's luck that three weeks later, in the same hall,
0:40:24 > 0:40:27another composer took London by storm.
0:40:27 > 0:40:32Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations were heard for the first time.
0:40:32 > 0:40:35It was Elgar's first big concert in the capital
0:40:35 > 0:40:37and he never looked back.
0:40:37 > 0:40:39The Delius event was forgotten,
0:40:39 > 0:40:43and he wasn't played again in Britain for another eight years.
0:40:43 > 0:40:47But Delius himself never forgot it.
0:40:47 > 0:40:51His own music had hit his eardrums,
0:40:51 > 0:40:54and it gave him the confidence to keep developing
0:40:54 > 0:40:56his distinctive sound-world.
0:40:56 > 0:40:59He was a supreme egotist
0:40:59 > 0:41:01and only interested in what his vision demanded,
0:41:01 > 0:41:03and he was determined to get it right.
0:41:03 > 0:41:07And from that point of view, a sort of totally honest
0:41:07 > 0:41:11and true composer, but not the orchestra's friend, absolutely not.
0:41:11 > 0:41:14The Enigma Variations, a great English masterpiece,
0:41:14 > 0:41:18goes directly to you, as you listen to it.
0:41:18 > 0:41:22With Delius, unless you're prepared to give it a bit of time
0:41:22 > 0:41:24and to listen to something more than once,
0:41:24 > 0:41:27and to spend time with it, of course, it will escape you.
0:41:27 > 0:41:30Elgar viewed the orchestra as his friends who were doing him
0:41:30 > 0:41:34a great service in playing his music, and he was determined to give
0:41:34 > 0:41:38every player at least one or two things to do which they would enjoy.
0:41:38 > 0:41:41He felt like he had a contract between him and the orchestra.
0:41:41 > 0:41:43I don't think Delius had any such emotion.
0:41:45 > 0:41:49For Delius, the test was not to follow a musical argument
0:41:49 > 0:41:51or devise a fugue.
0:41:51 > 0:41:54He'd always lived for the pleasure of the moment,
0:41:54 > 0:41:58so now, with a death sentence hanging over him,
0:41:58 > 0:42:01he set out to conjure up the most beautiful sounds he could -
0:42:01 > 0:42:04especially through his choice of harmony.
0:42:06 > 0:42:09He took the moments of intense pleasure in his life,
0:42:09 > 0:42:14the swamps of Florida, the high hills of Norway, the Yorkshire Moors,
0:42:14 > 0:42:17the fleshpots of Paris, the slave songs of America,
0:42:17 > 0:42:20or the canvasses of his artist friends,
0:42:20 > 0:42:23and transformed them into music.
0:42:25 > 0:42:27Some people, it puts them off.
0:42:27 > 0:42:29They just cannot take it all at once, you know,
0:42:29 > 0:42:35this fantastic harmony where every single chord change is an adventure.
0:42:35 > 0:42:37It's a very, very rich style.
0:42:37 > 0:42:40A lot of people find it too rich, you know,
0:42:40 > 0:42:44it's like a very, very rich meal that never lets up,
0:42:44 > 0:42:46and you have to have a strong stomach for it.
0:42:46 > 0:42:48He had such a huge variety of
0:42:48 > 0:42:50emotional temperature in his music.
0:42:50 > 0:42:53I mean, think, for instance,
0:42:53 > 0:42:54of the opening of the Mass of Life,
0:42:54 > 0:42:56not a religious work...
0:42:58 > 0:43:02..not a Pagan work, but a work about the exuberance of life
0:43:02 > 0:43:05and man's bond with nature,
0:43:05 > 0:43:08inspired by Nietzsche, of course.
0:43:08 > 0:43:12It opens with a terrific orchestral
0:43:12 > 0:43:16and choral explosion of energy, that blows you out of your seat.
0:43:30 > 0:43:31It's so virile!
0:43:31 > 0:43:34People don't associate that with Delius, but it's always there.
0:43:45 > 0:43:50There is a strong hatred against the Christian religion
0:43:50 > 0:43:53and all of the religions, I think.
0:43:53 > 0:43:56He believed only in life.
0:43:56 > 0:44:01In the Requiem he wrote, he has a double choir passage,
0:44:01 > 0:44:04where one choir sings
0:44:04 > 0:44:06# Hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah. #
0:44:06 > 0:44:10and the other one sings # Allah il, heil, Allah Allah. #
0:44:10 > 0:44:13And he has these Muslims and Christians
0:44:13 > 0:44:15screaming towards each other.
0:44:22 > 0:44:25Delius was, of course, an atheist, but I think his religion
0:44:25 > 0:44:28was in the mountains,
0:44:28 > 0:44:30it was in the hills,
0:44:30 > 0:44:32the forests.
0:44:32 > 0:44:35Life, here, that's it, but nature just goes on and on.
0:44:41 > 0:44:43Nowhere did he feel that more
0:44:43 > 0:44:45than in the mountains of Norway,
0:44:45 > 0:44:47which he'd first fallen in love with
0:44:47 > 0:44:49on a business trip for his father.
0:44:49 > 0:44:54He often spent summer holidays there, for the rest of his active life.
0:44:54 > 0:44:59There's something quite anguished about this whole beginning.
0:45:02 > 0:45:06It's a feeling of man's need.
0:45:11 > 0:45:14There's some longing in this music.
0:45:16 > 0:45:18And it completely gives the lie to the idea that
0:45:18 > 0:45:24Delius is all about, you know gentle, pretty landscapes.
0:45:25 > 0:45:28It's not.
0:45:28 > 0:45:31It's a very urgent, kind of passionate music.
0:45:35 > 0:45:39We're looking for something higher. It's an aspiration, in a way.
0:45:46 > 0:45:49And the music begins to wind up
0:45:49 > 0:45:53with growing chromatic tension.
0:45:58 > 0:46:01And a sense of physical strain or exertion.
0:46:15 > 0:46:19Sorry, I keep listening to the music, it's terrible,
0:46:19 > 0:46:21I lose my train of thought!
0:46:33 > 0:46:38Then there's this sudden breakthrough, and the clouds part.
0:46:38 > 0:46:43And we hear this repeated horn figure,
0:46:43 > 0:46:47a Norwegian herding call or kulokk.
0:46:51 > 0:46:53And we're in a completely different place.
0:46:56 > 0:47:00In October 1901, the prodigal son
0:47:00 > 0:47:04was called back to Bradford for his father's funeral.
0:47:04 > 0:47:07Julius had died at the age of 80,
0:47:07 > 0:47:11without ever having heard a note of his son's music.
0:47:11 > 0:47:14"We buried the old man on Monday", Fritz wrote,
0:47:14 > 0:47:19"and, indeed, he died just in time to save the whole family from ruin."
0:47:19 > 0:47:21The wool business was failing,
0:47:21 > 0:47:26and Delius's hopes of a substantial legacy came to nothing.
0:47:26 > 0:47:33At this point, at the age of 40, he changed his name to Frederick.
0:47:33 > 0:47:36For the first time in his life he was alone.
0:47:36 > 0:47:38He'd no-one to look to.
0:47:38 > 0:47:42His father was gone, his uncle was gone, there was nothing.
0:47:42 > 0:47:45And that was the turning point in his life.
0:47:46 > 0:47:50Back in France, Delius was spending more and more time
0:47:50 > 0:47:53at the home of an artist friend, Jelka Rosen.
0:47:53 > 0:47:57The village of Grez-sur-Loing, near Fontainebleau,
0:47:57 > 0:48:01gave him the tranquil space he needed for composing,
0:48:01 > 0:48:06and Jelka, who had a little money, provided for his material needs.
0:48:06 > 0:48:10How do you interpret his relationship with Jelka?
0:48:13 > 0:48:16A very satisfactory one from his point of view,
0:48:16 > 0:48:18is the way I put it.
0:48:18 > 0:48:19Poor old Jelka.
0:48:19 > 0:48:21She adored his art, she adored his music.
0:48:21 > 0:48:25And she understood that he had a unique contribution
0:48:25 > 0:48:26to give to the world.
0:48:26 > 0:48:29And she was sacrificing herself,
0:48:29 > 0:48:33not only herself, but also her own art.
0:48:33 > 0:48:35He found someone who obviously adored him,
0:48:35 > 0:48:38who had a house where he could live and compose in,
0:48:38 > 0:48:39and would look after him.
0:48:39 > 0:48:43And he went on having affairs with women in Paris all the time.
0:49:03 > 0:49:06There's one note at the bottom of the score.
0:49:09 > 0:49:15It just says, "Sing on vowel uh, UH, (as in love)...
0:49:18 > 0:49:20"..with very loose mouth,
0:49:20 > 0:49:24"almost closed in the pianissimo, but which should be gradually
0:49:24 > 0:49:27"opened or shut according as more or less tone is wanted."
0:49:58 > 0:50:02I think it's very interesting that he chose the word love.
0:50:02 > 0:50:06There's other words which have that vowel sound.
0:50:28 > 0:50:31But the one thing that is not in the title is romance,
0:50:31 > 0:50:33but I think this is an incredibly romantic,
0:50:33 > 0:50:35and perhaps even erotic, piece.
0:50:46 > 0:50:50Is he an English composer?
0:50:51 > 0:50:54No! In...
0:50:54 > 0:50:56Yeah, but what do you mean by that?
0:50:56 > 0:51:00Delius is an English composer, I will say that without hesitation.
0:51:00 > 0:51:03To call him an English composer is entirely wrong.
0:51:03 > 0:51:05Well, I actually truly believe he is English.
0:51:05 > 0:51:08Yes, he is an English composer, because he was born in Bradford.
0:51:08 > 0:51:11If you'd asked him if he was English, he might have got cross.
0:51:11 > 0:51:17He had not a single drop of British blood.
0:51:17 > 0:51:21His blood in his veins is German.
0:51:21 > 0:51:23His heart is in the highlands of Norway.
0:51:23 > 0:51:26He's an incredible Norwegian composer,
0:51:26 > 0:51:29more Norwegian than any Norwegian I know.
0:51:29 > 0:51:34Part of his soul, he's, he has a little, he's a little bit French.
0:51:34 > 0:51:36And in other works,
0:51:36 > 0:51:41like in On Hearing The First Cuckoo In Spring, he's very English.
0:51:41 > 0:51:45But, the first cuckoo in spring can be heard in France,
0:51:45 > 0:51:49just as much as it can be in Yorkshire.
0:52:08 > 0:52:11What I find that Delius is most like is film,
0:52:11 > 0:52:14and this is really bizarre
0:52:14 > 0:52:17because there weren't any films, really, in 1912.
0:52:17 > 0:52:21But this opening, the way that he treats it, you never hear it again.
0:52:21 > 0:52:25Here it is you have that lovely sound and then you have this...
0:52:33 > 0:52:37And you never hear any of that material again.
0:52:37 > 0:52:40And what that's like is like a long shot of a wood.
0:52:54 > 0:52:56It's tempting to try and persuade oneself that
0:52:56 > 0:52:59that's the sound of a particularly English spring.
0:52:59 > 0:53:01But of course, Delius wrote the piece in France,
0:53:01 > 0:53:04and it's based partly on a Norwegian folk song,
0:53:04 > 0:53:07which was suggested to Delius by an Australian pianist.
0:53:07 > 0:53:11Percy Grainger, when he first met Delius in 1907,
0:53:11 > 0:53:16played him Grieg's arrangement of the little melody In Ola Valley.
0:53:34 > 0:53:36And I love the fact that,
0:53:36 > 0:53:39as well as having Grainger suggest the tune to him,
0:53:39 > 0:53:42Delius has had the cuckoo suggested to him by Grieg's arrangement.
0:53:45 > 0:53:50So, this next section is when you get down in the wood
0:53:50 > 0:53:54and you start looking around, until suddenly, we see the cuckoo.
0:54:07 > 0:54:11On two occasions Delius writes "cuckoo"
0:54:11 > 0:54:15in a word above the clarinet part. "Cuckoo."
0:54:15 > 0:54:19And so this implies a very filmic imagination, to me,
0:54:19 > 0:54:21that we've gone from that long shot...
0:54:23 > 0:54:26And down to...
0:54:27 > 0:54:29..that, and to the details of the tune.
0:54:29 > 0:54:32And finally, we get to what the film's all about,
0:54:32 > 0:54:33which is the cuckoo.
0:54:49 > 0:54:53Fred and Jelka finally got married in 1903.
0:54:53 > 0:54:56He told Grieg it was more practical,
0:54:56 > 0:54:59it gave them a badge of honesty and good manners,
0:54:59 > 0:55:01and they got everything cheaper.
0:55:01 > 0:55:06Their six-year courtship had been at best lukewarm.
0:55:10 > 0:55:12Did he ever love her?
0:55:16 > 0:55:20It's difficult to say, to say, to say that,
0:55:20 > 0:55:21because, erm,
0:55:21 > 0:55:24in his first letters he writes, "Yours, Frederick".
0:55:24 > 0:55:28I don't know if he really writes,
0:55:28 > 0:55:30"I love you", to her.
0:55:30 > 0:55:35By the time that they met, Delius was aware that he had syphilis,
0:55:35 > 0:55:39and what the consequences would be for Jelka
0:55:39 > 0:55:43if they were to consummate their relationship.
0:55:43 > 0:55:46And one possible conclusion is that
0:55:46 > 0:55:48that relationship was never
0:55:48 > 0:55:50fully consummated.
0:55:50 > 0:55:53After he had got married with Jelka,
0:55:53 > 0:55:55he had not lost his bad habit
0:55:55 > 0:55:59of going to Paris with friends, and looking after women.
0:56:05 > 0:56:10Jelka complained, to judge by Delius's words of self-defence.
0:56:10 > 0:56:14"I am not affectionate," he told her in January 1901.
0:56:14 > 0:56:17But he said he couldn't change.
0:56:17 > 0:56:21"Please follow me through your friendship's eyes,
0:56:21 > 0:56:23"where I am always to be found.
0:56:23 > 0:56:27"Through love's eyes, no doubt, I become hazy and indistinct."
0:56:29 > 0:56:36The fact that he worked so well in her home spoke for itself, he said.
0:56:36 > 0:56:39"When I suddenly wake up to the fact
0:56:39 > 0:56:41"that you are suffering a sort of hell,
0:56:41 > 0:56:44"then only have I ever thought of leaving."
0:56:44 > 0:56:50He maintains his old relations with some prostitutes, perhaps,
0:56:50 > 0:56:56he was, I don't know, how do you say in English, a libertin, uh?
0:56:56 > 0:56:57- Libertine.- Libertine.
0:56:57 > 0:56:59Yes, he was a libertine man.
0:56:59 > 0:57:03"Am I going to the devil or not?", he asked Jelka.
0:57:03 > 0:57:06"I don't know but I must go after my art
0:57:06 > 0:57:09"and I know you understand it and want it so."
0:57:09 > 0:57:13So, what sort of husband was he for her?
0:57:13 > 0:57:15Ruthless.
0:57:15 > 0:57:17Pursuing his own interests.
0:57:17 > 0:57:21And demanding of her that she was just at his feet all the time.
0:57:22 > 0:57:27The young man who'd conducted Delius's big concert in London
0:57:27 > 0:57:30went to stay with the Deliuses.
0:57:30 > 0:57:33He reported that the composer had taken him to six brothels
0:57:33 > 0:57:39in Paris, and introduced him to various friends working in them.
0:57:39 > 0:57:44"Is Delius quite sane in these matters?" He asked.
0:57:44 > 0:57:46Do you think he was a hedonist?
0:57:48 > 0:57:51That's to say the least.
0:57:51 > 0:57:52You could say hedonistic.
0:57:52 > 0:57:56You could say it's certainly luxuriant music.
0:57:56 > 0:58:00And it has a sense of its own beauty.
0:58:00 > 0:58:03He's not beating around the bush at all,
0:58:03 > 0:58:05like many other English composers!
0:58:05 > 0:58:10He's going directly to the matter. What's life all about?
0:58:10 > 0:58:12How is it?
0:58:12 > 0:58:13"Birth, copulation and death",
0:58:13 > 0:58:16"Birth, copulation and death",
0:58:16 > 0:58:20and over and over again, that is actually a very, very Delian thing.
0:58:20 > 0:58:24This feeling that you can't let anything slip from your grasp,
0:58:24 > 0:58:27you know, you, you have to seize the beauty of the,
0:58:27 > 0:58:30of the moment when you find it.
0:58:30 > 0:58:33When you get to a composer like Stockhausen,
0:58:33 > 0:58:35who invents this idea of moment form,
0:58:35 > 0:58:39which is that every single moment is itself so dazzling
0:58:39 > 0:58:41and ear-catching,
0:58:41 > 0:58:44that you can put them down in any order and they'll make sense
0:58:44 > 0:58:46because you're always interested in the music,
0:58:46 > 0:58:48you're not interested in where it's going,
0:58:48 > 0:58:50you're interested in what you're hearing now.
0:58:50 > 0:58:55It is this idea of the moment being so powerful with Delius.
0:58:55 > 0:58:59You're fascinated by what he's saying all the time.
0:59:20 > 0:59:24This sense of huge, temporal space,
0:59:24 > 0:59:29as though the music's not moving, at all,
0:59:29 > 0:59:32with the offstage horn echo.
0:59:39 > 0:59:45And it could almost be a Mahler alpine meadow,
0:59:45 > 0:59:49but it's even more static and intensely-felt, somehow.
1:00:03 > 1:00:06And the string chords in the background are like a sort of aura
1:00:06 > 1:00:12or glow of sound. They're more noise than...than actual music.
1:00:28 > 1:00:32The only other composer I can think of that has the same kind of thing,
1:00:32 > 1:00:35is Messiaen, which is music
1:00:35 > 1:00:39that doesn't move. I mean, it's, you know,
1:00:39 > 1:00:46it's not directional, it's... it sits there and is beautiful,
1:00:46 > 1:00:49and you have to be able to accept that. You can't say,
1:00:49 > 1:00:51"Yes, but where is it going?",
1:00:51 > 1:00:53because it, you know,
1:00:53 > 1:00:54there are moments in Delius
1:00:54 > 1:00:56where it isn't going anywhere,
1:00:56 > 1:00:59it's just sitting there for you to love.
1:01:31 > 1:01:35It's also a feeling for register or texture.
1:01:35 > 1:01:38The way that he writes for particular instruments,
1:01:38 > 1:01:40such as the strings,
1:01:40 > 1:01:43you get this sense of a kind of tingling in your ears,
1:01:43 > 1:01:48the noise or static charge around the actual string sound itself.
1:02:11 > 1:02:13Time just seems to stand still.
1:02:17 > 1:02:20It's only two pages of score...
1:02:23 > 1:02:27..but it lasts almost five minutes in performance.
1:02:31 > 1:02:34And we simply have this sense of drift.
1:02:37 > 1:02:39You need to find the shadows.
1:02:46 > 1:02:51It can't all be bright day, or darkest night.
1:02:51 > 1:02:55You need to find the grey between the black and the white.
1:03:07 > 1:03:08If you have the time,
1:03:08 > 1:03:10those shadows will come,
1:03:10 > 1:03:13where the light breaks through.
1:03:25 > 1:03:29When Delius was away in Paris, Jelka in Grez-sur-Loing
1:03:29 > 1:03:30was at least free to paint.
1:03:30 > 1:03:32And more and more, Delius came to value
1:03:32 > 1:03:36her riverside home as a place to work.
1:03:36 > 1:03:39If the 1890s were the years
1:03:39 > 1:03:42when his musical personality germinated,
1:03:42 > 1:03:45the first decade of the 20th century
1:03:45 > 1:03:47was when it came into full bloom.
1:03:47 > 1:03:51Yet he has never quite caught up with the other composers
1:03:51 > 1:03:53who crowded that decade -
1:03:53 > 1:03:57Debussy, Ravel, Mahler, Richard Strauss, Sibelius and Elgar.
1:03:57 > 1:04:01Where do you think Delius's music fits?
1:04:01 > 1:04:03In a way,
1:04:03 > 1:04:06I don't want it to fit, at all.
1:04:06 > 1:04:08Because, to me,
1:04:08 > 1:04:09nobody else achieved
1:04:09 > 1:04:11that sense of ecstasy.
1:04:11 > 1:04:16You can say that he took his leads from, from Wagner
1:04:16 > 1:04:20and from Grieg and Chopin, actually, also.
1:04:20 > 1:04:23But he turned it into his own language right away.
1:04:23 > 1:04:26He is a one-off.
1:04:26 > 1:04:29When he's writing in a mature style,
1:04:29 > 1:04:30there is no-one else
1:04:30 > 1:04:32who sounds like Delius.
1:04:32 > 1:04:34It's very hard to conduct.
1:04:34 > 1:04:38It's very hard to get an orchestra to understand
1:04:38 > 1:04:41what it needs to do and to listen for,
1:04:41 > 1:04:43to make the sound-world.
1:04:43 > 1:04:44I know in the UK
1:04:44 > 1:04:45there's a tendency to say
1:04:45 > 1:04:47that orchestral players
1:04:47 > 1:04:48they hate playing Delius,
1:04:48 > 1:04:50and they find it dreary
1:04:50 > 1:04:51and blah, blah, blah.
1:04:51 > 1:04:55I don't know why this has occurred, but here, it's not the case.
1:05:14 > 1:05:17I think the wind players would be more interested,
1:05:17 > 1:05:18they get lovely little chirrups,
1:05:18 > 1:05:20and more detailed stuff to do.
1:05:26 > 1:05:28It needs great nuance, that's the thing.
1:05:29 > 1:05:31Subtle differences
1:05:31 > 1:05:33of which note is important, where to linger,
1:05:33 > 1:05:36perhaps just one note is a bit longer than the next four.
1:05:36 > 1:05:40That's very, very difficult to write down.
1:05:46 > 1:05:48It's that feeling for detail
1:05:48 > 1:05:50that makes Delius's music so unique,
1:05:50 > 1:05:53and the use of chromaticism
1:05:53 > 1:05:54that gives you that sense of
1:05:54 > 1:05:56the tiniest thing moving in the garden.
1:06:01 > 1:06:05The vision is so evocative. I mean, you could see it!
1:06:05 > 1:06:08You could see, sort of, late blossoming roses,
1:06:08 > 1:06:09at least I can.
1:06:12 > 1:06:15The great ability of Delius is to describe
1:06:15 > 1:06:20and to give the feeling in the same time.
1:06:21 > 1:06:26He describes the flowers. He describes the butterflies.
1:06:29 > 1:06:33We have the bees, zzzz, in his music.
1:06:40 > 1:06:44Jelka made this garden in France.
1:06:44 > 1:06:46Everyone who came into their garden
1:06:46 > 1:06:50said it was the most magical garden they could think of.
1:06:50 > 1:06:55Everything was orderly and wild at the same time.
1:07:21 > 1:07:27The moment you get into the garden, emotion takes over.
1:07:27 > 1:07:31With Delius, it always starts being pictorial,
1:07:31 > 1:07:36but it gets emotional and it turns into love and eroticism.
1:07:38 > 1:07:43He writes his score like a painter, with the pointillist technique.
1:07:43 > 1:07:46He puts a little motif here
1:07:46 > 1:07:49and little motif here and here
1:07:49 > 1:07:51and there and every time in another
1:07:51 > 1:07:53combination of instruments.
1:07:53 > 1:07:57And at the end of the garden, there was this river.
1:07:57 > 1:08:01It was very, very romantic, and they had these trees
1:08:01 > 1:08:04with the leaves going down into the stream, and all that.
1:08:16 > 1:08:21The large melody of the river in the strings
1:08:21 > 1:08:28with the arabesque of woodwind figuring the song of a thrush.
1:08:36 > 1:08:40It's a wonderful kind of French description
1:08:40 > 1:08:42of this French river flowing,
1:08:42 > 1:08:47but suddenly, the river takes on what is really a running river.
1:08:47 > 1:08:51It's a deeply sensual thing that you're experiencing.
1:09:05 > 1:09:09This passage is, for me, one of the most beautiful passage in music.
1:09:12 > 1:09:15- All music? - Of all music, yes.
1:09:18 > 1:09:21During his years in Grez-sur-Loing,
1:09:21 > 1:09:25Delius started paying the price of his pleasures.
1:09:25 > 1:09:29There was no certain way of knowing how the critical, tertiary stage
1:09:29 > 1:09:34of syphilis would strike, but in 1909, he developed mobility problems,
1:09:34 > 1:09:40and later travelled all over Europe in frantic search of a cure.
1:09:40 > 1:09:43What that must do to you, to know that your days are numbered,
1:09:43 > 1:09:46and wondering when it's going to happen...
1:09:46 > 1:09:48It must really focus your creative efforts.
1:09:48 > 1:09:54His nature changed. Perhaps the syphilis that was going to,
1:09:54 > 1:09:59in the end, turn him blind, hardened him in some way,
1:09:59 > 1:10:02or changed his constitution.
1:10:02 > 1:10:04And he became very critical, didn't he?
1:10:04 > 1:10:07He was quite a difficult man to live with, I think,
1:10:07 > 1:10:09and there were very few pieces of music
1:10:09 > 1:10:11that he was prepared to listen to, at all.
1:10:11 > 1:10:15It was the paradox of the man that his search for pleasure
1:10:15 > 1:10:20had always been coupled with an almost Puritan work ethic.
1:10:20 > 1:10:23So, as the disease caught up with him,
1:10:23 > 1:10:27he kept on writing - spurred on perhaps by his new champion,
1:10:27 > 1:10:30the young British conductor, Thomas Beecham.
1:10:30 > 1:10:34Delius's music became his personal crusade.
1:10:36 > 1:10:40Sir Thomas Beecham was an incredible pioneer,
1:10:40 > 1:10:43in trying to bring this music to a public,
1:10:43 > 1:10:45not to a wider public, just to a public at all.
1:10:45 > 1:10:48He took the responsibility for shaping it a little bit
1:10:48 > 1:10:49and saying,
1:10:49 > 1:10:52"Start quietly there and make sure you're loud by here."
1:10:52 > 1:10:54Because the music was, by contemporary standards,
1:10:54 > 1:10:57was sketchily written down.
1:10:57 > 1:11:00The years Delius had been writing music in isolation had,
1:11:00 > 1:11:02in some ways, made him
1:11:02 > 1:11:04his own worst enemy.
1:11:04 > 1:11:08He was not used to putting his scores in front of musicians,
1:11:08 > 1:11:11with the players bombarding you with questions -
1:11:11 > 1:11:14"Is it still forte in bar four?", and all that kind of thing.
1:11:14 > 1:11:16If he'd had that experience more often early on,
1:11:16 > 1:11:20he might have been keener to put, put markings in.
1:11:20 > 1:11:24Sometimes, it's not clear, whether he means you to play it very smoothly,
1:11:24 > 1:11:25or whether to gently articulate it.
1:11:25 > 1:11:27Whether the strings play lots of notes in one bow,
1:11:27 > 1:11:30or whether they make a different bow for every note.
1:11:30 > 1:11:32He had this sound in his head, and
1:11:32 > 1:11:34he wrote down the notes but, as we know,
1:11:34 > 1:11:36he was a terrible conductor,
1:11:36 > 1:11:38according to Beecham, at any rate.
1:11:38 > 1:11:44Well, I have seen in my time good conductors, not so good,
1:11:44 > 1:11:49competent conductors, indifferent conductors,
1:11:49 > 1:11:55but I have never come across such an abysmal depth of ineptitude
1:11:55 > 1:12:00in the way of conducting as revealed by poor old Frederick!
1:12:00 > 1:12:04It was quite a common thing for him to beat five in the bar,
1:12:04 > 1:12:06when it was four.
1:12:06 > 1:12:11He beat it 1, 2, 3, 4, AND 1, 2, 3, 4,
1:12:11 > 1:12:13which turned it into 5.
1:12:13 > 1:12:16But there was a time when he used to practice many hours a day
1:12:16 > 1:12:18in front of a mirror,
1:12:18 > 1:12:23yeah, endeavouring to understand this mysterious craft.
1:12:23 > 1:12:27- Yes. But to no purpose? - No purpose at all.
1:12:27 > 1:12:31All Beecham's little hairpins and,
1:12:31 > 1:12:35and little technical things,
1:12:35 > 1:12:37they are all in the complete edition.
1:12:37 > 1:12:38Whether this is right or wrong,
1:12:38 > 1:12:41I shan't be the one to say,
1:12:41 > 1:12:44but it's characteristic of the total dominance
1:12:44 > 1:12:47of Beecham in the connection with Delius.
1:12:47 > 1:12:50- You discussed his scores with Delius? - Oh, never!
1:12:50 > 1:12:53- Oh, never?- Oh, good God, no! Of course I wouldn't.
1:12:53 > 1:12:57He couldn't tell me anything about them.
1:12:57 > 1:12:59When I played them, and he heard them in the concert room
1:12:59 > 1:13:01or on the radio, he said,
1:13:01 > 1:13:02"That's the way I want it.
1:13:02 > 1:13:05- "Don't change that. That's, that's, that's grand!"- Mm.
1:13:06 > 1:13:08Recently, in Manchester,
1:13:08 > 1:13:10we were doing one of his
1:13:10 > 1:13:11greatest works, Sea Drift.
1:13:11 > 1:13:15And Beecham had made some very decisive
1:13:15 > 1:13:20ideas about the effect of the sea...
1:13:21 > 1:13:24..where we would get louder and softer and everything.
1:13:26 > 1:13:30And then my assistant produced the original score,
1:13:30 > 1:13:35that was first published, and it didn't have these marks at all.
1:13:35 > 1:13:39Delius himself made no such swells.
1:13:39 > 1:13:44And I thought, if we just did what Delius wrote,
1:13:44 > 1:13:48what would it sound like?
1:13:48 > 1:13:52And I thought it was so beautiful, and so much more evocative,
1:13:52 > 1:13:54that immediately, at the second rehearsal, I said,
1:13:54 > 1:13:58"Right, scrub out everything that Beecham wrote
1:13:58 > 1:14:01"and let's start again, with a clearer, cleaner palette."
1:14:07 > 1:14:11And the gentle swell of the sea was there,
1:14:11 > 1:14:15but the waves weren't so big.
1:14:15 > 1:14:19The light on the water seemed to me to be more interesting,
1:14:19 > 1:14:21like the sunshine on an early summer morning.
1:14:21 > 1:14:25And it seemed to me that that's what
1:14:25 > 1:14:27Delius had given us.
1:14:27 > 1:14:30But that's not to say that Beecham was wrong.
1:14:30 > 1:14:34He had made a choice and I was going to make another choice.
1:14:38 > 1:14:43In the early 1920s, Delius lost the use of his hands.
1:14:43 > 1:14:48His music manuscripts lay unfinished on the table,
1:14:48 > 1:14:49and he was running out of money.
1:14:49 > 1:14:53He had to sell his beloved Gauguin painting,
1:14:53 > 1:14:56and settle for a copy painted by Jelka in its place.
1:14:56 > 1:15:00The next thing to go was his sight -
1:15:00 > 1:15:04the start of nine years of blindness -
1:15:04 > 1:15:07a cruel fate for someone so visually aware.
1:15:23 > 1:15:27This is the passage that gave Delius so much trouble,
1:15:27 > 1:15:29just to get all the voicing right.
1:15:33 > 1:15:37And then a solo soprano and a tenor,
1:15:37 > 1:15:41something that would have come very much from,
1:15:41 > 1:15:44from what he heard in Florida.
1:15:56 > 1:16:02It's as though Delius needed some other instrument,
1:16:02 > 1:16:06and that instrument he needed was the voice.
1:16:07 > 1:16:10He needs it, he needs this new colour,
1:16:10 > 1:16:18and, and this pure way of expressing human wonder.
1:16:30 > 1:16:35And now the orchestra sort of becomes part of the chorus...
1:16:38 > 1:16:42..rather then the other way round, you know it's, it's...
1:16:47 > 1:16:51..I mean, it's glorious high notes for the sopranos.
1:17:26 > 1:17:31You can feel yourself looking up, and...
1:17:36 > 1:17:38..in ecstasy, really.
1:17:40 > 1:17:46The overwhelming beauty and grandeur and glory of, of...
1:17:47 > 1:17:54..of the high hills, it's... I just find it completely overwhelming.
1:18:07 > 1:18:13And then we come back to the... the music of the opening.
1:18:16 > 1:18:22Delius himself came back one more time to where he began - to England.
1:18:24 > 1:18:26In 1929, he spent three weeks in London
1:18:26 > 1:18:31for a six-concert festival of his music, organized by Beecham.
1:18:31 > 1:18:36Otherwise, he was a prisoner in Grez-sur-Loing.
1:18:39 > 1:18:41But after several years of silence,
1:18:41 > 1:18:43he did manage to complete some scores,
1:18:43 > 1:18:46with the aid of a young organist from Yorkshire, Eric Fenby,
1:18:46 > 1:18:53who soon realized that Delius's ear and tongue were still sharp.
1:18:53 > 1:18:55I think probably most people were terrified of him
1:18:55 > 1:18:58when they went to Grez, even though they were friends,
1:18:58 > 1:18:59I think he was a sort of friend where you,
1:18:59 > 1:19:02you had to be very careful what you said the whole time,
1:19:02 > 1:19:03sit on the edge of your seat, almost.
1:19:03 > 1:19:08He told Fenby that no artist should ever marry.
1:19:08 > 1:19:12"Amuse yourself with as many women as you like", he said.
1:19:12 > 1:19:14"If you do have to marry,
1:19:14 > 1:19:17"choose a girl who is more in love with your art than with you."
1:19:18 > 1:19:24At the end of his life, Delius's nationality became a burning issue.
1:19:26 > 1:19:30Today, his Bradford origins prompt only cursory attention.
1:19:30 > 1:19:33But when he died in France at the age of 72,
1:19:33 > 1:19:37there was a tussle over his body that was quite macabre.
1:19:39 > 1:19:42The strategy that was adopted with Delius was to make him
1:19:42 > 1:19:48English in a way that he himself had never bothered with.
1:19:48 > 1:19:51It's very interesting to see the obituaries of the composers
1:19:51 > 1:19:53who died in 1934
1:19:53 > 1:19:55as the year progresses.
1:19:55 > 1:19:58Elgar was the first, and he was much lamented, in February.
1:19:58 > 1:20:01And then rather a surprise, Gustav Holst died in May.
1:20:01 > 1:20:05And then Delius died in June, and he was front page news.
1:20:05 > 1:20:09You know, "The greatest composer in England since Purcell",
1:20:09 > 1:20:11and that, of course, was a phrase
1:20:11 > 1:20:13that had been applied to Elgar in February,
1:20:13 > 1:20:16which they just lifted absolutely and said
1:20:16 > 1:20:17"No," you know, "Our man is the man".
1:20:17 > 1:20:21Delius and Elgar had been almost the same age,
1:20:21 > 1:20:25both late developers, both peaking at the same point -
1:20:25 > 1:20:28the first decade of the twentieth century.
1:20:28 > 1:20:29For many years afterwards,
1:20:29 > 1:20:33their partisans were in open rivalry.
1:20:33 > 1:20:35No-one could serve two masters -
1:20:35 > 1:20:37you had to choose between God and Mammon,
1:20:37 > 1:20:39or Elgar and Delius.
1:20:41 > 1:20:44Beecham had certainly made his choice.
1:20:44 > 1:20:47He almost never conducted Elgar.
1:20:48 > 1:20:52He re-claimed Delius for Britain, after his long exile.
1:20:52 > 1:20:56Beecham put it about that, on his last journey back to France,
1:20:56 > 1:20:58the blind composer had wanted his deckchair
1:20:58 > 1:21:03on the Channel ferry turned to face the receding shores of England.
1:21:05 > 1:21:09And he persuaded the dying Jelka that Delius had always wanted
1:21:09 > 1:21:12to be buried in the south of England,
1:21:12 > 1:21:14where Beecham just happened to have a connection
1:21:14 > 1:21:18with St Peter's church in Limpsfield.
1:21:18 > 1:21:21This management of Delius's nationality went on,
1:21:21 > 1:21:23even after his death,
1:21:23 > 1:21:25because, in fact, his remains were Anglicised, even.
1:21:25 > 1:21:28They were taken out of the grave where they'd been put
1:21:28 > 1:21:32with very scant ceremony in France in June 1934,
1:21:32 > 1:21:36and in May 1935, he was reburied in Limpsfield in Surrey.
1:21:36 > 1:21:39This feat of bodysnatching for Britain
1:21:39 > 1:21:44was so controversial that it required a midnight burial.
1:21:44 > 1:21:47And the next day, Sir Thomas Beecham came down
1:21:47 > 1:21:49with the London Philharmonic Orchestra
1:21:49 > 1:21:52and played some of Delius's music and made a speech.
1:21:52 > 1:21:56And the BBC recorded that speech and broadcast it.
1:21:56 > 1:21:57So the press management,
1:21:57 > 1:22:00the media management that was going on here was absolutely fantastic.
1:22:00 > 1:22:02None of this happened when Elgar died.
1:22:15 > 1:22:17Yet Delius and Elgar
1:22:17 > 1:22:19ended the best of friends.
1:22:19 > 1:22:23In 1933, the year before they both died, Elgar flew to France
1:22:23 > 1:22:27and visited the blind and paralysed Delius, for tea,
1:22:27 > 1:22:30ham sandwiches and champagne.
1:22:31 > 1:22:35This is a remarkable event in British musical history, I think.
1:22:35 > 1:22:39The meeting between these two grand old men of British music,
1:22:39 > 1:22:41sharing their experience,
1:22:41 > 1:22:45and also their sense of times having moved on, somehow.
1:22:45 > 1:22:48But then more touching, I think, is the correspondence
1:22:48 > 1:22:50that follows afterwards.
1:23:02 > 1:23:06Elgar and Delius wrote six letters to each other
1:23:06 > 1:23:07over the next six months -
1:23:07 > 1:23:11the last from Elgar's nursing home on Christmas Day 1933,
1:23:11 > 1:23:13two months before his death.
1:23:13 > 1:23:19This late encounter was unblemished by jealousy or bitterness.
1:23:19 > 1:23:22You can see that they got on extremely well.
1:23:22 > 1:23:23Very warm hearted and friendly.
1:23:23 > 1:23:26And they both admired what each other had done,
1:23:26 > 1:23:28contrary to popular belief.
1:23:28 > 1:23:32Elgar called Delius a poet in sound.
1:23:32 > 1:23:37He said the aeroplane journey to Paris had been like Delius's music.
1:23:37 > 1:23:40A little intangible, sometimes, but always very beautiful.
1:24:10 > 1:24:13This is a composer who speaks to me entirely.
1:24:13 > 1:24:17It gets my soul and my nerves going.
1:24:17 > 1:24:19It affects me deeply.
1:24:43 > 1:24:47I find a lot of his music intensely moving.
1:24:50 > 1:24:51It makes me cry.
1:24:54 > 1:24:59I think you have a very, for me, life changing experience.
1:25:08 > 1:25:10It's never going to be mainstream.
1:25:10 > 1:25:13I don't think it was important for him.
1:25:13 > 1:25:18Delius is Delius, and he will always just be that very special chapter.
1:25:37 > 1:25:41An extraordinary sense of beauty of sound,
1:25:41 > 1:25:43which has not been surpassed
1:25:43 > 1:25:46by any composer dead or alive in the world.
1:26:31 > 1:26:33He is not very much played.
1:26:33 > 1:26:37But his music is a very peculiar kingdom.
1:26:48 > 1:26:53He writes in the Requiem - and the text he has written himself -
1:26:53 > 1:26:56"Take to yourself a woman,
1:26:56 > 1:27:01"and drink and eat, and enjoy life."
1:27:02 > 1:27:07I think that's essentially what Delius thinks life is for.
1:27:07 > 1:27:10It's here for you! Take it!
1:27:12 > 1:27:14The day after the Limpsfield funeral,
1:27:14 > 1:27:17which Jelka had been too weak to attend,
1:27:17 > 1:27:21the phone rang on engineer David Howarth's desk at the BBC.
1:27:21 > 1:27:24From the distinctive three rings,
1:27:24 > 1:27:27he knew it was the Director-General, Sir John Reith.
1:27:27 > 1:27:30"Take your recording of the funeral to Kensington, young man",
1:27:30 > 1:27:35he said, "and let Mrs Delius hear it in her nursing home".
1:27:35 > 1:27:38He played Jelka Beecham's eulogy.
1:27:38 > 1:27:41"Dear Tommy", she murmured with a smile,
1:27:41 > 1:27:46but as he played her In A Summer Garden, she began to drift away.
1:27:46 > 1:27:51Jelka never heard any more music and died the next day.
1:27:54 > 1:27:59Only years later did the BBC man discover that the piece he'd chosen
1:27:59 > 1:28:02was the one Delius had dedicated to Jelka,
1:28:02 > 1:28:07and the last music Delius himself had heard.
1:28:07 > 1:28:11In death, at least, Fred and Jelka were united.
1:28:11 > 1:28:15"All are my blooms", it says on the score,
1:28:15 > 1:28:19"and all sweet blooms of love to thee I gave while Spring and Summer sang."
1:29:27 > 1:29:32Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd