This book examines Delius's individual approaches to genre, form,
harmony, orchestration and literary texts which gave the composer's
musical style such a unique voice.
Frederick Delius' (1862-1934) music has proved impervious to analytical
definition. Delius's approaches to genre, form, harmony, orchestration
and literary texts are all highly individual, not to say eccentric in
their deliberate aim to avoid conformity. Rarely does Delius follow a
conventional line, and though one can readily point to important
influences, the larger Gestalt of each work has a syntax and coherence
for which conventional analytical methods are mostly inadequate.
Delius's musical style has also defied one of the most essential
critical tools of his musical epoque - that of national identity. His
style bears no relation either to the Victorian or Edwardian aesthetic
of British music spearheaded by Parry, Stanford and Elgar before the
First World War, nor to the more overtly nationalist,
folk-song-orientated pastoralism of post-war Britain in such composers
as Vaughan Williams and Holst. In contrast, Delius acknowledged himself
a 'stateless' individual and considered that his music refused to belong
to any national school or movement.
To test these claims, the book explores a number of important factors.
Delius's musical education at the Leipzig Conservatorium and the works
he produced there. Delius's musical voice, notably his harmonic and
melodic style and the close structural relationship between these two
factors. The book also explores the question of Delius and 'genre' in
which the investigation of form is central, especially in opera, the
symphonic poem, the choral work (where words are seminal to the creation
of structural design) and the sonata and concerto (to which Delius
brought his own individual solution). Other significant factors are
Delius's cosmopolitan use of texts, operatic plots and picturesque
impressions, his relationship to Nietzsche's writings and the genre of
dance, and the role of his 'earlier' works (1888-1896) in which it is
possible to plot a course of stylistic change with reference to the
influences of Grieg, Sinding, Florent Schmitt, Wagner, Strauss and
Debussy.
