29 January: Frederick Delius

Frederick Delius, English composer whose works include A Mass of Life, On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring and A Village Romeo and Juliet, was born on this date in 1862. Some things you might not know about him.

1. He may have been born in England (Bradford in Yorkshire, to be exact), but he lived and worked in many other places including Germany, France, Norway and the USA. His musical influences included Norwegian folklore and African American spirituals.
2. He had three brothers and ten sisters. The family were fond of music and Frederick learned the Violin and Piano as a child, but his parents didn't envisage Frederick having a career in Music. They wanted him to follow his father into the family wool business.
3. When sent on trips connected to the family business, Frederick would spend more time visiting the musical centres of the place than doing business until his father despaired of him and sent him to America to manage an Orange plantation in Jacksonville, Florida. Here, too, Delius found he was much more interested in learning, and in due course composing music than in any kind of business.
4. He published his first musical composition while in Florida - Zum Carnival, a Polka for the piano.
5. There's also a legend that, while in Florida, he had an affair with an African American woman called Chloe, and got her pregnant. Then, when Delius returned to Florida to sell the plantation, Chloe feared he'd come to take their son away and fled, taking the boy with her. There's not much hard evidence for this story. An attempt to find some descendants of the boy in the 1990s was unsuccessful. However, this experience is said to have influenced the tone of Delius's music thereafter.
6. He later married a German artist called Jelka Rosen. Delius wasn't especially successful as a composer at that time, so she was the main breadwinner. She remained devoted to him despite the fact he wasn't faithful to her.
7. He wasn't a fan of concert programme notes. When asked for one he said that he much preferred that people just listened to his music and not be distracted by such things.
8. A piece in his Village Romeo and Juliet, Walk to the Paradise Garden, isn't about a garden at all - The Paradise Garden is the name of a pub.
9. By 1928, his health had failed to the extent that he could no longer compose - he was paralysed and blind. He tried composing by dictating to his wife, but later a young admirer named Eric Fenby offered to help. This allowed Delius to carry on composing for a few more years. Fenby later wrote a book about his experience in which he revealed that Delius was a big cricket fan and that they'd followed the 1930 Test series together.
10. Delius died in 1933, aged 72. He'd wanted to be buried in his garden, but the French authorities wouldn't allow it. His plan B was to be buried in a country churchyard in England. His wife Jelka was very ill, too, at the time and wasn't well enough to sail to England to bury him there, so Delius was temporarily buried in a nearby cemetery until she felt strong enough to make the trip. However, she became ill on the way and ended up being taken to hospital in Dover and missing the service at St Peter's Church at Limpsfield in Surrey, which was held at midnight, by lamplight, with 60 people in attendance. Jelka didn't recover from her illness - she died two days later, and was buried in the same grave.

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