Frederick Delius

Styles:
Opera
Born:
January 29, 1862
Bradford, Yorkshire, England
Died:
June 10, 1934
Biography by "Blue" Gene Tyranny, All Music Guide
A British composer of opera, vocal, choral, orchestral, and chamber music. The ear of the young Delius was engaged, one summer night in Florida, by the sound of close-harmony Afro-American singing gently wafting over the St. John River (he had been sent to manage an orange plantation). Delius suddenly realized that his vocation was to be a musician. A romantic with the musical vocabulary of the impressionists, he wrote often-imitated but never-matched tone poems of great subtlety and beauty in a very personal style that is not reducible to a formula.
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It has been called post-romantic Delius's musical style is one of the most unusual in Western musical history. Characterized by a curious mixture of pentatonic figures and chromaticism, although still largely tonal, it reflects a move from ...
Considering he moved to Florida, it is surprising he is not heard more often in the States. His work is highly idiomatic and in some ways impressionistic in the same way that his contemporary Ravel is considered. It does have a certain "...
According to this site he didnt leave Bradford until he was 16 and then went to London, then back to Bradford to learn his fathers woolen business. http://www.delius.org.uk/g_biography.htm
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