Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Sources and Abbreviations
- Foreword by Sir Mark Elder, CBE
- Preface
- Chapter 1 1862–1888 Youth
- Chapter 2 1888–1892 The Young Composer in Paris
- Chapter 3 1893–1901 Coming to Maturity
- Chapter 4 1902–1905 The Great Noontide and Beecham
- Chapter 5 1906–1910 Acceptance and Friends
- Chapter 6 1911–1914 Inspiration Unabated
- Chapter 7 1915–1918 Winding Down
- Chapter 8 1919–1934 Fenby and the Last Years
- Chapter 9 The Songs
- Chapter 10 1934 and After
- Appendix 1 Delius’s Works in Chronological Order
- Appendix 2 Delius’s Diploma and Reports from The Leipzig Conservatorium
- Appendix 3 Programmes for the 1929 and 1946 Delius Festivals
- Selected Further Reading
- Index
Chapter 6 - 1911–1914 Inspiration Unabated
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Sources and Abbreviations
- Foreword by Sir Mark Elder, CBE
- Preface
- Chapter 1 1862–1888 Youth
- Chapter 2 1888–1892 The Young Composer in Paris
- Chapter 3 1893–1901 Coming to Maturity
- Chapter 4 1902–1905 The Great Noontide and Beecham
- Chapter 5 1906–1910 Acceptance and Friends
- Chapter 6 1911–1914 Inspiration Unabated
- Chapter 7 1915–1918 Winding Down
- Chapter 8 1919–1934 Fenby and the Last Years
- Chapter 9 The Songs
- Chapter 10 1934 and After
- Appendix 1 Delius’s Works in Chronological Order
- Appendix 2 Delius’s Diploma and Reports from The Leipzig Conservatorium
- Appendix 3 Programmes for the 1929 and 1946 Delius Festivals
- Selected Further Reading
- Index
Summary
After a bad start to the beginning of 1911, by the spring Delius was beginning to recover:
The cure in Dresden only made Fred worse – awfully thin and haggard and he only picked up in Wiesbaden and everybody thinks he looks very well now. He is working again and we take nice walks.
He and Jelka left the clinic in Dresden in January, went to Wiesbaden (where they heard Schuricht conduct Sea Drift), and were back in Grez by the first week in March. Delius was able to receive visitors again, and Beecham came twice. In March he brought with him his new friend (and lover), the American-born London society hostess, Lady Cunard, who had apparently come to like Delius’s music, and at the beginning of June Beecham drove over to Grez in his car, and took Delius back to London, with Jelka following by train. They stayed at 9 Hans Place, near Harrods, the home of the wealthy art-collector Frank Stoop and his wife, whom they had come to know quite well. Delius met Bantock on the 16 March and, with Jelka, they went to the first of Beecham’s all-Delius concerts, which included the premiere of Songs of Sunset, with Appalachia, Paris and the first Dance Rhapsody. During the interval, Delius first met Philip Heseltine, the seventeen-year-old schoolboy who was to play a large part in his life for almost the next twenty years.
Philip Arnold Heseltine was born, somewhat incongruously, in The Savoy Hotel on Piccadilly (or ‘on the Embankment’, as he later put it)3 on 30 October 1894. The men in his family had been successful stockbrokers and solicitors, and his father was also a solicitor. However, he died when the boy was only three, and two years later his mother – a very domineering woman, with whom he developed an almost Oedipal relationship4 – remarried and moved to a large, old house in the middle of Wales. Heseltine went to Eton, where he was taught music by two remarkable men, Edward Mason5 and Colin Taylor, the second of whom remained a confidant and friend for life. They introduced him to Delius’s music in 1910,6 and he quickly acquired a deep love and, indeed, an obsession for it.
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- Information
- Delius and his Music , pp. 292 - 348Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014