BRADFORD, LONDON AND A EUROPEAN EDUCATION

Granted the freedom of the city of Bradford in 1932, Frederick Delius was reported to have remarked: ‘I love Bradford … and it would have been the greatest pleasure in my life to have been able to visit the city to have the freedom bestowed on me there’. Rather less complimentary, and probably nearer to the truth, was his uncompromising disparagement of the Yorkshire conurbation as a ‘filthy place, full of factories’ imparted to Eric Fenby in his last years; and his memories of childhood in Bradford, for all the fondness he retained for the outlying moors, were tainted by the strictness of life at home. A propensity to exaggerate may have been a symptom of his illness, or, as Arthur Hutchings has suggested, ‘the [inheritance] of his father's hardness’. There is a widespread acceptance that Delius's father Julius warranted the description ‘Prussian martinet’. At home he exercised a ‘reign of fear’ at the family home at Claremont. An obsession with his sense of formality, to the point of militarism, may have been suffocating for his twelve children, but it belies the fact that Julius and his wife emanated from a well-established tradition of German Kultur where music was considered a valuable part of a broader education. Elise Delius (née Krönig) had come from a music-loving family in Bielefeld, and Julius himself was undeniably fond of music. Even Delius, according to Heseltine, admitted this: ‘My father loved music and used to tinker on the piano when he knew he was alone’. What is more, Bradford, a significant, prosperous and expanding Yorkshire conurbation when Julius Delius arrived there in 1850, was the beneficiary of various musical initiatives characteristic of expanding provincial music in northern Victorian England. In addition to the mill and pit bands, choral music thrived, and after the St George's Hall was opened in August 1853, the citizens of Bradford were able to enjoy large-scale concerts of orchestral and choral works, particularly after the Hallé Orchestra started to visit the city in 1858. Among the sponsors was no other than Julius Delius. In 1865 the Bradford Subscription Concerts began; Julius Delius was a committee member.