Description

Frederick Albert Theodore Delius CH (January 29 1862, &ndash; June 10, 1934) was an English composer born in Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire in the north of England. <p>Delius's parents were German. Julius and Elise Pauline Delius had moved from Bielefeld, Germany to England to set themselves up in the woollen business. Frederick ('Fritz' to his family, 'Fred' to his friends) Delius was the fourth of their fourteen children. <p>Although born in England and educated at Bradford Grammar School (where the singer John Coates was his contemporary), Frederick Delius felt little attraction for the country of his birth and spent most of his life abroad, in the United States and the continent of Europe, chiefly in France. Nonetheless his music has been described as 'extremely redolent of the soil of this country [i.e. Britain] and characteristic of the finer elements of the national spirit' by Felix Aprahamian (Beecham's Delius, 1975 edition). <p>Although Frederick showed early musical...