"It seems likely that Harold Bauer has got his dates wrong. He must surely be referring to Sea Drift in which Delius memorably set words from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. But that was first performed, in Germany, in 1906, so 1900 cannot be correct. The term ‘symphony’ has loosely been used to describe certain other works of Delius’s: The Song of the High Hills has been referred to by one or two commentators as a choral symphony, and we find Jelka Delius in 1918 writing ‘Fred has quite finished his Symphony’ when referring to A Poem of Life and Love which is far from being a symphony. Delius certainly wrote no symphony as such and I feel fairly sure that Bauer must have been referring to Sea Drift." Stephen Lloyd
Message Thread
« Back to index | View thread »
Thank you for taking part in the MusicWeb International Forum.
Len Mullenger - Founder of MusicWeb