Five Deliuses

I listened to an hour or three of Frederick Delius and drew some Deliuses.

Its the sound of an approaching era. I like his music very much its so expressive and thoughtful and emotional yet restrained, in short its very modern! Delius was born 1862 and died 1934.

I only just read the first chapter of wikipedia which reads as follows:

..was an English composer. Born in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce. He was sent to Florida in the United States in 1884, to manage an orange plantation; there he soon neglected his managerial duties, and in 1886 returned to Europe. Having been influenced by African-American music during his short stay in Florida, he began composing. After a brief period of formal musical study in Germany beginning in 1886, he embarked on a full-time career as a composer in Paris and then in nearby Grez-sur-Loing, where he and his wife Jelka lived for the rest of their lives, except during the First World War.

Delius one is my favourite Delius. He came out upsidedown with pleasure in the first hour and I was surprised and amused at him when I looked at him for the first time the right way up. He doesn't look very much like the Delius who composed the music though he was an observational drawing of him just upside down. Hes sort of chunkier. more Depardieu who I also love. I say Love. Well now I love Delius' music. I knew I liked him but I just studied his kind eyes and his expressive nose and lips and his embarrassed hair. I have embarrassed hair too. But he's really trying to communicate with his eyes and I like him very much. But his music. Wow. You should just listen to a few of his pieces. When I then read that he'd been born Fritz (Dutch ancestry) and born Brtish grew up then went to Florida, to run a family plantation but didn't like it (it must have been an interesting time only 20 years after the abolotion of slavery I imagine it was distressing and exciting time to be a manager on a plantation: he did however very much like the African American music! Then he lived in France with his wife. Maybe that's why his music is so modern, an early advocate of cultural exchange! A sensitive face and sensitive music. I didn't quite catch it but I enjoyed trying.

Delius Five was where I stopped. I thought he was sufficient. I was getting from A to B and Delius Five is B. He's the most socially acceptable Delius. He's Delius after he's had a bath and a shave and some freshly laundered clothes and a comb through his hair and a few practice smiles held for some time. But being a concentrated fellow I can assume because composition takes a sort of concentrated serentity he probably didn't find it too hard to stare at the camera with emotion and sincerity for a good three minutes and so the photograph of the real Delius that my Deliuses One through Five are inspired by has captured his unusually sensitive and concentrated yet serence countennance. Anyway despite being my most acceptable Delius two hours of contemplating my life while drawing a postcard later, he's still pretty weird if you look closely. But that is just between Delius Five and me.

Post script

I just read he liked Niesche and was a pupil of Wagner... that 's what it is. Strange though that he was sensitive to and receptive to Africa American music very early, he also took and digested the work and ideas of creatives that have since been appropriated by the opposite end of the political spectrum. He died in 1934 before the outbreak of WW2 but he will have seen the rise of fascism following the horror of WW1.

I listened to the play list linked above but the first one I didn't like was Romeo and Juliet c1910, it reminded me of the Fall of Paradise it is dark and foreboding - so perhaps he could see what lay ahead or perhaps it was just a reflection of the climate at the time.

Anyway: postcards.