Name: Frederick Delius - Song of Summer | Videos | Gan Jing World
Uploaded: 2023-11-28T20:09:26.963Z
Duration: 11 min 25 s
Description: - Composer: Frederick Theodore Albert Delius (29 January 1862 -- 10 June 1934) - Orchestra: London Symphony Orchestra - Conductor: John Barbirolli - Year of rec... | Videos | Gan Jing World

olla-vogala

https://video5-us-east.cloudokyo.cloud/video/v6/b6/36/92/b63692c0-810a-4c0b-90c7-b548cb9f4cfd/master.m3u8

- Composer: Frederick Theodore Albert Delius (29 January 1862 -- 10 June 1934)
- Orchestra: London Symphony Orchestra
- Conductor: John Barbirolli
- Year of recording: 1967

Painting: Delius in his Garden at Grez-sur-Loing. Oil on canvas by Jelka Rosen {his wife}, early 1900s.

"A Song of Summer", tone poem for orchestra, written in 1930-1931.

After Delius was blinded and crippled by tertiary syphilis in the early '20s, his composing career seemed effectively to have ended. But the arrival of Eric Fenby, a young English man who had fallen in love with Delius' music, re-vitalized Delius, and, with Fenby's help and cooperation as an amanuensis, Delius returned to composition. Arguably the best work of Delius' final creative period was A Song of Summer. Based on A Poem of Life and Love that Delius had written in 1918 but never performed or published, the vast and spacious opening of A Song of Summer was dictated by Delius to Fenby, who then interwove themes from the earlier work into the fabric of Delius' invention. The result is Delius purified and refined with themes of heart-quickening beauty and harmonies of opulent voluptuousness scored with supreme sensuousness. Of course, being composed by Delius, A Song of Summer has no rhythm and very little form: the harmonies move at their own ecstatically indolent speed and the form is essentially erotic, featuring a pair of orgasmic climaxes preceded by rising passion and followed by languor. 

Delius explained the context of the tone poem to Fenby:
"I want you to imagine we are sitting on the cliffs of heather and looking out over the sea. The sustained chords in the high strings suggest the clear sky and stillness and calm of the scene...You must remember that figure that comes in the violins when the music becomes more animated. I'm introducing it there to suggest the gentle rise and fall of the waves. The flutes suggest a seagull gliding by."

Sir Henry J. Wood conducted the premiere in London on 17 September 1931. Fenby himself also recorded the work, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in a recording released in 1981.

The tone poem lent its title to the 1968 Ken Russell film 'Song of Summer', which depicted Eric Fenby's life as Delius's amanuensis. The music appears in the film, along with other Delius works.