Delius - His Own Words

[buckylucky@aol.com (BuckyLucky)]

The following on Frederick Delius (1862-1934) is published in Harold C.
Schonberg's "The Lives of the Great Composers," Revised edition, 1981.  I
feel it is relevant material here.


Delius's music owed nothing to anybody.  Like Debussy, he completely broke
away from established form, and there is a free, improvisatory quality
about his music that sounds as if it had resulted from experimenting with
voluptuous, exotically chromatic chords at the piano.  It is a rhapsodic
kind of music, in free forms, and is altogether free of Classicism.  The
harmonies can be overwhelmingly rich and even dissonant at times, but they
were unlike the harmonies of any other composer.  "I don't believe in
learning harmony or counterpoint," Delius said.  "Learning kills instinct.
 Never believe the saying that one has to hear music many times to
understand it.  It is utter nonsense, the last refuge of the
incompetent....For me, music is very simple.  It is the expression of a
poetical and emotional nature."  To Delius, a "sense of flow" was the only
thing that mattered.  Music had flow or it didn't.  If it had, it was good
music.  If it didn't, it was bad.  In 1920 he reacted violently to the
advanced music of his day, in a long article he wrote for "The Sackbut":

"There is room in the world for all kinds of music to suit all tastes, and
there is no reason why the devotees of Dada should not enjoy the musically
imbecile productions of their own little circle as much as the patrons of
musical comedy enjoy 'their' particular fare.  But when I see the prophets
of the latest clique doing their utmost to pervert the taste of the public
and to implant a false set of values in the rising generation of music
lovers by sneering at the great masters of the past, in the hope of
attracting greater attention to the 'petits maitres' of the present-then I
say it is time to speak openly and protest....

This is an age of anarchy in art; there is no authority, no standard, no
sense of proportion.  Anybody can do anything and call it 'art' in the
certain expectation of making a crowd of idiots stand and stare at him in
gaping astonishment and admiration....

Music does not exist for the purpose of emphasizing or exaggerating
something which happens outside its own sphere.  Musical expression only
begins, to be significant where words and actions reach their uttermost
limit of expression.  Music should be concerned with the emotions, not
with external events.  To make music imitate some other thing is as futile
as to try and make it say 'Good morning' or 'It's a fine day.'  It is only
that which cannot be expressed otherwise that is worth expressing in
music."