Delius on BBC4

[BBMmk2]

I never knew that such respect and cordiality existed betwen these two great men. I will watch this on iplayer after cd review BaL!

[Lateralthinking1]

Well that was excellent wasn't it. I thought so but he is clearly a Marmite composer. If anything, my opinion of his music went up even further because of pieces in the programme I hadn't heard before. There wasn't anything I didn't like.

He was a painter. There we were discussing whether he was English or German but that is only the starting point. The specific nature of his German upbringing in England was stifling and the English countryside seemed like comparative freedom. The former was important for providing both the need in him for musical expression and the tension - a word I didn't hear used in the programme - in all of the music he wrote. A key point though is that even England proved too restrictive, given his background, hence onto the United States and then to France. And it is with the orange groves, the revelation of black singers and French impressionists with easels that one really gets to see it. He is a French-American composer first and foremost but he wouldn't have been a composer at all had he not originally been Anglo-German. Then there is the Scandinavian that adds to the vibrant colour.

I must admit that I hadn't realised Grieg had been such an influential figure. In fact, there were a lot of things I learnt from the programme. I have associated the blues with Gershwin but not Delius. And yet as soon as the blues as a music form was mentioned, I could hear that very clearly in the work. It was an exciting moment. His innovation was extraordinary - the first composer to produce a black opera, the first to depict isolation in urban life, the first to write a piece for the banjo and the first to produce what was almost a film score at a time when films as we know them didn't exist. People have different opinions. I suppose they get the parts of it they want to get. I don't find the music flashy, flamboyant, up in the heavens or even sensual as various programme contributors hear it. However, that combination of ethereal wildness and orderly detail makes perfect sense to me.

It was also fascinating to hear how he didn't hear his own music performed for years. In a strange way, that was almost like writing blind. I think that partially accounts for the colour and intensity. While there is no doubt that there is passion in the music, and some of it sexual, it seems to me that the latter was overstated. The high life in Paris did not occur at his most prolific time and arguably the music emerged whenever there wasn't that kind of outlet. What I hear in the music is a composer who experienced sensory overload rather than mere sensuality. That was then conveyed through the music in a way that now seems to some overly rich. It is probably less overwhelming than his own sensory experience before ordered through composition. The heights in the music are about aspiration. It is all reach rather than being lofty. That is what makes it so magnificent.

I can't think of any other composer who manages in music to locate the spaces where the inner world and the outer environment are so able to merge emotionally in those hearing it to the point where both are indistinguishable from themselves. Dare I say it, I find 90% of Beethoven extremely dry to the point of dull. I often feel that is a serious failing and am not quite sure why. Is it something to do with the fact that classical music shouldn't be too emotional or just the esteem given to specific composers? I don't know but I am very happy to be one of the Delians. That means I will be listening to a great deal more of Delius now.

[Pabmusic]

...Beecham seemed rather opinionated and had a rather high opinion of himself.

There was a time when I couldn't have said the following in public. I think I can now (if I'm wrong, it's been nice meeting you all ). Beecham was very highly opinionated indeed. It says a lot about him that, because he didn't get the conductorship of the BBC SO (it went to Boult) he founded the LPO deliberately as a rival orchestra. He fostered the attitude that people came to a concert to experience his conducting, not the music, first. He achieved wonderful things, of course, but his ego often got in the way.

I recall hearing Vernon Handley criticising Beecham's additions to Delius in much the same way that Mark Elder did.

[Lateralthinking1]

There was a time when I couldn't have said the following in public. I think I can now (if I'm wrong, it's been nice meeting you all ). Beecham was very highly opinionated indeed. It says a lot about him that, because he didn't get the conductorship of the BBC SO (it went to Boult) he founded the LPO deliberately as a rival orchestra. He fostered the attitude that people came to a concert to experience his conducting, not the music, first. He achieved wonderful things, of course, but his ego often got in the way.

I recall hearing Vernon Handley criticising Beecham's additions to Delius in much the same way that Mark Elder did.

For all of his support to FD, I thought Beecham seemed very strange. Perhaps more could be read into him than the composer about the burial at Limpsfield in the dead of night.

And if that was a "he was a great composer and will stand the test of time, so make sure he is seen as British" ploy, then maybe he is responsible for why it is something of an issue even now.

I agree with Elder - more naturally evocative without the add-ons.

Nice to see that correspondence with Elgar. Good that they got on, sort of, at the end.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Beecham was very highly opinionated indeed.

A sort of Musical Stephen Johnson?

[aeolium]

There was a time when I couldn't have said the following in public. I think I can now (if I'm wrong, it's been nice meeting you all ). Beecham was very highly opinionated indeed. It says a lot about him that, because he didn't get the conductorship of the BBC SO (it went to Boult) he founded the LPO deliberately as a rival orchestra. He fostered the attitude that people came to a concert to experience his conducting, not the music, first. He achieved wonderful things, of course, but his ego often got in the way.

Yes, that's true - he was very opinionated, and frequently said very silly things (some of which repeatedly crop up on these boards). But then that's true of a great number of composers and performers as well. I'd rather concentrate on what such people did than what they said. Beecham's contribution to the musical life of this country was enormous and his high quality as a conductor, especially of the music for which he had a real affinity, is imo unquestionable. That is what I prefer to focus on - that the musical development of orchestral and operatic life here would have been immeasurably poorer without him.

[amateur51]

A sort of Musical Stephen Johnson?

Naughty!

[Pabmusic]

...Beecham's contribution to the musical life of this country was enormous and his high quality as a conductor, especially of the music for which he had a real affinity, is imo unquestionable...

I agree with both points.

[salymap]

Yes, that's true - he was very opinionated, and frequently said very silly things (some of which repeatedly crop up on these boards). But then that's true of a great number of composers and performers as well. I'd rather concentrate on what such people did than what they said. Beecham's contribution to the musical life of this country was enormous and his high quality as a conductor, especially of the music for which he had a real affinity, is imo unquestionable. That is what I prefer to focus on - that the musical development of orchestral and operatic life here would have been immeasurably poorer without him.

Beecham did a lot for the musical life of this country and spend a lot of his [and his father's]money on doing that. However he could let his tongue run away with him to get an immediate effect, which has not been kind to his memory. He said a lot of silly, and unkind, things but didn't think about them being remembered years after his death. His deeds are what count and mostly they improved the world of music,especially opera and ballet.

[Serial_Apologist]

What I hear in the music is a composer who experienced sensory overload rather than mere sensuality.

I would say a highly sensitised openness to the environment: in Paris the fin de siecle ethos of unrestrained flambuoyance and Delius's hedonistic overindulgence in it in reaction against stifling late Victorian puritanicism; in the countryside, only superficially in sharp contrast, a capacity to identify selfhood with a natural rather than man-made order, thus with natural phenomena and change, and a corresponding intuition that, in the light of eternity, narratives delimit and can never capture, which was expressed in the music at its most characteristic.

Delius was a hippy before his time in many ways. Interesting to see confirmed my own suspicion that he was the first to have appreciated African American music, as it would have been experienced by those few prepared to be open in his time, like his friend Grainger. Watching the Pink Floyd documentary which followed left me wondering if Delius would have been less than censorious of their indulgences.

[Nick Armstrong]

I thought Beecham seemed very strange.

Lat, that struck me forcibly too, watching the clips of him (and I opined as much last night to one of our fellow Forumers). His body language, the way his eyes rolled around, I found slightly psychotic. Maybe he'd had a drink or four before the interview. The way he jammed his cigar back in his mouth to punctuate a point was funny. Very funny sayings.. but I have to say I commented "He was a nutter" after one of the clips...

[salymap]

I've just referred to Percy M Young's book,'Letters of Edward Elgar', in which he makes brief references to visits to Delius, saying he had an 80 mile taxi ride from Paris but it was good to talk over old friends with Delius. The letters would not have been available, presumably.

[Ariosto]

That is what I prefer to focus on - that the musical development of orchestral and operatic life here would have been immeasurably poorer without him.

Yes, I do agree, and as a musician he was in another class. His humour was very good, but not everything he said was very sensible.

He did also concentrate on music that in some ways many might find a little superficial. (Like Delius ... )

[Nick Armstrong]

Beecham's contribution to the musical life of this country was enormous and his high quality as a conductor, especially of the music for which he had a real affinity, is imo unquestionable. That is what I prefer to focus on - that the musical development of orchestral and operatic life here would have been immeasurably poorer without him.

Completely agreed, aeolium... (still fascinating to see the clips of him talking, though).

[Pabmusic]

I've just referred to Percy M Young's book,'Letters of Edward Elgar', in which he makes brief references to visits to Delius, saying he had an 80 mile taxi ride from Paris but it was good to talk over old friends with Delius. The letters would not have been available, presumably.

I presume not. I quoted them from Edward Elgar: Letters of a Lifetime, by Jerrold Northrop Moore (OUP 1990), although some of them are also in Lionel Carey's Delius: Letters 1909-1934 (Scolar Press 1988).