Delius As I Knew Him With A Portrait And Musical Notes

An intimate portrait of Delius by the man who notated many of the disabled composer's last works. Includes 33 musical examples.

My book begins with a brief consideration of what we mean by “English music” and what factors are involved. I explain the reasons behind my choice of composers for consideration, and for the omissions from the survey.

Frederick Delius is among the most celebrated English composers of the 20th century. Widely studied and performed, his works are considered models of the British impressionist school and continue to fascinate students and scholars centuries later. This research guide serves as a ready reference for students and scholars, but will also be interesting to read and useful for anyone who wants to know where to begin to learn more about this important composer.

An invaluable guide for lovers of classical music designed to enhance their enjoyment of the core orchestral repertoire from 1700 to 1950 Robert Philip, scholar, broadcaster, and musician, has compiled an essential handbook for lovers of classical music, designed to enhance their listening experience to the full. Covering four hundred works by sixty-eight composers from Corelli to Shostakovich, this engaging companion explores and unpacks the most frequently performed works, including symphonies, concertos, overtures, suites, and ballet scores. It offers intriguing details about each piece while avoiding technical terminology that might frustrate the non-specialist reader. Philip identifies key features in each work, as well as subtleties and surprises that await the attentive listener, and he includes enough background and biographical information to illuminate the composer’s intentions. Organized alphabetically from Bach to Webern, this compendium will be indispensable for classical music enthusiasts, whether in the concert hall or enjoying recordings at home.

"There are many biographies and articles about the life of Frederick Delius (1862-1934), but there has never been a comprehensive book about his music until now. He was an extraordinarily versatiles composer, equally at home with orchestral, instrumental, and chamber works as with choral works and songs; and Delius and his Music covers his entire output. Everything he published, from his earliest compositions and 'trifiles' to the mighty, ninety-minute A Mass of Life, is analysed here in nontechnical language. The history and background of each work and its critical reception are also examined, set within a biography, and against a backdrop of the English musical scene and some of its personalities during the seventy years of Delius's life. There are numerous musical examples and many quotations from contemporary newspapers and journals, as well as a complete list of Delius's works, with catalogue numbers, and a select bibliography. This book will appeal not only to students and Delian scholars, but also to everyone who already has an interest in Delius's unique music, or who would like to discover it for the first time"--Jaquette.

In The Late Victorian Folksong Revival: The Persistence of English Melody, 1878-1903, E. David Gregory provides a reliable and comprehensive history of the birth and early development of the first English folksong revival. Continuing where Victorian Songhunters, his first book, left off, Gregory systematically explores what the Late Victorian folksong collectors discovered in the field and what they published for posterity, identifying differences between the songs noted from oral tradition and those published in print. In doing so, he determines the extent to which the collectors distorted what they found when publishing the results of their research in an era when some folksong texts were deemed unsuitable for "polite ears." The book provides a reliable overall survey of the birth of a movement, tracing the genesis and development of the first English folksong revival. It discusses the work of more than a dozen song-collectors, focusing in particular on three key figures: the pioneer folklorist in the English west country, Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould; Frank Kidson, who greatly increased the known corpus of Yorkshire song; and Lucy Broadwood, who collected mainly in the counties of Sussex and Surrey, and with Kidson and others, was instrumental in founding the Folk Song Society in the late 1890s. The book includes copious examples of the song tunes and texts collected, including transcriptions of nearly 300 traditional ballads, broadside ballads, folk lyrics, occupational songs, carols, shanties, and "national songs," demonstrating the abundance and high quality of the songs recovered by these early collectors.