A Song before Sunrise

Composer: DELIUS, Frederick
  • Delius composed this piece for small orchestra in 1918.1
  • It was composed amid suffering: not only was WWI raging, but at the time of composition, Delius was at the bath resort of Biarritz, where he was hoping to get some relief for his declining health.2
  • The work is dedicated to Delius’s friend, Philip Heseltine (pseudonym: Peter Warlock).
  • Listen for: in the last two bars, the clarinet plays a motif which Delius (supposedly)3 compared to the call of a rooster.4

Sources

  1. Lionel Carley, Robert Anderson, and Anthony Payne, “Delius, Frederick,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed August 29, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000049095.
  2. Adrian Corleonis, “A Song Before Sunrise, for Small Orchestra,” in The All Music Guide to Classical Music, ed. Chris Woodstra, Gerald Brenn and Allen Schrott, (San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2005), 366.
  3. Ibid.
  4. David Curtis, “A Song before Sunrise,” The Delius Society Journal no. 155 (Spring 20014) , 50.

Cut IDs

41575