Florida Suite

Composer: DELIUS, Frederick
  • In 1884, Delius lived in Florida and worked at an orange plantation, Solana Grove, on the St. John’s River.1
  • In Jacksonville, Florida, Delius met organist Thomas Ward,2 who became his music teacher. Delius’s parents had resisted his desire for a career in music, so these lessons (while he was supposed to be focusing on orange growing) seem like a rebellious move on Delius’s part.3
  • Delius’s Florida Suite was his first orchestral composition, written in 1887 and revised in 1889.4
  • Some of the melodic material in this suite were inspired by the singing of African-American workers Delius heard at the plantation.5

Sources

  1. Lionel Carley, Robert Anderson, and Anthony Payne, “Delius, Frederick,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed September 3, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000049095.
  2. “Biography,” The Delius Trust, accessed September 3, 2019, https://www.delius.org.uk/resources/biography/.
  3. Carley, Anderson, and Payne, “Delius, Frederick,” Grove Music Online.
  4. “Biography,” The Delius Trust.
  5. Ibid.

Cut IDs

41226 42063 44121 44122 44123 44124