Three Small Tone Poems

• Delius composed his set of Three Small Tone Poems in 1889-90.¹

Contents

1. Summer Night
2. Winter Night (Sleigh ride)
3. Spring Morning²

• Sir Thomas Beecham, friend and supporter of Delius, edited and published this set in 1951.³
• Beecham claimed to have the manuscript for an Autumn themed tone poem by Delius, which would round out the set with all four seasons, but this has never been found.⁴

“I cannot do other than regard him as the last great apostle in our time of romance, emotion, and beauty in music.”

Sir Thomas Beecham, on Delius⁵

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. Ibid.
3. Hubert Foss, “The Instrumental Music of Frederick Delius,” Tempo 26 (1952), 31, JSTOR,   https://www.jstor.org/stable/943987.
4. Andrew J. Boyle, Delius and Norway (Woodbridge, England: Boydell Press, 2017), 92.
5. Thomas Beecham, Frederick Delius (London: Hutchinson, 1959), 221.