Summer Night on the River

• Delius composed this orchestral tone poem in 1911; it’s part of his set Two Pieces for Small Orchestra, along with On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring.¹
• Percy Grainger claimed his advice was the catalyst for Delius’s Two Pieces for Small Orchestra.

“Around 1910 he complained to me that his orchestral works were neglected in England. I wrote him saying that England was studded with fine amateur orchestras that would rejoice to do Delius works, but lacked the 3^rd clarinet, 3^rd bassoon, and 5^th and 6^th horns that his scores so often called for. ‘Write some short pieces for small orchestra,’ I urged, ‘and English orchestras will devour them.’ His next letter told me that he had taken my advice, and had already finished a short work for small orchestra.”

Percy Grainger²

“One can almost see the gnats and dragonflies darting over the waterlilies, and the faint white mist hovering over willow-tressed banks and overhanging trees.”

Eric Fenby, Delius’s amanuensis ³

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. Quoted in Martin Lee-Browne and Paul Guinery, Delius and His Music (Woodbrigde, England: Boydell Press, 2014), 312.
3. Quoted in Lee-Browne and Guinery, Delius and His Music, 312.