My Visit to Danville, September, 1996
Finally! I arrive in Danville, Virginia
late Saturday, the last day of summer. The weather is perfect:
sunny, slightly breezy, with a hint of autumn in the air. (The
Blue Ridge Mountains and Lovers' Leap
on Route 58 East were an auspicious first entrance to southern
Virginia.) So what brought me all the way from Morgantown, West
Virginia to Danville? As a northwesterner transplanted by a job
move, why did I come all this distance to a region of the county
so different from my background and experience?
I'm tracking
the path of that great, but lesser known "British"
composer Frederick Delius (1862-1934), who spent nine months in
Danville (Sept. 1885 - June 1886) teaching music to earn fare
to Europe, where he pursued a career as a composer. (Earlier,
he had made an unsuccessful attempt to grow oranges in Florida
from March 1884 to Sept. 1885, an enterprise designed to assuage
the fears, yet escape the scrutiny of his father in England, who
wished to hem in the wayward, artistically inclined lad: a classic
biographical episode in the lives of artists.) Delius and his
music now have an international reputation and have become a minor
classic. One can't go into almost
any record store with a classical music section of moderate size
and not find Delius CD's. He's
quite well represented by recordings, several versions existing
of his most important works. And it's
my love of that music and my desire to see some of its origins
that inspired me to come here.
I'm not the first.
Clare Delius, the composer's sister,
sought information in 1935 for a biography of her brother by writing
to"Headmaster of the School,
Danville, VA". Then Gerard Tetley,
editor of the Danville Bee, having seen the above letter,
was inspired to research the Delius Danville days by interviewing
and publishing articles in the 40's
and 50's. In the fall of 1950 the
eminent British conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, Delius's
friend and champion, visited Florida and Burleigh (a plantation
home 20 miles south of Danville) seeking information for his Delius
biography, and Professor Randel made a visit for his 1971 article
"Delius in America".
And more recently, a centennial celebration commemorating Delius's
residence in Danville was held in 1986, attracting leading Delius
scholars and enthusiasts, and culminating in a book ("Delius
in Danville"), the unveiling
of an historic marker denoting Delius's
residence, and performance of his work "Appalachia".
"Your new work [Appalachia] demonstrates
to me that for you everything in the world that you see and experience
with emotion can become music, that the world surrounds you in
terms of 'sound'
and that these sounds you carry in your very being."
So wrote the German conductor Julius Buths regarding the 1902
Delius masterpiece "Appalachia",
a work that records in most telling fashion the musical and atmospheric
impressions his stay in America had on him.
The most tangible musical evidence of his
American adventure is the tune he used as the basis for the variations
in "Appalachia",
one that he heard the Afro-American workers singing in the tobacco
stemmeries when wandering the bustling tobacco district of Danville.
(Delius might have heard this tune earlier in Florida, either
from the deckhands of steamships on the St. Johns River, his own
plantation hands, or the Afro-American waiters who doubled as
singers in the hotels of Jacksonville, Florida.) "Appalachia"
suggests the sights and sounds of his American odyssey, kaleidoscopically
shifting between musical images suggesting the lush, semi-tropical
Florida, and at times the landscape and society of southern Virginia.
To my ears, one can hear the activity of the wharfs in Jacksonville
or tobacco district in Danville, a waltz at a society event, the
blaring of a military band, etc.
And as backdrop to all in "Appalachia"
is the natural setting: the resplendent sunrise music at beginning,
the many nocturnal soliloquies with their cool air and quiet rustlings
of water and leaves, etc. "I
believe, myself, in no doctrine whatever--and in nothing but in
Nature and in the great forces of Nature"
wrote Delius. Whether the ocean in "Sea
Drift", or the mountains and
meadows in the "Mass of Life",
the natural environment permeates his work. Indeed, it was Delius's
experience of the natural wonders of the American continent (and
its indigenous music) that became the catalyst to his decision
to create music, and his future destiny as a composer.
This big musical scrapbook of his youthful
memories ("Appalachia")
was composed in 1902 (completely transforming an earlier 1896
version), a full 16 years after his first visit to America, echoing
another major theme of his art: the backward gaze in time. "Nostalgia
became Delius like a garment of truth"
wrote Geoffrey Crankshaw for the jacket notes of a Delius album.
Somehow, unexplainably, Delius was able to create a musical language
that evokes reflection on the past, and correspondingly, the transience
of life. This explains the "concentrated
loveliness" in his music--an
awareness of beauty intensified by conciousness of its mortality.
Filtered through the prism of his music we encounter the passing
of nature ("To Daffodils"),
severed relationships ("Sea Drift",
"Songs of Sunset"),
and human mortality ("Songs of
Farewell", "A
Late Lark">). But the "great
forces of Nature" renew life,
and in Delius we find an equal obsession with spring and summer
("On Hearing the First Cuckoo
in Spring", "In
A Summer Garden", "A
Song of Summer"): apparently
Delius was a sun worshipping pagan.
So in "Appalachia",
in spite of its narrow topical focus, we encounter the major themes
of his life's work, emphasizing its
centrality in his canon, and the role of the American landscape
and indigenous music in that work, specifically those of Florida
and Virginia. (Delius was also influenced by Scandinavian and
English folk music, as well as contemporary art music, especially
Chopin, Grieg, and Wagner, making him a true musical cosmopolitan.)
My journey, my pilgrimage to Danville was
conducted very much in that Delian spirit of recapturing the past,
to discover what remained of those days when the young composer
was taking his earliest tentative steps. My first encounter with
that past occurred late afternoon on my day of arrival, in that
amazing neighborhood of Victorian homes on North Main Street:
many of these houses stood when Delius was here. Old buildings
are time machines. And the spirit of late Victorian times, the
"fin-de-siecle",
hangs in the air, evoked by the ghosts of the lives that passed
through these buildings, Frederick Delius among them. I silently
commended the efforts made to preserve these structures. While
seeking a bed and breakfast on North Main, I met a friendly resident
who toured me through her turn-of-the-century house, making a
pleasant introduction to Danville. Unable to find a room here,
I locate comfortable, non-historic, lodging on the other side
of the Dan River, and settle in that evening.
The next morning I was waiting in the lobby
of my motel for Gary Grant of the Danville Historical Society,
someone I had corresponded with regarding my visit to the city,
and my interest in seeing the Delius sites. The affable gentleman
who greeted me that morning proved to be a most agreeable and
informative tour guide. (I have the benefit of his previous experience
in touring Delius scholars.) It was a pleasant first day of fall,
perfect for out-of-car mini excursions.
Our first stop was the Virginia State Historical
Marker at North Main and Keen Streets, marking the location (or
close to it) of Delius's Danville
residence. After picture taking we tracked the route that Delius
would regularly have taken to work with his two friends Professor
Robert Phifer, Head of Music at Roanoke Female College, and Frederick
Hoppe, who was employed in a saloon in the tobacco district.
Here we encounter in Delius's social
interests a classic example of the dichotomy to be found running
through his life: the refined aesthete, comfortable in a cultured,
artistic environment (he was raised in a upper-middle class home
in Bradford, England, where his father was a wealthy wool merchant),
and the free-spirited adventurer, eager for rowdy companionship.
Similarly, Thomas Beecham contrasts his "general
air of fastidiousness and sober elegance"
to his preferred provincial dialect of northern England. (Even
in his music, one writer contrasts its feline repose with the
moments it pounces on the listener unawares. To extend the musical
analogy of the "Delian dichotomy"
further, one may observe how Delius borrowed from the folk music
idioms of America, England, and Scandinavia, dressing them, however,
in the luxurious fabric of the chromatic harmony, orchestration,
and symphonic development prevalent in the art music contemporary
to his time.) Indeed, all the key Delius personality traits reveal
themselves with gusto during his brief but eventful Danville stay:
his love of sport (riding horses with Colonel Robert Wilson at
Dan's Hill Plantation); his ease of
making and keeping friends (he was an immediate social success,
many Danvillians following him long after he left through correspondence
or later, newspaper articles); his love of nature (he walked the
Dan River dells with his friends Phifer and Hoppe); and the personal
charm that women found so agreeable (including the rumored affair
with Virginia Watkins). These stories are nicely chronicled in
Mary Cahill's book "Delius
in Danville" (published by the
Danville Historical Society).
After crossing the Dan River from north Danville
(following the commute of our happy trio), we toured many other
sites in our Delius odyssey, including the site of the old Roanoke
Female College where Delius and Phifer taught (no longer standing),
the tobacco district, the site of the old railroad station near
Craghead Street where Delius first arrived and departed (no longer
standing), and the espresso shop downtown, among others. (Actually,
the espresso shop is a recent addition to downtown, and was a
pleasant discovery to this coffee drinking northwesterner recently
transplanted to the east. Espresso shops are everywhere in the
northwest.) We even had a chance to view the big stone piers
of the antebellum Richmond and Danville railroad bridge, crossed
by Delius when arriving in September, 1885 (and 20 years earlier
by Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet on April
3, 1865), the breeze blowing pleasantly up from the Dan that day.
The tour ended with a hilltop view of the Dan River valley.
Musical Legacy of Delius's Danville Experience
While the landscape and indigenous
music of Florida and Virginia, as discussed above, were an inspiration
to Delius and key to his development as a composer, there were
other very important musical consequences bearing on his future
resulting from his Danville stay.
Shortly after arriving, Delius met
professor Robert Phifer, Head of Music at Roanoke Female College,
who became his friend and mentor and who was instrumental in securing
him a teaching appointment at the College. Phifer, educated in
Europe's premier music conservatory at Leipzig, Germany, must
have sensed Frederick's gifts and encouraged the young composer
to continue seeking his way by the academic path. They had much
in common, and as Mrs. Phifer recalled: "There was not a
day passed that he did not find his way to our house, taking meals
with us, telling jokes, amusing my children, and always scribbling
music which no one could play but himself."
Delius went to the Leipzig conservatory,
and made there one of the more important musical contacts of his
life, Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, who's advocacy on his behalf
helped persuade his father to regard the young Frederick's musical
prospects in a more positive light. The rich musical life of
Leipzig also offered Delius the opportunity of hearing some of
the finest music making in Europe (Mahler conducted there), seeding
his young fertile mind with the musical experiences necessary
for his future growth as a composer. And for the price of a barrel
of beer Delius heard his "Florida Suite" (conducted
by Hans Sitt at Bonorand's restaurant in the Rosenthal Park),
the first time he could hear the effects of his orchestration--an
experience so crucial to his artistic development since he was
essentially a composer who thought in terms of the orchestra.
Delius didn't attend the Leipzig conservatory
on Phifer's word alone, but Phifer's voice may have been a more
compelling one, for as soon as he leaves Danville in the summer
of 1886, we find him in Leipzig the following fall.
And as a music teacher in Danville,
the only time Delius taught music in his life, he was compelled
to digest his music lessons from Thomas Ward in Florida (another
story) and from previous study and experience (Delius had piano
and violin lessons in earlier years), thus establishing an important
foundation for his future work--important even if that foundation,
as it turned out, consisted of identifying only a few principles
and a limited amount of literature within musical tradition that
could be of use to him, jettisoning the rest after thoughtful
review. His experiences in Leipzig continued this process.
The Second Visit of 1897
The circumstances of Delius's
second visit to Danville and the New World in 1897 are somewhat
fantastic, having the character of comic opera. This is in keeping
with the romantic streak coloring the various episodes of his
life (though a life not untouched, I might add, by difficulty
and some tragedy).
After Danville, Delius obtained familial
consent for a course of musical studies at the Conservatory in
Leipzig, Germany, where in addition to his studies, he hung out
with Scandinavian musicians and artists, making acquaintance with
the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. Upon completion of his course,
and supported by a small family allowance, he took up residence
in Paris for concentrated musical work, spending his summers hiking
the hills and mountains of Norway.
What prompted Delius to leave France for
a second and final visit to Danville and America probably included
a desire to settle affairs at his Florida orange plantation of
Solano Grove, potential musical interests in New York with the
impresario Victor Thrane, and perhaps a desire to evade the attentions
of his mistress Princesse de Cystria. Without the knowledge of
Delius and his traveling companion Halfdan Jebe (a Norwegian violinist)
she apparently slipped on board their New York bound vessel and
announced her presence to them when well out to sea! To explain
her presence as a traveling companion in those Victorian times
of overt propriety, they assumed the roles of traveling musicians.
When arriving in Danville, Jebe became the violinist "Lemmanoff",
and the princess the singer "Madame
Donodossola", with Delius as
himself playing piano. When the trio hit Danville, they performed
at the Methodist College (or Danville College for Young Ladies)
on January 30th, 1897, the Danville Register reviewing
the concert the next morning, from which I excerpt: "Mr.
Delius was very happy in his accompaniments, and his old friends
in the city were pleased to hear the evidence of his talents as
a composer in the composition of his which Madame Donodossola
so faithfully rendered." Delius
stayed in Danville for a brief time visiting his old friend professor
Phifer, the Phifer family, and others before moving on to Florida
with Jebe, and perhaps the princess.
Why did Delius visit Danville at this
time, since his practical interests lay only in New York and Florida?
While a convenient stop between, I submit that he sensed himself
on the brink of real maturity as a composer (verifiable by his
output), and was revisiting scenes from his past as a symbolic
gesture of farewell before beginning a new chapter in his life.
He had a genuine interest in seeing old friends as well. Indeed,
as late as 1910 he sent Robert Phifer a piano score of his Appalachia
autographed "To my old Danville friend...from Frederick Delius".
The Delius Festival of 1997
Commemorating the event of Delius's
1897 visit, the 1997 Delius Festival of May 29 - June 1, 1997
intends to foster appreciation and raise awareness of Frederick
Delius and his music. Events include receptions, a Victorian
town and country bus tour, historic home tours, lectures, and
concerts.
When I visited Danville, imagine my happy
surprise at finding the building in which the 1897 concert took
place still standing, now part of Stratford College! Yes, a "replication"
of that concert will be performed in the building in which it
originally took
place, with Delius, "Mr.
Lemmanoff", and the Russian princess
"Madame Donodossola".
It should be a pleasant evening.
A number of interesting and informative lectures
will take place during the Festival. Dr. Lionel Carley, archivist
of the Delius Trust, London, will deliver a keynote address, and
Dr. Roger Buckley, Editor of the Journal of the Delius Society,
and Vice-Chairman of the Society, London, will lecture on the
Red Notebook that Delius began in Danville in 1886. Delius's
Florida teacher and mentor, Thomas Ward, will be discussed by
Dr. Don Gillespie of C.F. Peters Corporation. Finally, Danville
Community College professor C. Kinney Rorrer will describe and
play the music of the mid 1880's that
Delius would likely have heard in America. Surely some of the
music of "Appalachia"
will be discussed and played at this gathering.
Danville can be proud to be hosting this
conference with such style. Hats off to the organizing committee!
And the city can be proud to have had a role in shaping the development
of one of music's most unique and
individual composers of genius: Frederick Delius. Admittedly,
this music isn't for everyone, but
for those who enjoy it, it offers rare rewards indeed. I'm
looking forward to a return visit in May.
Sidebar--A Tribute to Eric Fenby
When discussing the final details of my article
with Gary Grant (of the Festival Organizing Committee), I learned
from him that Eric Fenby had recently passed away (Feb. 18, at
the age of 90). Instantly I'm reminded
of the temerity of past intentions to send some sort of thank
you letter to Fenby, in appreciation of the labors he endured
in assisting Delius in compositional dictation, because some real
musical gems resulted from their collaboration which would otherwise
have never existed, namely
"ALate Lark",
"A Song of Summer",
"Sonata No. 3 for Violin and Piano",
"Songs of Farewell",
"Caprice and Elegy",
and the "Irmelin Prelude"
(among other pieces). Unfortunately, the letter didn't
go out. After the phone call, I contented myself with the gesture
of listening to a few recordings and reading a few books.
Eric Fenby was born in 1906. Musically gifted,
he was appointed organist of Trinity Church in Scarborough at
age 12. In 1928, compelled by the beauty of the music and the
awful plight of the composer, Fenby offered Delius his assistance
in completing his last works. Offer accepted, they worked in
close collaboration at the Delius household in the picturesque
French village of Grez-sur-Loing, Fenby devising a system for
musical dictation. Much of the next 6 years were spent in creative
endeavor, until Fenby was with Delius at the end in 1934. His
relationship to Delius was chronicled in the Ken Russell film
"Song of Summer".
The film has been shown at Delius festivals and on public broadcasting
stations in the U.S.
After Delius's
death, Eric Fenby settled in London, working for Sir Thomas Beecham
on a variety of musical tasks. It was during this period in 1935
that he wrote "Delius as I Knew
Him" (facilitated by three months
of self-imposed isolation in Yorkshire). In 1936-39 he was employed
by Boosey and Hawkes music publishers. After working for the
British armed forces during the Second World War, he established
the music department of the North Riding Training School. And
after winning the Order of the British Empire for successful artistic
direction of the 1962 Bradford Delius Festival, he assumed professorship
at the Royal Academy of Music in London from 1964 until 1977.
Eric Fenby made a definitive recorded statement
of many of Delius's works in "The
Fenby Legacy", as well as other
recordings. He will be remembered with heartfelt gratitude for
a lifetime of service devoted to the legacy of Frederick Delius,
and the art of music as composer, conductor, teacher, and author.
I can think of no better conclusion to this
Fenby tribute, and to this article, than to quote from his book
"Delius as I Knew Him".
He recalls the moment of hearing the radio broadcast of Delius's
death in Delius's home, after having
endured with the helpless relic of a composer his final torturous
moments:
"That night we heard the B.B.C. announcement
of his death, followed by that exquisite passage from the 'Walk
to the Paradise Garden'. Looking out
over the garden, as I listened to that music, I saw the world
of music as he entered it, and the world of music, richer now
by far through his legacy of loveliness, as he had left it. And
I, being young and of that hard, cold, and materialistic post-war
generation of those who know little or nothing of the world of
which he had sung, but only of a world of shams and substitutes
and devastations, felt a sense of finality, distinct from personal
loss, as if with this man the very Spirit of Romance had died."
And now compounding the loss from that distant
moment of 1934 is the passing of one Eric Fenby, who represented
a major link to the Delius legacy, and by extension, to the winged
Spirit of that troubled yet vibrantly beautiful era preceding
the First World War, the fin-de-siecle. However, and I'm
quite sure Eric Fenby would have agreed, that "Spirit
of Romance" lives on as captured
in the music of Frederick Delius.
If only I had written that letter.
"Our days here are but one day."
Frederick Delius, Requiem
