Bernard Van Dieren Ondelius
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Winter 1990, Number 103 The Delius Society Journal The Delius Society Yl JournalJ OUTruAL Winter 1990, Number 103 The Delius Society Full Membership and Institutions £10f 10 per year Students £8f,8 USA and Canada US$21 per year Africa, Australasia and Far East £12f 12 Presidents Eric Fenby OBE, Hon DMus,D Mus, Hon DLitt,D Litt, Hon RAM, FRCM, Hon FfCLFTCL Vice Presidents Felix Aprahamian Hon RCO Roland Gibson MSc, PhD (Founder Member) Sir Charles Groves CBE Meredith Davies CBE, MA, BMus,B Mus, FRCM, Hon RAM Norman Del Mar CBE, Hon DMusD Mus Vernon Handley MA, FRCM, D Univ (Surrey)(Suney) Chairman RBR B Meadows 5 Westbourne House,House. Mount Park Road,Road. Harrow,Harrow. Middlesex HAHAl1 3JT Treasurer Derek Cox Mercers, 6 Mount Pleasant, Blockley, Glos. GL56 9BU Tel: (0386) 700175 Secretary Miss Diane Eastwood 28 Emscote Street South, Bell Hall, Halifax, Yorkshire Tel: (0422) 5053750537 Editor Stephen Lloyd 85a Farley Hill, Luton, Bedfordshire LUILUI5EG 5EG Tel: Luton (0582) 20075 2 CONTENTS Bemard van Dieren on Delius 3 Reviews: DELIUS: Four pieces arranged for piano solo 14 MAY HARRISON: Unpublished recordings 15 DELIUS Florida Suite, Summer Evening 16 THE SPIRIT OF ENGLAND Collection 18 MARGARET HARRISON talking 19 Midlands Branch Report: Delius and Elgar 20 News Round-Up 21 Obituaries: Clive Bemrose 22 Elizabeth Green 23 Forthcoming Events 23 Members paying their subscription by standing order may wish to note that the Society's Bank is: Trustee Savings Bank 8/9 Meer Street Stratford-upon-Avon Warwickshire CV37 6QB Sort Code 77-07-10 Account No. 11320460 Additional copies of this issue £2 (non-members £2.50), inclusive of postage ISSN-0306-0373 3 BERNARD VAN DIEREN ONDELIUSON DELIUS It isis no coincidence that both Cecil Gray]Grayr and Arthur BlissBliss22 in theirtheir reminisreminis- 'enigmatic cences referredreferred toto thethe 'enigmatic personality' of the Dutch-born composer 'the Bernard van Dieren (1887-1936),(1887-1936),BlissBliss going so far as toto call him 'the most far 'magnetic' enigmatic personality I haveever met'. met' . Gray alsoalsowrotewrote of his 'magnetic' perper- sonality, a factor thatthat may have somebearing on his somewhat curious repurepu- tationtation as a composer whose music even today today isis largelylargely overlooked despite 'one Gray's extravagant claimsclaims3 3 for him as 'one of the few livingliving mastersof music'.music'. An enigma indeed.indeed.What Whatcannot be ignored, however, is the impactimpactvan Dieren had on the circle of composers that includedincludedBliss, Bliss,Walton,Walton, Lambert and Heseltine. Philip Heseltine almost immediatelyimmediately came under van Dieren's seemingly powerful influenceafter their meeting in June 1916, and he wrote to Delius two years later4latel in terms that could not disguise the extent of this influence: 'Van 'Van Dieren .... is a man of miraculous genius for whose music my love & enthusiasm grows by what it feeds on. It would be well worth your while to journey to England only to see this wonderful man and his works: he is stillstill so ill that it seems impossible to predict whether he will live another year or another day. He has long ago passed the stage at which a normal man would have dieddied-and- and this bafflesbffies his doctors,.doctors; his will to live is all that he has to rely on, and he is working feverishly day and night whenever he has enough strength to hold a pen .... .'' The aura of a genius close to death adds to the enigma: in truth this superhuman fight for lifelift is more a flight of Heseltine's fancy.Vanfancy. Van Dieren sufferedfrom kidney complications that necessitated numernumer- ous operations and long spells in bedbeds.5 . Nevertheless Delius replied from 'All from BiarritzBiarritz6:6: 'All that you wrote me of Van Dieren makes me wish to get there as quick as possible - So that he, himself, may make me acquainted with his music & that I may yet be able to help him.him.lI will certainly do all in my power both in England & America for this unfortunate genius . .' No doubt it was largely Delius'sfondness for HeseltineHeseltine that made him try his influence on Emil Hertzka of Universal Edition to have someof van Dieren's piano piecespub-pub 'l lished. 'I spoketo HH. very warmly of Van Dieren and his piano pieces- tell Van D. to send them at once,' he informed Heseltine in October 1919I9I9z.7. And indeed in 1921 the SixSixSketches Op 4afor piano appearedfrom Universal. If or where Delius and van Dieren met is uncertain. It may have been in 1923 at the time of the Hassan run in London, for Heseltine wrote to van 'Delius for Dieren in September8:SeptembeF: 'Delius is at Cox's Hotel, Jermyn Street and may pos-pos sibly stay till next week.He would be pleased rfif you could contrive to visit him there . .' Possibly in responseto the whisper in the publishers' ears, van Dieren's Third String Quartet was dedicated to Delius (as was the Second to CecilCecil Gray and the Sixth to Heseltine)Heseltine) who heard it at Grez played by a visiting string quartetequartet9 and also in a radio broadcastl0.broadcastlO . Delius's verdict unfortunately has not comedown to us. Heseltinebecame a tirelesschampion of van Dieren's works as he had been 4 of Delius's.Delius's.VanDierenwaswithHeseltineVan Dieren was with Heseltine ononthe the evening of the latter's suicide in 1930,.1930; he was the last person to have seen him alive, and he became his sole heir and executor. Had Heseltine lived, he himself would surely have written this memorial tribute to Delius. As it turned out this duty fell to vanyan Dieren whose article appeared in the July 1934 issue of ofTheThe Musical Times (and inciinci- dentally, with the year of birth stillstill given incorrectly as 1863).1863).It is reprinted here otherwise unaltered. 'Musical 1.l. 'Musical Chairs' (Home & Van ThaIThal 1948, Hogarth Press 1985), p. 105 'As 2. 'As I remember' (Faber 1970), p. 97 'A 3. 'A SurveySuney o/Contemporaryof ContemporaryMusic' (OUP 1924), p. 239 4. Foreman (ed.),(ed,.),'From'From Parry to Britten: British Music in Letters 1900-1945' (Batsford 1987),1987),p.p. IIIlll 'Warlock 5. Tomlinson, 'Warlock and van Dieren with a van Dieren catalogue' (Thames 1978), p. 7 'Delius: 6. Carley, 'De/ius: A LifeLift in Letters 1909-1934'1909-1934'(Scolar 1988), p. 190 7. ibid.,ibid.,p.222p. 222 8. Foreman (ed.), op. cit.,cit.,p.p. 128 'Delius 9. Fenby, 'Delius as 1I knew him' (Bell 1936, Faber revision 1981), pp. 187-8 10. Carley, op. cit., pp. pp.395-6395-6 FREDERICK DELIUS January 29186229 1862 - June 10l0 1934 Less than twenty years ago I could still begin an article with these words: 'Very 'Very few people have more than a vague notion who Delius is. Most musimusi- cians know no more than the editor of a magazine, who last month described 'Peculiar' him as a peculiar composer.' 'Peculiar' was a thoughtful euphemism; the actual thoughts about him were not quite so kind. Many Germans were unwillunwill- ing to acceptacceptFritz Delius as a German. Yet, unless a composer were more or less a German he could not be aarealreal composer. English composers were said to have existed once. But very long ago. And besides, they were sorry old sticks or just simply period pieces. But a modern English composer? A contradiction in terms. The atmosphere in which Delius had to grow a reputation was one which younger musicians today will find difdif- ficult to evoke. England had practically abandoned claims to musical culture. The time when a gentleman's accomplishments comprised a capacity for singing tunes from notes was far away. It was a disposition lost in the mists of legend. The one reality was that a musician was a fiddler or a dancing master. If there were musicians left among the gentry, they were what one might describe as owner-musicians. A professional musician, if he would retain any human dignity, could only be a musical Don. But this species was not welwel- comed outside academic circles. English musicians of the two kinds lived alongside each other like Moslem and Hindu in India. The latter provided material for the Brahmin caste; they were the pundits. Still, a curious anomaly was that Moslems could not have looked with greater fanaticism towards the German Mecca of the musically faithful than the pundits did. An English comcom- poser could have no higher aim than the approbation of the Germans. And the Germans were contemptuous in their conviction of superiority. Delius was in a particular position. He shared the beliefs in the reliability of the German precepts; yet there was something in his character that was most 5) - unmistakably English, and his few English admirers could hear it in every note. The English lawn and the English ale, the green pleasant land, and the exquisite harmony of rural life reappeared in his music. Chances of perforperfor- mance for English composers, after the Crystal Palace days, when German conductors decided the tone, had become very uncertain. To achieve any reprep- utation one had to rely on what Germany had to offer. In Germany this was the time of the modemmodern festivals. AllA11 music that seemed to subscribe to the ideals of German musical reform, which was after all only the reaction against the old German beliefs (another side of the same thing), was welcome there. Here was something that ought to impart a new tone to music. Instead of the outlived formalism of old musical manifestations, he would sing the return to healthy, pagan, assertive life.