Frederick Delius’ early life was as unusual for a composer as his music itself. Born in Yorkshire in 1862, the son of a Bradford wool merchant, Delius rebelled against his father’s plans for him in the family business, and was sent to manage an orange grove in Florida. There, he was enthralled by the singing of the Black workers around him. He then studied at Leipzig Conservatoire (where Grieg became a lifelong friend) before moving to Paris. In 1897, he settled in the home of his future wife Jelka Rosen, in nearby Grez-sur-Loing. Delius had by now developed an idiom unlike anyone else’s, blending post-Wagnerian chromatic richness and emotional power with a wistful poetic streak. His music was taken up by conductors in Germany and, in England, by Thomas Beecham: the opera A Village Romeo and Juliet and the choral Appalachia, Sea Drift and A Mass of Life all spread Delius’ name. There were successful shorter orchestral pieces too, among them Brigg Fair (based on an English folk-song) and On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring. Sadly, his rate of production was then slowed by the effects of syphilis contracted in his early years; by the late 1920s, Delius was blind and paralysed. He composed by dictation to a young collaborator, Eric Fenby, completing among other works a late masterpiece, Songs of Farewell for chorus and orchestra, before passing away in 1934 aged 72.