Frederick Delius

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961. Later Printing. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Very Good. 0x0x0. Later printing. Jacket edges rubbed with some tears. 1961 Hard Cover. 227 pp. Delius, Frederick Theodor Albert (1862–1934), composer, was born on 29 January 1862 at Claremont, Horton Lane, Bradford, Yorkshire, the grandson of Ernst Friedrich Delius (1790–1831) and the fourth of the fourteen children of Julius Delius (1822–1901) and his wife, Elise Pauline Krönig (1838–1929). Both his parents were born in Bielefeld, Germany. His father moved to Bradford to work in the wool trade; he was naturalized in 1850, and married in 1856. Delius's younger sister Clare in her Memories (1935) recalled their father as a disciplinarian, with 'a ledger mind' (Delius, Memories, 96) whose 'guiding influence … was fear' (ibid., 22). He was, however, a just man, and not averse to the arts: Joseph Joachim and Alfredo Carlo Piatti made music at the Delius home. Little Fritz (the name with which he was baptized and which he used until he was about forty) played the piano and the violin, improvising with ease. Hearing Chopin's posthumous E minor waltz opened an 'entirely new world' (ibid., 48) for him. - Britannica