Requiem (Delius)

The Requiem by Frederick Delius was written between 1913 and 1916, and first performed in 1922. It is set for soprano, baritone, double chorus and orchestra, and is dedicated "To the memory of all young artists fallen in the war". The Requiem is Delius's least-known major work, not being recorded until 1968 and having received only seven performances worldwide by 1980.

The reasons why Delius, an avowed atheist, started work on a Requiem, a decidedly Christian (specifically Catholic) form, are obscure. (A Mass of Life from 1905 also has a title suggestive of religion, but with an apparently anti-religious text.) He started work on the Requiem in 1913, after a holiday in Norway. The dedication "To the memory of all young artists fallen in the war" was clearly not in Delius's mind at the outset, as there was no war happening at that time. He had substantially completed the work by 26 October 1914, barely ten weeks after the start of the First World War. Prior to the outbreak of the war, both Henry Wood and Sir Thomas Beecham had showed early interest in presenting the Requiem during the latter part of the 1914 season. The war put paid to those plans, and Delius used the opportunity to make some minor revisions. By 15 March 1916 he was able to tell Philip Heseltine that it was completely finished.

Delius's nephew was killed on active service not long before the war ended but the dedication was already appended at the end of the score in the spring of 1918.

The work lasts a little over half an hour. It is in two parts and five sections. The chorus appears in every section, along with either the soprano or baritone soloist. The soloists do not sing together until the final section:

There are some uncertainties surrounding the text. It seems that Delius did some of the early work himself, but his German Jewish friend contributed substantially in putting it together; so substantially, in fact, that he considered himself its true author and felt entitled to a royalty payment. Simon was the owner and editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung, and also a political economist, writer and translator, art historian, musicologist and practising musician. How he and Delius became acquainted is not recorded. The text does not literally quote any specific author, but is derived in spirit from the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer, while also redolent of William Shakespeare, the Bible, and the text of Gustav Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. At one point, "Hallelujahs" are mingled with Arabic invocations to Allah. The published score makes no mention of the author, and Heinrich Simon's involvement only became generally acknowledged in the 1970s. Thomas Hemsley, the baritone soloist in the 1965 Liverpool performance, described the words as "a bit embarrassing, seeming to be rather a poor, second-hand imitation of Nietzsche".

...
Wikipedia