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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2016
The feeling of nature I think is what I like so much in Grieg's best things. You have it too & I think we all 3 have something in common.
Delius to Grainger, 10 June 1907.
Spring always means for me a longing for Norway.
Delius to Grainger, January 1914.
A ‘Norwegian Cuckoo’? Well perhaps not Norwegian literally, but certainly figuratively. Perhaps, as we shall see, nothing more than an accidental cadence. Delius thought so, even if Grieg didn't; and it was probably Grainger who inadvertently acted as the go-between.
1 Quotations from Delius's letters are from Carley, Lionel's Delius: A Life in Letters, Vol.I, 1862–1908, 1983 and Vol.II, 1909–1934, 1988 Google Scholar, and Grieg and Delius: a Chronicle of their Friendship in Letters, 1993.Google Scholar
2 For fuller details, see ‘Frederick Delius and Norway’ by Lowe, Rachel Google Scholar, in A Delius Companion, ed. Redwood, Christopher, 1976, pp. 167–186.Google Scholar
3 Grieg in a letter to Frants Beyer, 13/2/1888: see Carley, Lionel: Delius: A Life in Letters, 1862–1908, 1983, p. 13;Google Scholar
4 Bird, John: Percy Grainger, 1976, p. 115.Google Scholar
5 Bird, , op.cit., p. 116.Google Scholar
6 Bird, , op.cit., p. 120.Google Scholar
7 ‘Grainger and Folksong’, by Tall, David Google Scholar, in The Percy Grainger Companion, ed. Foreman, Lewis, 1981, p. 57.Google Scholar
8 Bird, , op.cit., p. 110.Google Scholar
9 Letter from Frederick Delius to Jelka Delius, 21/4/1907.
10 Interview with John Amis, BBC, 14/6/1959, quoted by Bird, , op.cit., p. 111.Google Scholar
11 Delius: Portrait of a Cosmopolitan, 1976, pp. 48–49.Google Scholar
12 ‘Personal Recollections of Grieg’, Musical Times, 11 1907, p. 720 Google Scholar; see also Morton, John: Grieg, 1974, p. 123.Google Scholar
13 op cit.:see footnote 10.
14 Letter, 15/3/1909.
15 Letter, 23/6/1912.
16 Letter, 18/9/1912.
17 Letter to the editor of the London Evening Standard, 5/2/1927, quoted in ‘Impulsive Friend: Grainger and Delius’, by Carley, Lionel Google Scholar, in The Percy Grainger Companion, op.cit., p. 46.Google Scholar
18 ‘About Delius’, by Grainger, Percy Aldridge Google Scholar, in Warlock, Peter: Delius, rev. edition 1952, p. 172.Google Scholar
19 Bird, , op.cit., p. 111 Google Scholar. Eric Fenby is slightly dismissive about the impact of Grainger's harmonization on Delius: see Fenby, : Delius, 1971, pp. 58–62 Google Scholar. See also memoir, Grainger's, ‘The Personality of Frederick Delius’Google Scholar, first publ, in The Australian Music News, 07 1934 Google Scholar, reprinted in A Delius Companion, op.cit., pp. 117–129 Google Scholar, particularly p.128.
20 ‘About Delius’, op.cit., pp. 171–173.Google Scholar
21 According to Percy, it was he who ‘urged’ Delius to ‘write some short pieces for small orchestra’ which led to On hearing the first cuckoo in spring: ‘About Delius’, op.cit., p. 172.Google Scholar
22 ibid., p.172.
23 The only folksong which Grieg himself collected ‘in the field’ was ‘Gjendine's Lullaby’, op.66 No.19.
24 ‘About Delius’, op.cit., p. 173.Google Scholar
25 Warlock, : Delius, 1923, p. 118.Google Scholar
26 Benestad, Finn and Schjelderup-Ebbe, Dag: Edvard Grieg: the Man and the Artist, 1988, p. 336.Google Scholar
27 The complete piece is reproduced in Fenby, Eric's Delius, 1971, pp. 68–70 Google Scholar, with a short extract from On hearing… for comparison.
28 Letter from Delius to Tischer, 26/7/1913.
29 e.g., Horton, : Grieg, 1974, p. 123.Google Scholar
30 Fenby, , op.cit., p. 70.Google Scholar
31 Grieg: a symposium, 1948 Google Scholar; editorial footnote p.56.
32 op.cit., p.96, footnote 2.
33 See Schlotel, Brian, Grieg, 1986, p. 8.Google Scholar
34 Warlock, : Delius, 1923, p. 132.Google Scholar
35 Jefferson, Alan: Delius, 1972, p. 70 Google Scholar: ‘The cuckoo in this French spring is undoubtedly from the garden at Grez.’; Lionel Carley: ‘Hans Haym: Delius' Prophet and Pioneer’, in A Delius Companion, op.cit., p. 213 Google Scholar: ‘Some of his more Impressionist pieces, such as “In a Summer Garden” and “On hearing the first cuckoo in spring”, give us an instinctive feeling that, wherever the inspiration may be rooted, an essentially English natural setting is being evoked.’; Hutchings, Arthur: Delius, 1948, p. 85 Google Scholar: ‘The spirit is entirely English’.
36 For fuller discussion of this matter, see my article, ‘The Notation of Bird-Song’, in Ibis, cxii, 1970, p. 151 Google Scholar. For more information on the cuckoo and its calls, see The Birds of the Western Palearctic, ed. Cramp, Stanley, 1985, Vol.IV, Terns to Woodpeckers, p. 412.Google Scholar
