A Song of the High Hills is a work for tenor, soprano, chorus and orchestra by Frederick Delius.
Composed in 1911, it was first performed under the direction of Albert Coates, at the Queen's Hall in London on February 26, 1920.
Delius explained that I have tried to express the joy and rapture felt in the High Mountains and to depict the lonely melancholy of the highest altitudes of the wide expanses.
The vocal parts typify Man in Nature.Sir Thomas Beecham described this as one of Delius's major works ('on an heroic scale, and the inspiration is on an exalted level throughout'[2]) and a transitional work, in which Delius moved away from the human sensibilities described in such works as Sea Drift towards a 'certain austerity of manner', attaining 'a magical sequence of sounds and echoes, both vocal and instrumental, all culminating in a great outburst of tone that seems to flood the entire landscape.
'[3] '...we have hitherto unfamiliar elements of austerity and impersonality, as if the composer had grown tired of interpreting the joys and sorrows of human beings and had turned to the contemplation of nature only.