Requiem (Delius)

The reasons why Delius, an avowed atheist, started work on a Requiem, a decidedly Christian (specifically Catholic) form, are obscure.

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.

[1] Simon was the owner and editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung, and also a political economist, writer and translator, art historian, musicologist and practising musician.

[4] These other-than-Christian associations caused the commentators of the day to spurn it as "anti-Christian", and its pantheism did not win the hearts of those who were still suffering the loss of loved ones in the First World War.

The mingling of 'Hallelujahs' with 'Allah II Allah' was "introduced apparently to suggest the equal futility of all the religious war-cries of the world", and "the Delius standpoint is, as a whole, more arid than that of the most conventional 'religious' music, because a negation can generate no common impulse and arouse no enthusiasms.

"[2] In 1918 Delius had written "I don't think that I have ever done better", but even his greatest supporters, Sir Thomas Beecham, Philip Heseltine and Eric Fenby, were unimpressed with the work when first exposed to it, and for the most part remained so.

"[5] The first performance in London used an English translation of the German text by Philip Heseltine, who was brought into the project when Ernest Newman declined Delius's request.

[8] The premiere performance of Frederick Delius's Requiem was in the Queen's Hall,[5] London on 23 March 1922, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Albert Coates.

[11] Fifteen more years elapsed before the next performance – only the second in the United Kingdom – on 9 November 1965, by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Charles Groves,[12][13] with Heather Harper and Thomas Hemsley as the soloists.

[4] By 1980 there had been two more performances in the United States (Ann Arbor, Michigan and New York), as well as one in Greenville, Delaware, with organ, harp and percussion replacing the full orchestra.