Our Black laborers showed a truly wonderful sense of musicianship in the instinctive way they treated melody and harmony.  Hearing their singing in such romantic surroundings, it was then and there that I first felt the urge to express myself in music.

                                                                                            -- Frederick Delius

Frederick Delius in Florida

A Music-Performance Documentary Film for Public Television

In March 1884, a headstrong young Englishman sailed from Liverpool to the eastern coast of Florida. He had persuaded his father, a prosperous wool merchant, to allow him to leave the family business and try his hand at cultivating oranges. Of course, it was adventure, not orange-growing, that appealed to 22-year-old Frederick Delius, and the enterprise was short-lived. But Delius’ year in that sub-tropical paradise unlocked an urge for creation he had long felt within:

In Florida, sitting and gazing at Nature, I gradually learnt the way in which I should eventually find myself. Nobody else could help me. Contemplation like composition cannot be taught.

As a child, Frederick had exhibited extraordinary musical talent, but his father dismissed the notion of a musical education as frivolous. The young man’s unique experiences in Florida rekindled his desire for a life in music, and by 1886, he was enrolled at Leipzig Conservatory and studying with Edvard Grieg. Clear now about the course of his future, Frederick Delius became, in the words of world-famous conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, the “finest English composer in the last 200 years.”

Inspired by Florida’s magical landscape . . .

Frederick’s orange plantation, Solano Grove, lay on the moss-draped banks of the St. John's River, just west of St. Augustine and several hours downstream from Jacksonville. In 1884, both cities were little more than villages, though St. Augustine had been established by the Spanish in 1565. The interior of North Florida was mainly wilderness, pristine and breath-taking in its exoticism and Garden of Eden perfection.

Once settled at Solano Grove, Frederick secured a piano and befriended a well-educated music teacher, a Jacksonville church organist named Thomas Ward. It was Ward who first instructed Delius in composition theory and counterpoint, ultimately sparking the young man’s decision to defy his father and seek a musical education.

Frederick also absorbed the mysterious, seemingly primeval songs of his plantation workers, who were largely African-American and merely a generation away from Emancipation. A friend and biographer, Eric Fenby, recalls Frederick’s fond memory of “sitting up far into the night, smoking cigar after cigar, and listening to the workers and their subtle improvisations.”

Delius became immersed in the songs, rhythms and harmonies of his workers and the post-reconstruction American South, and these sounds influenced not only his compositional style but his entire artistic outlook. Indeed, he has been called "the last great apostle of Romantic   beauty in music.” His first orchestral work, Florida Suite, written in 1887, is a shimmering, lushly sensuous tone poem in four exquisitely evocative movements. It portrays a time, place and atmosphere as vividly and passionately as any orchestral work in musical history.

Discovering the roots of Florida Suite . . .

Frederick Delius in Florida (working title) is a 57-minute performance-documentary revisiting the youthful adventures of young Delius and exploring the multiple inspirations for Florida Suite and his subsequent compositions. Employing an on-camera host and narrator (e.g., opera baritone Thomas Hampson), and artfully interweaving symphonic performance, rehearsal footage, archival clips/stills and museum paintings, library and historical society sleuthing, and beautiful HDTV location and wilderness footage, the film will trace Delius’ historic movements and moments of self-discovery amid the mystical beauty of North Florida’s still-pristine natural world –all accompanied by the gloriously lyrical strains of Florida Suite.

The 2009 television production will involve most of the cultural and environmental anchor institutions of the Jacksonville-St. Augustine metropolitan area:

• Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, in an exquisite live performance of Florida Suite, conducted by David Lloyd-Jones, in Jacoby Symphony Hall at the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts.
• Riverside Fine Arts Association, Jacksonville, and its internationally renowned library of Delius memorabilia.
• Cummer Museum of Art, Jacksonville, with its superb collection of 19th-century North Florida landscapes, river scenes and plantation paintings.
• Solano Grove and the Kingsley Plantation, U.S. National Park Service historic sites.  
• Jacksonville University, where Frederick Delius’ plantation home is now located.
• Jacksonville Public Library and its Frederick Delius, African-American and Florida Collections of photographs and memorabilia.
• Jacksonville and St. Augustine Historical Societies.
• Lightner Museum, Castillo de San Marcos and the Alcazar Hotel in St. Augustine.
• Nature Conservancy’s Machaba Balu Preserve.
• Princess House and Pellicer Creek (St. John’s River Water Management District).
• University of North Florida Nature Trails and DeLeon Springs State Park.
• Local public television (PBS) station WJCT/Jacksonville.

The overall project includes a website, high-profile public events, and programs of educational outreach for the area’s high schools and universities. Both the DVD edition of the program and a new companion CD will include the Jacksonville Symphony’s performance of Delius’ final composition, Songs of Farewell (1931), a magnificent 26-minute choral and orchestral work set to the poetry of Walt Whitman.    The film will be an imaginative, high-definition amalgam of four PBS signature series – Nature, American Experience, Great Performances and History Detectives.

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Music is a cry of the soul. It is addressed and should appeal instantly to the soul of the listener. It is a revelation, a thing to be reverenced.

                                                                                     -- Frederick Delius

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THE PRODUCTION TEAM

Sandy MacDonell (executive producer) served for several years as executive producer at the Miami/Atlanta-based Siebke-Ross Productions and was recently involved in merchandising and marketing projects with Walt Disney World and Universal Studios. He was producer for “Sea Search,” a syndicated series on underwater exploration, and “It’s Your Money,” a series on financial planning featuring host Jim Barry. Mr. MacDonell began his film career in advertising before moving on to public service campaigns and documentary films for such organizations as Save the Children Foundation and the Catholic Archdiocese of Florida.     

__________________________ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THE PRODUCTION TEAM_____________________

SANDY MACDONELL

JOHN R. PAULSON             

 For more information on the film project "Frederick Delius in Florida", e-mail Sandy MacDonell.

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