Editing Frederick Delius (section)

===Leipzig and Paris===
[[File:Edvard Grieg (1888) by Elliot and Fry - 02.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Edvard Grieg]], who was a strong influence on Delius's earlier music]]
In 1886, Julius Delius finally agreed to allow his son to pursue a musical career, and paid for him to study music formally. Delius left Danville and returned to Europe via New York, where he paused briefly to give a few lessons.<ref name=dnb/> Back in Europe he enrolled at the [[Felix Mendelssohn College of Music and Theatre|conservatoire]] in [[Leipzig]], Germany. Leipzig was a major musical centre, where [[Arthur Nikisch]] and [[Gustav Mahler]] were conductors at the [[Leipzig Opera|Opera House]], and [[Johannes Brahms|Brahms]] and [[Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky|Tchaikovsky]] conducted their works at the [[Leipzig Gewandhaus|Gewandhaus]].<ref name=mgobit/> At the conservatoire, Delius made little progress in his piano studies under [[Carl Reinecke]], but [[Salomon Jadassohn]] praised his hard work and grasp of counterpoint; Delius also resumed studies under Hans Sitt.<ref name=dnb/> Delius's early biographer, the composer [[Patrick Hadley]], observed that no trace of his academic tuition can be found in Delius's mature music "except in certain of the weaker passages".<ref name=dnbarchive/> Much more important to Delius's development was meeting the composer Edvard Grieg in Leipzig. Grieg, like Ward before him, recognised Delius's potential. In the spring of 1888, Sitt conducted Delius's ''[[Florida Suite]]'' for an audience of three: Grieg, [[Christian Sinding]] and the composer.{{refn|According to Hadley, the orchestral players were paid in beer.<ref name=dnbarchive/>|group= n}} Grieg and Sinding were enthusiastic and became warm supporters of Delius. At a dinner party in London in April 1888, Grieg finally convinced Julius Delius that his son's future lay in music.<ref name=dnbarchive/>

After leaving Leipzig in 1888, Delius moved to Paris where his uncle, Theodore, took him under his wing and looked after him socially and financially.<ref name=dnb/> Over the next eight years, Delius befriended many writers and artists, including [[August Strindberg]], [[Edvard Munch]] and [[Paul Gauguin]]. He mixed very little with French musicians,<ref name=dnb/> although [[Florent Schmitt]] arranged the piano scores of Delius's first two operas, ''Irmelin'' and ''The Magic Fountain'' ([[Maurice Ravel|Ravel]] later did the same for his ''[[verismo]]'' opera ''Margot la rouge'').<ref name=mgobit/> As a result, his music never became widely known in France.{{refn|Hadley, writing in 1946, commented that Delius's music remained unknown in France.<ref name=dnbarchive/> The critic [[Eric Blom]] wrote in 1929, while the composer was still alive: "Domiciled in France for nearly three decades, in Paris his name is a blank among the ordinary concert-goers and a curiosity among musicians. In cultivating music lovingly in his quiet riverside home at Grez, he fatally omitted to cultivate the musicians of the capital: the result is an artistic ostracism as rigid as only the injured vanity of Parisian art-circles can decree it."<ref>{{cite journal|author-link= Eric Blom|last= Blom|first= Eric|jstor= 738331|title= Delius and America|journal= The Musical Quarterly|date= July 1929|pages=438–47| doi = 10.1093/mq/xv.3.438|volume=XV}} {{subscription}}</ref> In 2007, the critic Michael White wrote, "European snobbery still prevailed, especially in France, where as late as the 1970s [[Nadia Boulanger]] claimed never to have heard of Delius."<ref>{{cite news|title= So Mighty, So Unmusical: How Britannia Found Its Voice |last=White|first=Michael|url= https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/arts/music/11whit.html |newspaper= The New York Times|date= 11 February 2007|access-date=21 January 2011}}</ref>|group= n}} Delius's biographer [[Diana McVeagh]] says of these years that Delius "was found to be attractive, warm-hearted, spontaneous, and amorous". It is generally believed that during this period he contracted the [[syphilis]] that caused the collapse of his health in later years.<ref name=dnb/><ref>{{cite journal|title= Medical Histories of Prominent Composers: Recent Research and Discoveries|last= Saffle|first= Michael|first2= Jeffrey R. |last2=Saffle|jstor= 932980|journal= Acta Musicologica|pages=77–101|date= July–December 1993|volume=65|doi=10.2307/932980}}{{subscription}}</ref>

Delius's Paris years were musically productive. His symphonic poem ''Paa Vidderne'' was performed in [[Oslo|Christiania]] in 1891 and in Monte Carlo in 1894; Gunnar Heiberg commissioned Delius to provide [[incidental music]] for his play ''Folkeraadet'' in 1897; and Delius's second opera, ''The Magic Fountain'', was accepted for staging at [[Prague]], but the project fell through for unknown reasons.<ref>Beecham (1975), pp. 71–73</ref> Other works of the period were the fantasy overture ''Over the Hills and Far Away'' (1895–1897) and orchestral variations, ''Appalachia: Variations on an Old Slave Song'' (1896, rewritten in 1904 for voices and orchestra).<ref name=grove/>