Editing Frederick Delius (section)

===War and post-war===
During the First World War, Delius and Jelka moved from Grez to avoid the hostilities. They took up temporary residence in the south of England, where Delius continued to compose. In 1915, ''[[The Musical Times]]'' published a profile of him by his admirer, the composer [[Peter Warlock|Philip Heseltine]] (known as "Peter Warlock"), who commented:
<blockquote>
[H]e holds no official position in the musical life of the country [i.e. Britain]; he does not teach in any of the academies, he is not even an honorary professor or doctor of music. He never gives concerts or makes propaganda for his music; he never conducts an orchestra, or plays an instrument in public (even [[Hector Berlioz|Berlioz]] played the tambourine!)<ref name=heseltine/>
</blockquote>

Heseltine depicted Delius as a composer uncompromisingly focused on his own music. "There can be no superficial view of Delius's music: either one feels it in the very depths of one's being, or not at all. This may be a part of the reason why one so seldom hears a really first-rate performance of Delius's work, save under Mr. Beecham".<ref name="Some Notes">{{cite journal|title= Some Notes on Delius and His Music|last= Heseltine|first= Philip|jstor= 909510|journal= The Musical Times|pages=137–42|date= March 1915|volume=56|doi=10.2307/909510|url= https://zenodo.org/record/1450006/files/article.pdf}} {{subscription}}</ref>{{refn|Heseltine first met Delius in 1911 when, as a schoolboy, he attended a Beecham concert of Delius's works. From this meeting a friendship and correspondence developed that lasted for the remainder of Heseltine's life (he died in 1930). Delius was a profound influence on Heseltine's own early compositions.<ref name= Warlock>{{cite dictionary|last= Smith|first= Barry|title= Warlock, Peter [Heseltine, Philip (Arnold)]|url= http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/29912?q=Peter+Warlock&search=quick&pos=1&_start=1#firsthit|dictionary= Oxford Music Online|access-date= 3 September 2012}} {{subscription}}</ref>|group= n}}
[[File:Flecker Cambridge crop.jpg|thumb|upright|[[James Elroy Flecker]] (1884–1915). Delius provided incidental music to Flecker's ''Hassan'', premiered in 1923.]]
One of Delius's major wartime works was his ''[[Requiem (Delius)|Requiem]]'', dedicated "to the memory of all young Artists fallen in the war". The work owes nothing to the traditional Christian liturgy, eschewing notions of an afterlife and celebrating instead a pantheistic renewal of Nature. When [[Albert Coates (musician)|Albert Coates]] presented the work in London in 1922, its atheism offended some believers. This attitude persisted long after Delius's death, as the ''Requiem'' did not receive another performance in the UK until 1965, and by 1980 had still had only seven performances world-wide. In Germany, the regular presentation of Delius's works ceased at the outbreak of the war, and never resumed.<ref>{{cite journal|title= Frederick Delius|last= Cardus|first= Neville|journal= The Guardian|page=8|date= 25 January 1962}}</ref> Nevertheless, his standing with some continental musicians was unaffected; Beecham records that [[Béla Bartók|Bartók]] and [[Zoltán Kodály|Kodály]] were admirers of Delius, and the former grew into the habit of sending his compositions to Delius for comment and tried to interest him in both Hungarian and Romanian popular music.<ref>Beecham (1975), p. 191</ref>

By the end of the war, Delius and Jelka had returned to Grez. He had begun to show symptoms of syphilis that he had probably contracted in the 1880s. He took treatment at clinics across Europe, but by 1922 he was walking with two sticks, and by 1928 he was paralysed and blind. There was no return to the prosperity of pre-war years: Delius's medical treatment was an additional expense, his blindness prevented him from composing, and his royalties were curtailed by the lack of continental performances of his music. Beecham gave discreet financial help, and the composer and musical benefactor [[H. Balfour Gardiner]] bought the house at Grez and allowed Delius and Jelka to live there rent-free.<ref name=dnb/> <!-- SERIOUS CITEVAR PROBLEM HERE; PAGE NUMBER LACKING; AND IN WRONG POSITION CHRONOLOGICALLY In 1929, Delius was appointed a [[Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour]], which gave him great pleasure. By now too frail to travel to London to receive it in person, he received the insignia from [[Nevile Henderson|Sir Nevile Henderson]] on 21 July.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Jenkins |first=Lyndon |title=While Spring and Summer Sang: Thomas Beecham and the Music of Frederick Delius |publisher=[[Ashgate]] |year=2005 |location=Aldershot}}</ref>-->

Beecham was temporarily absent from the concert hall and opera house between 1920 and 1923, but Coates gave the first performance of ''[[A Song of the High Hills]]'' in 1920, and Henry Wood and [[Hamilton Harty]] programmed Delius's music with the [[Queen's Hall]] and Hallé Orchestras.<ref name=dnbarchive/> Wood gave the British première of the Double Concerto for violin and cello in 1920, and of ''A Song Before Sunrise'' and the ''Dance Rhapsody No. 2'' in 1923.<ref>Jacobs, p. 447</ref> Delius had a financial and artistic success with his incidental music for [[James Elroy Flecker]]'s play ''Hassan'' (1923), with 281 performances at [[Her Majesty's Theatre|His Majesty's Theatre]].<ref name=grove/> With Beecham's return the composer became, in Hadley's words, "what his most fervent admirers had never envisaged – a genuine popular success". Hadley cites, in particular, the six-day Delius festival at the Queen's Hall in 1929 under Beecham's general direction, in the presence of the composer in his [[bath-chair]]. "[T]he cream of his orchestral output with and without soli and chorus was included", and the hall was filled.<ref name=dnbarchive/> Beecham was assisted in the organisation of the festival by Philip Heseltine, who wrote the detailed programme notes for three of the six concerts.<ref name= Warlock/><ref>{{cite journal|title= The Published Writings of Philip Heseltine on Delius|url= http://www.delius.org.uk/images/journals/pdfs/journal94t.pdf|journal= The Delius Society Journal|issue= 94|date=Autumn 1987|access-date= 5 September 2012|archive-date= 23 September 2015|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150923213430/http://www.delius.org.uk/images/journals/pdfs/journal94t.pdf|url-status= dead}}</ref> The festival included chamber music and songs, an excerpt from ''A Village Romeo and Juliet'', the Piano and Violin Concertos, and premières of ''Cynara'' and ''A Late Lark'', concluding with ''A Mass of Life''.<ref name=grove/>
The ''[[The Guardian|Manchester Guardian]]''{{'s}} music critic, [[Neville Cardus]], met Delius during the festival. He describes the wreck of the composer's physique, yet "there was nothing pitiable about him&nbsp;... his face was strong and disdainful, every line graven on it by intrepid living". Delius, Cardus says, spoke with a noticeable Yorkshire accent as he dismissed most English music as paper music that should never be heard, written by people "afraid of their feelin's".<ref>Cardus, p. 254</ref>