Written in 1895 and revised in 1902. Written at the Solano Grove home he
maintained at his father's Florida orange orchards south of Jacksonville.
It is a series of sound pictures of the part of the American Southland
that Delius knew as a young man. Essentially the work is about a young
slave sold to a down river plantation and forcibly separated from his
loved ones. Composed for Baritone, Orchestra and Chorus.
Appalachia. Variations on an old slave song with final chorus. Full score. < Revised and edited by Sir Thomas Beecham. > (Frederick Delius Complete Works)
Frederick Theodore Albert Delius CH (29 January 1862 – 10 June 1934) was an English composer. Born in Bradford, Yorkshire, to a prosperous mercantile family of German extraction, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce. He was sent to Florida in the United States in 1884 to manage an orange plantation, where he neglected his managerial duties; influenced by African-American music, he began composing. After a brief period of formal musical study in Germany beginning in 1886, he embarked on a full-time career as a composer in Paris and then in nearby Grez-sur-Loing, where he and his wife Jelka lived (except during the First World War) for the rest of their lives.
