Frederick Delius (1862-1934) was an English composer whose music developed largely outside the mainstream of British musical institutions. Born in Bradford to a German family, he spent formative time in Florida, Leipzig and Paris before settling in France.

His works include A Village Romeo and Juliet, Brigg Fair, On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, Paris, Appalachia, concertos, songs and choral pieces. Many were championed by conductors such as Thomas Beecham.

Delius’s music is chromatic, fluid and atmospheric, often less concerned with formal argument than with continuous transformation of mood. It can suggest landscape, memory and sensual experience dissolving into one another.

His later years were darkened by blindness and paralysis, but he continued composing with the assistance of Eric Fenby. Delius remains one of music’s great twilight colourists, a composer of drifting horizons and elusive perfumes.