Frederick Delius (1862-1934) - photo 1
Frederick Delius (1862-1934) - photo 2
Frederick Delius (1862-1934) - photo 3

Frederick Delius (1862-1934)

Lot 219
15.12.2023 11:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Starting price
£ 100
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1109019
Lot 219 | Frederick Delius (1862-1934)
Estimate value
£ 1 500 – 2 000
Frederick Delius (1862-1934)
Autograph letter and postcard signed (‘Frederick Delius’) to [Harry Waldo] Warner, Grez-sur-Loing, 23 December 1916 and n.d.
In English. 4 pages in total, the letter 167 x 122mm, bifolium, the postcard 138 x 90mm. Provenance: Sotheby's, 6 May 1988, lot 338.

Delius supplies revisions for his 1916 String Quartet to the viola player Harry Waldo Warner. In the undated postcard, Delius sketches a bar of music for the cello to replace the 15th bar of the slow movement. The same correction needs to be made where the bar repeats at the end of the movement. He discusses alternative chord arrangements ‘which might sound better to the discretion of each player’. In the letter of 23 December 1916, Delius thanks Warner for his note following its debut, writing: ‘I am very gratified to hear that the quartet received such a favorable reception in London.’ He has written a scherzo to be inserted in the quartet, which he thinks ‘will improve the work & give it more contrast.’ He will send this to Warner so that he can have it copied for his next performance of the work.

Harry Waldo Warner (1874-1945) was a founding member of the London String Quartet, which in 1916 comprised Warner, first and second violinists Albert Sammons and Thomas W. Petre, and the cellist Charles Warwick Evans. They played primarily at the Bechstein (now Wigmore) Hall. The work discussed here is Delius’s 1916 String Quartet, his only complete work in the genre, first performed by the London String Quartet at Aeolian Hall on 17 November 1916. Delius substantially revised the piece’s slow movement, named ‘Late Swallows’, most notably by adding the scherzo mentioned in the present letter, which appears in the published versions of the score.
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Frederick Delius (1862-1934)
Frederick Delius (1862-1934)
£100

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