Eric Fenby

Eric William Fenby OBE (22 April 1906 – 18 February 1997) was an English composer, conductor, pianist, organist and teacher who is best known for being Frederick Delius's amanuensis from 1928 to 1934. He helped Delius realise a number of works that would not otherwise have been forthcoming.

Fenby was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, and as a youth took lessons in the piano, organ and cello. At the age of 12 he was appointed organist at Holy Trinity Church. As a composer he was largely self-taught. By 1925 he had conducted a work for string orchestra at the Spa Grand Hall in Scarborough and had written some minor pieces.

Working for Delius

In 1928, hearing that Delius had become virtually helpless because of blindness and paralysis (due to syphilis), he offered to serve him as an amanuensis. Fenby worked, at the composer's home in Grez-sur-Loing, near Paris, for extended periods until Delius died almost six years later. The project was taxing not only because of the need to devise a unique mode of musical communication but also because of Delius's difficult temperament and atheism. Although born into a Methodist household, Fenby had recently become a devout Catholic. The strain on him was intensified by the requirement to act as nurse during the composer's final days. Then followed further responsibilities including visiting Delius's severely ill widow Jelka and accompanying the composer's exhumed body back to England for burial. The whole experience left him "completely burnt out". In 1936, he published an account, Delius As I Knew Him.

Frederick Delius

Frederick Theodore Albert Delius, CH (/ˈdiːlɪəs/ 29 January 1862 – 10 June 1934) was an English composer. Born in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce. He was sent to Florida in the United States in 1884 to manage an orange plantation. There he soon neglected his managerial duties, and in 1886 returned to Europe. Having been influenced by African-American music during his short stay in Florida, 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 for the rest of their lives, except during the First World War.

Delius's first successes came in Germany, where Hans Haym and other conductors promoted his music from the late 1890s. In Delius's native Britain, it was 1907 before his music made regular appearances in concert programmes, after Thomas Beecham took it up. Beecham conducted the full premiere of A Mass of Life in London in 1909 (he had premiered Part II in Germany in 1908); he staged the opera A Village Romeo and Juliet at Covent Garden in 1910; and he mounted a six-day Delius festival in London in 1929, as well as making gramophone recordings of many of Delius's works. After 1918 Delius began to suffer the effects of syphilis, contracted during his earlier years in Paris. He became paralysed and blind, but completed some late compositions between 1928 and 1932 with the aid of an amanuensis, Eric Fenby.

Eric

The given name Eric, Erik, or Erick is derived from the Old Norse name Eiríkr (or Eríkr in Eastern Scandinavia due to monophthongization). The first element, ei- is derived either from the older Proto-Norse *aina(z) meaning "one" or "alone" or from Proto-Norse *aiwa(z) meaning "ever" or "eternal". The second element -ríkr derives either from *rík(a)z meaning "ruler" or "prince" (cf. Gothic reiks) or from an even older Proto-Germanic *ríkiaz which meant "powerful" and "rich". The name is thus usually taken to mean "one ruler", "autocrat", "eternal ruler" or "ever powerful", "warrior", and "government".

The most common spelling in Scandinavia is Erik. In Norway, another form of the name (which has kept the Old Norse diphthong) Eirik is also commonly used. In Finland, the form Erkki is also used. The modern Icelandic version is Eiríkur, while the modern Faroese version is Eirikur. Éric [eʁik] is used in French, and in Germany Eric, Erik and Erich are used.

Although the name was in use in Anglo-Saxon England, its use was reinforced by Scandinavian settlers arriving before the Norman Invasion. It was an uncommon name in England until the Middle Ages, when it gained popularity, and finally became a common name in the 19th century. This was partly because of the publishing of the novel Eric, or, Little by Little by Frederick William Farrar in 1858.

Ken Russell

Henry Kenneth Alfred "Ken" Russell (3 July 1927 – 27 November 2011) was an English film director, known for his pioneering work in television and film and for his flamboyant and controversial style. He attracted criticism for being obsessed with sexuality and the church. His films in the main were liberal adaptations of existing texts, or biographies, notably of composers of the Romantic era. Russell began directing for the BBC, where he made creative adaptations of composers' lives which were unusual for the time. He also directed many feature films independently and for studios.

He is best known for his Oscar-winning film Women in Love (1969), The Devils (1971), The Who's Tommy (1975), and the science fiction film Altered States (1980). Russell also directed several films based on the lives of classical music composers, such as Elgar, Delius, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, and Liszt.

Film critic Mark Kermode, speaking in 2006, and attempting to sum up the director's achievement, called Russell, "somebody who proved that British cinema didn't have to be about kitchen-sink realism—it could be every bit as flamboyant as Fellini. Later in his life he turned to making low-budget experimental films such as Lion's Mouth and Revenge of the Elephant Man, and they are as edgy and 'out there' as ever".

Song of Summer

Song of Summer is a 1968 black-and-white television film written, produced and directed by Ken Russell for the BBC's Omnibus series which was first broadcast on 15 September 1968. It portrays the final six years of the life of Frederick Delius, when he was blind and paralysed, and when Eric Fenby lived with the composer and his wife Jelka as Delius's amanuensis. The title is borrowed from the Delius tone poem A Song of Summer, which is heard along with other Delius works in the film.

It stars Max Adrian as Delius, Christopher Gable as Fenby, and Maureen Pryor as Delius's wife Jelka, with director Russell in a cameo role as a philandering priest. The cinematography was by Dick Bush, and the editing was by Roger Crittenden. It was shot on black-and-white 35mm film.

It has received wide praise since its first screening, and Ken Russell himself said it was the best film he ever made and he would not have done a single shot differently.

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