43 results
Workflow and Outcome of Thrombectomy in Late Time Window: A Pooled Multicenter Analysis
- Ayoola Ademola, Fouzi Bala, Bijoy K. Menon, John Thornton, Ilaria Casetta, Stefania Nannoni, Mayank Goyal, Darragh Herlihy, Enrico Fainardi, Sarah Power, Valentina Saia, Aidan Hegarty, Giovanni Pracucci, Andrew Demchuk, Salvatore Mangiafico, Karl Boyle, Patrik Michel, Kevin A. Hildebrand, Tolulope T. Sajobi, Michael D. Hill, Danilo Toni, Sean Murphy, Beom Joon Kim, Mohammed A. Almekhlafi
-
- Journal:
- Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences , First View
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 19 April 2024, pp. 1-7
-
- Article
-
- You have access Access
- Open access
- HTML
- Export citation
-
Background:
We investigated the impact of workflow times on the outcomes of patients treated with endovascular thrombectomy (EVT) in the late time window.
Methods:Individual patients’ data who underwent EVT in the late time window (onset to imaging >6 hours) were pooled from seven registries and randomized clinical trials. Multiple time intervals were analyzed. Mixed-effects logistic regression was used to estimate the likelihood of functional independence at 90 days (modified Rankin Scale 0–2). Mixed-effects negative binomial regression was used to evaluate the relationship between patient characteristics and workflow time intervals.
Results:608 patients were included. The median age was 70 years (IQR: 58–71), 307 (50.5%) were female, and 310 (53.2%) had wake-up strokes. Successful reperfusion was achieved in 493 (81.2%) patients, and 262 (44.9%) achieved 90-day mRS 0–2. The estimated odds of functional independence decreased by 13% for every 30 minute delay from emergency department (ED) arrival to imaging time and by 7% from ED arrival to the end of EVT in the entire cohort. Also, the estimated odds of functional independence decreased by 33% for every 30 minute delay in the interval from arterial puncture to end of EVT, 16% in the interval from arrival in ED to end of EVT and 6% in the interval from stroke onset to end of EVT among patients who had a wake-up stroke.
Conclusion:Faster workflow from ED arrival to end of EVT is associated with improved functional independence among stroke patients treated in the late window.
The effect of photobiomodulation on tinnitus: a systematic review
- Yasmin Nikookam, Nawal Zia, Andrew Lotfallah, Jameel Muzaffar, Jennifer Davis-Manders, Peter Kullar, Matthew E Smith, Gemma Bale, Patrick Boyle, Richard Irving, Dan Jiang, Manohar Bance
-
- Journal:
- The Journal of Laryngology & Otology , First View
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 November 2023, pp. 1-22
-
- Article
-
- You have access Access
- Open access
- HTML
- Export citation
-
Objective
To establish outcomes following photobiomodulation therapy for tinnitus in humans and animal studies.
MethodsA systematic review and narrative synthesis was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement. The databases searched were: Medline, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (‘Central’), ClinicalTrials.gov and Web of Science including the Web of Science Core collection. There were no limits on language or year of publication.
ResultsThe searches identified 194 abstracts and 61 full texts. Twenty-eight studies met the inclusion criteria, reporting outcomes in 1483 humans (26 studies) and 34 animals (2 studies). Photobiomodulation therapy parameters included 10 different wavelengths, and duration ranged from 9 seconds to 30 minutes per session. Follow up ranged from 7 days to 6 months.
ConclusionTinnitus outcomes following photobiomodulation therapy are generally positive and superior to no photobiomodulation therapy; however, evidence of long-term therapeutic benefit is deficient. Photobiomodulation therapy enables concentrated, focused delivery of light therapy to the inner ear through a non-invasive manner, with minimal side effects.
453 Rapid SARS-CoV-2 testing with duplexed recombinase polymerase amplification and a bacteriophage internal control
- Part of
- Coleman Martin, Andrew T. Bender, Benjamin P. Sullivan, Lorraine Lillis, David S. Boyle, Jonathan Posner
-
- Journal:
- Journal of Clinical and Translational Science / Volume 7 / Issue s1 / April 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 24 April 2023, p. 134
-
- Article
-
- You have access Access
- Open access
- Export citation
-
OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Current COVID-19 rapid molecular tests require cartridge-reader detection, expensive circuitry, and complex microfluidics making the most accurate tests unavailable to the masses. Here we present a rapid molecular diagnostic leveraging isothermal amplification and paper-based microfluidics for a low-cost ultra-sensitive COVID-19 assay. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: We designed a reverse transcription recombinase polymerase amplification (RT-RPA) assay for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 and bacteriophage MS2 RNA. RT-RPA is a sequence specific, ultrasensitive, rapid isothermal DNA amplification technique that is well suited to home based testing due to its rapid assay time, robustness, ease of use, and readout options. RT-RPA reagents are added to a tube and incubated at 39°C in a fluorometer. Realtime fluorometer data gives results in under 15 minutes. This assay also provides visual detection via lateral flow readout with results in 23 minutes. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: We have developed a rapid multiplexed nucleic acid amplification assay with an internal process control for SARS-CoV-2 using single-pot RT-RPA. We screened 21 primer combinations to select primers that demonstrated excellent performance and target specificity against common respiratory viruses. We demonstrate the ability to multiplex SARS-CoV-2 and MS2 detection, utilizing MS2 as an internal process control for lysis, reverse transcription, amplification, and readout. We show duplexed detection using both fluorescence readout and visual readout using lateral flow strips. Duplexed fluorescence detection shows a limit of detection of 25 copies per reaction. Duplexed lateral flow readout shows a limit of detection of 50 copies per reaction DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: We developed a duplexed RT-RPA assay for SARS-CoV-2 with fluorescence or lateral flow readout. Our assay does not re-quire expensive reader, circuity, or fluid handling. The low material cost, temperature, and robustness make it ideal for a more accurate home-based COVID-19 diagnostic.
Automated detection and staging of malaria parasites from cytological smears using convolutional neural networks
- Mira S. Davidson, Clare Andradi-Brown, Sabrina Yahiya, Jill Chmielewski, Aidan J. O’Donnell, Pratima Gurung, Myriam D. Jeninga, Parichat Prommana, Dean W. Andrew, Michaela Petter, Chairat Uthaipibull, Michelle J. Boyle, George W. Ashdown, Jeffrey D. Dvorin, Sarah E. Reece, Danny W. Wilson, Kane A. Cunningham, D. Michael. Ando, Michelle Dimon, Jake Baum
-
- Journal:
- Biological Imaging / Volume 1 / 2021
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 02 August 2021, e2
-
- Article
-
- You have access Access
- Open access
- HTML
- Export citation
-
Microscopic examination of blood smears remains the gold standard for laboratory inspection and diagnosis of malaria. Smear inspection is, however, time-consuming and dependent on trained microscopists with results varying in accuracy. We sought to develop an automated image analysis method to improve accuracy and standardization of smear inspection that retains capacity for expert confirmation and image archiving. Here, we present a machine learning method that achieves red blood cell (RBC) detection, differentiation between infected/uninfected cells, and parasite life stage categorization from unprocessed, heterogeneous smear images. Based on a pretrained Faster Region-Based Convolutional Neural Networks (R-CNN) model for RBC detection, our model performs accurately, with an average precision of 0.99 at an intersection-over-union threshold of 0.5. Application of a residual neural network-50 model to infected cells also performs accurately, with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.98. Finally, combining our method with a regression model successfully recapitulates intraerythrocytic developmental cycle with accurate lifecycle stage categorization. Combined with a mobile-friendly web-based interface, called PlasmoCount, our method permits rapid navigation through and review of results for quality assurance. By standardizing assessment of Giemsa smears, our method markedly improves inspection reproducibility and presents a realistic route to both routine lab and future field-based automated malaria diagnosis.
6 - 1896: Norway regained
- Andrew J. Boyle, University of Sheffield
-
- Book:
- Delius and Norway
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 30 August 2017
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2017, pp 116-132
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
‘I am leading a life quite Adam like’
Letter from Delius to Jelka Rosen, 15 June 1896I first met Delius in January 1896 in Paris at the house of a Swedish sculptress, Mme Benedix-Bruce; her husband was a Canadian painter. Knowing how much I loved the songs of Grieg which I sang so often, she always said: ‘You must know a young Englishman, a friend of ours. He also loves Grieg and composes music himself ’ […] I did not wish to see this young man she always spoke of. But once when I dined there with my mother who was living with me in Paris, he was there too.
Helene Rosen was born in 1868. Known to all as Jelka, she was a painter from a Schleswig-Holstein family with distinguished figures in music and diplomacy. After this dinner, the hostess implored Jelka to sing for the company:
I sang the ‘Swan’ and ‘Solveig's Song’ of Grieg – with a naiveté I have often marvelled at later on, for I had but a small soprano voice and had only had just a few singing and breathing lessons. […] Anyhow Delius seemed to like my singing, for he told me he would come to my studio and bring me a book of his own songs.
Delius brought his Seven Songs from the Norwegian and played for her one of the songs that Grieg had also set, probably ‘Twilight Fancies’, and informed Jelka that he considered his version the superior one. If it was through Grieg's music they had made their introductions, it was an author who bound them together: ‘At that time I was full of enthusiasm for Nietzsche's Zarathustra’, she related, ‘and I was greatly surprised when this young Englishman said he knew and loved Zarathustra’.
Jelka frequently entertained Delius at her studio and as winter turned to spring in Paris she enjoyed ‘a happy, wonderful time’. They would sometimes take the train out from the city and go for long walks in the countryside. After submitting her latest canvas to the spring Salon des Indépendants, Jelka indulged herself with a few days of holiday in the village of Grez-sur-Loing, near Fontainebleau. Delius arranged to be visiting at the same time the neighbouring village of Bourron, where his friend Charles F.
2 - 1862–1888: Bradford, Florida and Leipzig
- Andrew J. Boyle, University of Sheffield
-
- Book:
- Delius and Norway
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 30 August 2017
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2017, pp 15-38
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
‘This English-American, musically deep, marvellous Hardangervidda Man’
Letter from Edvard Grieg to Frants Beyer, 20 February 1888Frederick Delius was born in Bradford in 1862.
Around 1800, Bradford was a rural market town deep in the rolling moorland landscape of western Yorkshire, and with a population of six thousand. Just a half century later, the industrial revolution had transformed the town beyond recognition. Industrialists wishing to invest in wool found there the conditions they sought: sandstone, an excellent building material; large deposits of iron ore and coal; and the soft water that was a prerequisite for scouring wool. By the middle of the century, Bradford was responsible for some two-thirds of Great Britain's wool production and was at the centre of much of the world's wool trade. A large part of the export trade was with Germany and inevitably many of the investors attracted by the town's industrial muscle were German – including Julius Delius. He moved from the textile centre of Bielefeld to Bradford c.1850, when he was twenty-eight years old. At that time the town's eighty textile factories gave work to a population that had risen to 180,000. Julius quickly expanded his export company, Delius & Co., Wool & Noil Merchants, and by 1871 could build new, modern warehouses and offices. He married Elise, also from Bielefeld, and together they had fourteen children. Child number four, the next eldest boy, was christened Fritz. (Only from 1902 would he adopt an English variant of the name, Frederick.)
The head of the family demanded an almost military discipline from his offspring. From an early age the sons were left in no doubt by Julius that they were expected to follow him into the family business. From the culture of his homeland, however, Julius also brought a deep love of music, and Delius recalled that his father ‘was a great concert-goer and he often had chamber music in the house’. The children were encouraged to play music: ‘I cannot remember the first time when I began to play the piano: it must have been very early in my life. […] When I was six or seven, I began taking violin lessons from Mr Bauerkeller of the Hallé Orchestra, who came over from Manchester especially to teach me.’
Abbreviations
- Andrew J. Boyle, University of Sheffield
-
- Book:
- Delius and Norway
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 30 August 2017
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2017, pp xv-xv
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
10 - 1908–1912: Changes of direction
- Andrew J. Boyle, University of Sheffield
-
- Book:
- Delius and Norway
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 30 August 2017
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2017, pp 215-245
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
‘Et je m'en vais / Au vent mauvais’
from ‘Chanson d'Automne’, Paul VerlaineIn the life of Frederick Delius, 1907 was a momentous year. It has been called his annus mirabilis on account of the explosion of interest his music enjoyed in England. Also seen in the light of his connections to Norway, it was for the composer a transitional period, but for very different reasons. Norwegian friends such as Halfdan Jebe and Christian Sinding were moving out of his life and now Edvard Grieg, the artist whose music represented for Delius the irresistible pull of Norway, was gone. For the development of his career in the foreseeable future, only Germany and England mattered. With his success in England, the process that had been going on since Folkeraadet of redefining his relationship to Norwegian society was at an end. Hereafter, Delius would look to Norway for neither a professional network nor an audience.
This notwithstanding, Norway's place at the core of his creative life would become more secure than ever, through the persistent importance to him of Norwegian nature, and of the Norwegian folk character that thrived between the mountains. Indeed, in 1908–?the year after the English breakthrough – we see him driven by a compulsion to show his new English friends exactly where he found much of the inspiration for his works, where his creative spirit was renewed: in the light of Norway's summer nights, and in the loneliness of Jotunheimen's mountain plateaus.
Delius devoted the first half of 1908 to composition and to trips to England and Germany to hear his works, including the premiere of A Mass of Life in Munich. It was probably while in London in March that Delius spent some time with the renowned Norwegian cabaret singer Bokken Lasson. At the end of April she sent him tickets for her upcoming London concert and hoped that ‘you have not quite forgotten me’.2 By then, Delius was back in Grez and could not make use of them.
8 - 1898–1902: Unshakeable self-belief
- Andrew J. Boyle, University of Sheffield
-
- Book:
- Delius and Norway
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 30 August 2017
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2017, pp 170-196
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
‘Snow-mountains in the distance’
Stage direction in A Village Romeo and JulietIn the year following Folkeraadet, Delius's career stagnated. He nurtured a dream of finding the key that would open the musical life of London, in particular an opera house that would stage Koanga. For the time being he lacked the resources that a prolonged promotional campaign in London would cost him. A new opera project based on the short story ‘Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe’ by Gottfried Keller had ground to a halt because Keary, his librettist for Koanga, could not work up any enthusiasm for it. In a period with little direction or continuity in his career, and still encouraged by the publicity Folkeraadet had brought to his name, it is unsurprising that Delius should have sought new theatre commissions.
In the spring of 1898, the book of Helge Rode's new theatrical piece, Dansen gaar (The Dance Goes On), was published in Copenhagen. It was a study of the struggle for genuine love and art and of the obstacles placed by daily life in the way of these ideals. The drama is played out around the figure of Aage Volmer, a painter, and Klara, the daughter of an industrialist, who secretly get engaged, despite Klara's father having negotiated for her a union with a nouveau riche aristocrat. Volmer's speeches about love and art seem to float on a cloud of aestheticism, distanced from the world. Shortly after its publication, two of Helge Rode's closest friends found much in it that spoke directly to their sensibilities: Edvard Munch and Fritz Delius. Indeed, Rode had mirrored a metaphysical ideal that was a common denominator in the creative lives of all three friends – poet, painter and composer. Volmer tells Klara:
whole wide world, all the sounds and colours of love – then it would create a collective feeling, – it could open for us a life of greatness –
When Aage Volmer describes the work he intends to paint, he depicts love as a state of ecstasy binding the lovers both to nature and to death:
The Dance of Life. My painting shall be called The Dance of Life! There will be a couple dressed in flowing clothes dancing one light summer night down an avenue of dark cypresses and red rose bushes.
Selected bibliography and archival sources
- Andrew J. Boyle, University of Sheffield
-
- Book:
- Delius and Norway
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 30 August 2017
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2017, pp 311-317
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
4 - 1890–1891: ‘C'est de la Norderie’
- Andrew J. Boyle, University of Sheffield
-
- Book:
- Delius and Norway
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 30 August 2017
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2017, pp 66-96
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
‘It seems radiant with glory, that time’
Letter from Nina Grieg to Delius, 22 May 1909While young Norwegian musicians had sought an education in Leipzig in the first half of the nineteenth century, painters were drawn to the academies in Düsseldorf and, later, Munich. With the emergence in France of the early impressionists and the Barbizon school, however, the European art map was redrawn. In the last two decades of the century, German academies lost much of their attraction for Norwegian art students, who elected rather to submerge themselves in la vie de bohème. In 1878, as part of the Exposition Universelle – the World's Fair in Paris – a huge exhibition of art was staged that revealed to Norwegian artists the pre-eminence of contemporary French art. Among the Norwegians who moved to Paris after the exhibition were Christian Krohg, Hans Heyerdahl and Erik Werenskiold. Attracted by liberal Parisian society, many female Norwegian artists – including Kitty Kielland, Harriet Backer and Asta Norregaard – also fled there from petty bourgeois Kristiania.
Radical Norwegian authors, too, turned their backs on the classical inspiration of Rome in favour of Paris, as Torleiv Kronen has pointed out: ‘The new republic rekindled the hope of fulfilling the old promise: freedom, equality and brotherhood. A generation of writers with Flaubert, Zola, Maupassant and the brothers Goncourt at its head augured well for a wholly new way of thinking. The arts, in particular literature, were expected to serve reality. For Norwegian writers, realists as they were, this was irresistible.’ Bjornstjerne Bjornson lived in Paris for five years (1882–87) and Jonas Lie for twenty-four years (1882–1906); the homes of these literary beacons became rallying points for Norwegian thinkers and artists.
These and other Scandinavian figures prepared the ground for the extraordinary obsession with everything Nordic that swept Paris in the 1890s. It was the second generation of Norwegian painters – those who arrived there around the same time as Delius – that would harvest the fruits; they came to a city whose art lovers could not got enough of chill northern landscapes in either naturalist or later neo-romantic styles.
11 - 1912–1918: High hills, dark forests
- Andrew J. Boyle, University of Sheffield
-
- Book:
- Delius and Norway
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 30 August 2017
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2017, pp 246-281
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
‘all the poetry & melancholy of the Northern summer & the high mountain plateaus’
Letter from Delius to Henry Clews, 20 June 1918The Song of the High Hills can be regarded as a true culmination – a ‘crowning peak’ – of over a hundred years of musical attempts to associate or equate musical expressions with mountain nature, as interpreted in a Romantic aesthetic. For Delius's work to rise to this height, three different timelines had to cross at the right moment:
• He was at a moment in his life, marked by the vicissitudes of ill health and middle age, when his personal outlook seems to have magnified for him the frailty of human existence and the intransience of nature;
• He was at a moment in Western music when it was becoming easier for composers to distance themselves from Austro-German traditions;
• He was at a moment in Western civilisation when scientific enquiry had given individuals new understanding of their place in historical time and the eternity of the cosmos.
Before we turn to look in some detail at the score, it will be useful to trace how these three timelines come together.
In the Paa Vidderne melodrama of 1888 we saw Delius for the first time experimenting with effects of distance. His striking attempts here to equate musical expressions of majesty and bleakness with the high moorlands were replaced in On the Mountains with Wagnerian heroics and Lisztian drama. A sense of wonderment and introspection returned with Over the Hills and Far Away, then in parts of A Village Romeo and Juliet there followed a refinement of the Alpine ranz des vaches trope to suggest an escape route for the trapped lovers into timeless, nameless mountains. For A Mass of Life Delius adopted for the last time a Wagnerian language to extol the heights – in this case the metaphorical heights of Nietzsche's spiritual aristocrat, Zarathustra. Even then, with his ‘Auf den Bergen’ prelude to Part II of the Mass, the metaphorical landscape was changing character.
Preface
- Andrew J. Boyle, University of Sheffield
-
- Book:
- Delius and Norway
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 30 August 2017
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2017, pp x-xiv
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Frederick Delius travelled to Norway on twenty occasions during his adult life, visiting the south-eastern coast and the central mountains for periods of one to three months. Although he was initially attracted to the country for the same reasons as many other Britons fleeing their industrialised landscape, his Norwegian journeys assumed ever greater significance in his career. He came to regard them as crucial to the health and survival of his artistic process. If prevented from visiting Norway for more than two summers he would become restless, sensing that his creative direction was becoming more difficult to determine. One such break in the chain of visits was caused by the First World War, when submarines and mines made sea crossings too hazardous; in a letter to her husband, Jelka Delius bemoaned the turn of events: ‘It is dreadful that we are cut off from Norway, I never felt so strongly that it is really a necessity to you.’ On another occasion she described Norway as ‘the land of Fred's constant longing’.
Delius identified subtropical Florida as the place where he, as a young man, had determined on a life as a composer. On returning from America he studied at Leipzig and then moved to Paris, where he enjoyed the Bohemian pleasures sought by many artists there in the 1890s. For the last thirty-five years of his life his home was in a French village. Places rich in colour, or exotic nature, or urban energy – such sensual locations always beckoned to Delius. Nevertheless, at regular intervals he needed to flee northwards in order to get his ‘old self back again’, as he put it. His physical energy was restored by weeks of bathing by the Kristiania Fjord; to reinvigorate his self-belief and to re-envisage his artistic direction he travelled on to the great Norwegian mountains. Again and again.
Norway became an essential active ingredient in his creative processes, easily recognisable in his output. Some thirty-three compositions, large and small, were inspired by his Norwegian experiences or were settings of texts by Norwegian poets.
Index
- Andrew J. Boyle, University of Sheffield
-
- Book:
- Delius and Norway
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 30 August 2017
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2017, pp 318-328
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
7 - 1897: Front page news
- Andrew J. Boyle, University of Sheffield
-
- Book:
- Delius and Norway
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 30 August 2017
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2017, pp 133-169
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
‘the most unpopular man in Norway’
Delius, as described in Verdens Gang, 23 October 1897For a whole month in October and November 1897, Delius would be front page news in Norway on account of the scandal he caused with his music for the theatre comedy Folkeraadet. At the start of the year he had also kept the gossip columnists and headline writers of the New York press busy.
For several years, the composer had indulged in an affair with one of the most beautiful of Parisian aristocrats. Born Marie Léonie Mortier de Trévise in 1866, she had been married since 1888 to the Prince of Cystria, Baron de Faucigny-Lucinge. A child of the Belle Époque, she was more attracted to the cultural life of the great city than to her family's grand estate, which she was destined to inherit. A proficient singer herself, the Princesse de Cystria attracted the leading musicians of Paris to her salons, including Ravel and Debussy. Her love for Delius seems to have been genuine and enduring and it led to her accompanying him and Halfdan Jebe on their journey to Florida in 1897. In his 1959 biography of the composer, Thomas Beecham relates that for Delius the expedition was in part a way for him to flee the princess's obsessive attentions, and that she disguised herself as a man, stole on to the ship, and only disclosed her identity ‘[four] hundred miles out at sea, and six full days to run before reaching the haven of New York’. It is a beguiling version of the events that has been repeated in Delius biographies since. Nevertheless, it is a narrative that more than likely was invented by Delius at some later date to make the participation of the princess in the America trip easier to swallow for Jelka. The sources reveal a different course of events which – for elements of farce, masquerade and prankish mischief – trounces the invented version by a good margin.
Far from being a disguised and secret passenger, the Princesse de Cystria boarded the liner New York in Southampton together with Delius and Jebe.
5 - 1892–1895: Norway lost
- Andrew J. Boyle, University of Sheffield
-
- Book:
- Delius and Norway
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 30 August 2017
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2017, pp 97-115
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
‘For me dramatic art is almost taking the place of religion’
Letter from Delius to Jutta Bell, 29 May 1894Shortly after returning to Paris from Kristiania and the premiere of On the Mountains, Delius moved to a small apartment in the Petit-Montrouge quarter, bounded by Montrouge to the south and Montparnasse to the north. After a few years in rural surroundings, he was now in a densely populated workingclass neighbourhood to which many young artists were moving.
Some notion of Delius's personality and appearance at that time is to be gained through the eyes of those who observed him. Artist Jelka Rosen, his future wife, gives us this portrait:
an aristocratic looking, rather tall, thin man with curly dark hair with a tinge of auburn and an auburn moustache which he was always twisting upwards. […] An old grey hat, his blue vivacious eyes, pale face and red tie, accentuating the pallor. […] I remember the pang of anxiety his pallor gave me. He worked half the night, smoking and drinking red wine, and then stayed in bed late, but disturbed by all the noises in that populous courtyard.
The English composer Isidore de Lara was also in Paris and found Delius ‘ascetic and unworldly’, but, on getting better acquainted, concluded: ‘I never saw a man with such irresistible will, and as it is directed with intelligence, he is sure to come to the front. […] He seems to have the working capacities of a brewer's horse.’ Delius was still living on allowances from his father in Bradford and his uncle in Paris, and could rarely allow himself luxuries. ‘His means were very small, and he cooked his own meals’, recalled de Lara. ‘I have often dined with him in his room on a couple of eggs.’ A young English-American pianist, Harold Bauer, lived nearby, and half a century later his encounter with Delius was still clear in his memory:
[His] tastes in art were as wide and liberal as could be imagined; but he had the strongest feeling that the first duty of any artist was to find ways in which his own personality could be expressed, whether or not the process conformed to traditional methods.
12 - 1919–1934: Myth and reality in Lesjaskog
- Andrew J. Boyle, University of Sheffield
-
- Book:
- Delius and Norway
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 30 August 2017
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2017, pp 282-306
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
‘At last we are here in Norway – the land of Fred's constant longing’
Letter from Jelka Delius to Marie Clews, 18 August 1919Prior to 1919, Delius had been to Norway sixteen times, but only once in consecutive summers (1898 and 1899). From 1919 to 1923, however, he and Jelka spent four of the five summers in the country, the last three of them in Lesjaskog, first planning for, then enjoying a secluded life in their own cottage. The story of these visits becomes gradually less and less about ‘light summer nights & all the poetry & melancholy of the Northern summer’, and more about the rapid deterioration in Delius's health. With the advance of his disease and paralysis, many admirable and attractive traits of Delius's personality were curtailed, ‘collateral damage’ in his battle to preserve the innermost core of himself. The commentators who got to know the composer in this period have left us some of the best known and, unfortunately, prevailing descriptions of him as an abrasive and difficult individualist. Before embarking on these years, then, it would be timely to quote from some of the many people who, prior to his illness, were irresistibly drawn towards his light.
Percy Grainger, composer
Delius, as I knew him, was remarkable for his gracious and graceful companionship, for the gaiety and lightness of his moods, for his good-humoured delight in fair and open-minded argument, for his unfailingly humane outlook on world affairs.
Thomas Beecham, conductor
[There] was nothing in Delius of that vague indetermination associated traditionally with musical genius; in practical affairs he was as hardhearted as any to be found in his native county, and his knowledge of the world, both men and women, was searching and profound. He was sceptical and cynical where the majority of people were concerned, and he never wasted a word of sympathy or encouragement on those who in his opinion were not deadly in earnest over their job. But he was frank and cordial with the few he really cared for, and in general company he loved passionately to engage in highly controversial discussions on every subject imaginable.
Clare Delius, sister
His sense of humour was highly developed and his laugh was infectious. He was entirely devoid of mannerisms, and when he took the call at the St.
3 - 1888–1889: With Grieg on the heights
- Andrew J. Boyle, University of Sheffield
-
- Book:
- Delius and Norway
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 30 August 2017
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2017, pp 39-65
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
‘For months our meeting in Wonderful Norway has filled my entire horizon’
Letter from Delius to Grieg, undated, but early June 1889By the summer of 1888, Delius was established in Paris, but his fascination with Scandinavia was directing his creative impulses. From then until his mountain tour with Grieg a year later there would come Norwegian composition after Norwegian composition:
• thirteen songs to texts by Norwegian poets
• Paa Vidderne, melodrama for orchestra and reciter
• Idylle de Printemps, symphonic poem originally with a Norwegian title and strongly influenced by Grieg
• sketches for incidental music to Ibsen's Keiser og Galileer (Emperor and Galilean)
Twelve of the thirteen Norwegian songs written in 1888 and 1889 were quickly published, first in a group of five in 1890, then a further group of seven in 1892 (see Table 1 on p. 40). All were settings of German translations. They were the first Delius compositions to be published and Grieg's influence with the Augener publishing house no doubt played its part. We can see from Table 1 that eight of the twelve texts chosen by Delius had already been set to music by Grieg. From our distance this might seem tactless, but it no doubt attests to Delius's almost blind admiration for his mentor. It should come as no surprise, then, that a handful of musical elements regarded as typifying Grieg's style have also found their way into Delius's songs. Among these can be mentioned sequences of seventh chords, the bass line falling by step, and key modulation and harmonic progressions directly from the tonic to the mediant. In a letter written to Delius after receiving some of the songs, Grieg stated that he found ‘so many beautiful and deeply felt things in them’, but continued: ‘And then again there are other things which are difficult to accept […] in the form and in the treatment of the voice. A Norwegian melody and a Wagnerian treatment of the voice are dangerous things indeed to try to reconcile.’
A comparison of the composers’ interpretations offers us some interesting insights, although in two instances, ‘Cradle Song’ and ‘The Homeward Way’, Delius's early efforts are being compared to songs that are among the most successful in Grieg's output.
Delius and Norway
- Andrew J. Boyle
-
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 30 August 2017
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2017
-
This is a study of the vital role that Norway played in the life and work of Frederick Delius. Norway was a primary source of inspiration for Delius: 20 summers of his adult life were spent there, and almost 40 works express his experiences of Norwegian nature or were composed to Norwegian texts. Yet, although his attachment to Norway was at the core of his creative life, this book is the first in-depth study of the influence the country and its artists had on the composer. It includes significant new material regarding Delius's friendships with Edvard Munch, Edvard Grieg and Knut Hamsun. Previously unknown visits to Norway are detailed, as are close ties to a whole raft of Norwegian artists and political figures that have never previously been documented. For the first time, Delius's alter ego is uncovered, several mythologies regarding the composer are clarified, and the Norwegian background to some of his most well-known works is considered. The Delius that emerges from these pages is little known, even to most enthusiasts of his music: a driven and energetic personality and an artist searching for a language with which to express the existential crisis facing modern man in the early twentieth century.ANDREW J. BOYLE is an author and musician. He gained his PhD on the music of Frederick Delius from the University of Sheffield.
List of illustrations and tables
- Andrew J. Boyle, University of Sheffield
-
- Book:
- Delius and Norway
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 30 August 2017
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2017, pp viii-ix
-
- Chapter
- Export citation