Frederick Delius and the Orange Grove That Made Him a Composer

Frederick Delius’s father sent him to Florida in 1884 to run an orange grove. Delius was twenty-two, English, and not much interested in oranges. At Solano Grove, on the St. Johns River about 25 miles south of Jacksonville, he spent his time on music instead, and when he left in the autumn of 1885 he meant to be a composer.

The Lessons

In Jacksonville he found an organist named Thomas Ward, who taught him counterpoint and composition. Delius later called it the only useful music instruction he ever had. He also listened. African American deckhands sang as they worked the river steamboats, and the singing carried across the water to the porch at Solano Grove.

The Florida Suite

He wrote the Florida Suite in 1887, in Leipzig, as an orchestral picture of the river. It premiered there the next year.

What to Know

The Solano Grove house did not stay at the grove. In 1961 the Delius Association of Florida moved it to the Jacksonville University campus and restored it, and the university library now holds the association’s Delius collection.