Fenby (left) and Yehudi Menuhin (who shared a birthday, 22 April) study a Delius score
Eric William FenbyOBE (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.
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 become a devout Catholic. The strain on him was intensified by the requirement to act as nurse during the composer's final days. Further responsibilities followed, including visiting Delius's severely ill widow, Jelka Rosen, 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.[1][2]
The works he helped Delius to write (all for orchestra unless otherwise shown) are:
This episode in Fenby's and Delius's lives was portrayed in Ken Russell's 1968 production for the BBC, Song of Summer, which can be found on YouTube. In 1980 Kate Bush sang about them in her song "Delius". In a much distorted form, the Delius-Fenby collaboration also serves as a basis for the fictional Ayrs-Frobisher collaboration in David Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas.
Having left the Catholic Church, Fenby married Rowena C. T. Marshall (daughter of a Scarborough vicar) in 1944. They had a son, Roger, and a daughter, Ruth.
After the war Fenby founded the music department of the North Riding Training College. He was artistic director for the Bradford Delius Festival in 1962. He then became Professor of Harmony at the Royal Academy of Music in London from 1964 until 1977.
Fenby died in Scarborough, having returned to Catholicism in his final years.
Honours
Fenby was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1962 for his artistic
direction of the 1962 Delius Centenary Festival in Bradford. He was appointed President of the Delius Society that same year.[3]
He was awarded honorary doctorates from the universities of Bradford and Warwick (UK), and Jacksonville (USA).
As a conductor and pianist Fenby made numerous recordings, including the definitive performances found in the Fenby Legacy double LP for Unicorn Records. Fenby recorded all three of Delius's violin sonatas, first with Ralph Holmes and later with Yehudi Menuhin, and Delius's Cello Sonata with Julian Lloyd Webber.
