La Calinda from Koanga

arranged by Eric Fenby

If any composer was qualified to write an opera set in a plantation in the Southern States it was Frederick Delius. He had worked as an orange grower in Florida in his twenties and had absorbed both the atmosphere of the place and the music of the black workers who, he is quoted as saying, had a “wonderfully instinctive feeling for harmony.” In 1895 when he started work on Koanga, his third opera, he was settled in France but before he completed it he went back to Florida to put his estate in order and, no doubt, to refresh his memories of the plantation. Although little has been heard of Koanga since its first performance in Elberfeld in 1904, one small item in it has achieved wide popularity. Written several years earlier for the Florida Suite, it was borrowed for the second act of the opera to add a touch of local colour, syncopated rhythms and graceful melody to the wedding celebrations of its black hero, Koanga, to Palmyra, daughter of the master of the plantation. A choral dance in the opera, La Calinda is usually performed in the concert hall in an arrangement for orchestra without voices by Eric Fenby.

G.L.