In the summer of 1918, with the Great War grinding slowly to its end and the troubling symptoms of syphilitic paralysis—which over the next seven years would turn the vigorous Delius into a helpless invalid—on the rise, the composer sought a cure in the baths at Biarritz, where he composed A Song Before Sunrise. In its brevity (playing about six minutes), keenness of orchestral detail, and evocative power, it might easily make a third to the Two Pieces for Small Orchestra—"On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring" and "Summer Night on the River"—from before the war. Indeed, it has the character of "'Cuckoo' revisited," though where the latter and its companion exude an elegiac, almost mystical, rapture, A Song Before Sunrise is redolent with tongue-in-cheek blitheness. Delius is even said to have likened the clarinet figure in the last bars to a rooster's sunrise greeting. Dedicated to Philip Heseltine—known as Peter Warlock to all lovers of English song—the piece was first given by Sir Henry Wood at a Promenade Concert in September, 1923.

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