Composed in 1907, Songs of Sunset belongs to Delius' most opulent period, coming after his testament, A Mass of Life (1905), and conceived in the same incandescent burst which brought forth Brigg Fair, the Dance Rhapsody No. 1, In a Summer Garden, Fennimore and Gerda, and Cynara. In fact,Cynara was originally sketched as part of Songs of Sunset, but outgrew its plan to become an independent composition which Delius did not complete until some two decades later. Both works set poems by Ernest Dowson (1867-1900), and are laced with nostalgia for the bohemian life Delius led from the early 1880s into the late 1890s—the age of Beardsley, Wilde, Strindberg, Munch, Gauguin, and the young Ravel. Indeed, the luxuriant weariness of the Songs of Sunset is meant to be heard against Cynara's call for "madder music and for stronger wine," and its notorious profession of constancy—"I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion."

Scored for soloists, mixed chorus, and large orchestra, these evocations of passion and lost youth set the lone personal voice among melting choral paeans to nature's mirroring moodiness. The first of the Songs of Sunset is, appropriately, "A song of the setting sun!" which brings "All too soon . . . the cynic moon." Upon this choral scene painting, the baritone breaks in to plead "Cease smiling, Dear! A little while be sad," joined by a contralto (or soprano) voice in a duet—"O red pomegranate of thy perfect mouth!"—yet lamenting "the reach of time and chance and change, / And bitter life and death, and broken vows, / That sadden and estrange." Chorus and orchestra call up "The pale amber sunlight" of autumn in a classic instance of late Romanticism's "dying fall," a poignant celebration of sweetness in decay presaging the inevitable farewell. "Exceeding sorrow / Consumeth my sad heart!" the contralto cries in a sustained aria of mourning. In the baritone's answering lullaby, "By the sad waters of separation," she is already a distant memory—"Hardly can I remember your face." A sensuously winsome chorale conjuring of the buzz and hum of springtime, in "See how the trees and the osiers blithe," is rounded by the contralto and baritone lamenting separately that "the spring of the soul / Cometh no more for you or for me." In the baritone's final solo, he muses that "I was not sorrowful, I could not weep, / And all my memories were put to sleep." Rain and shadow fall together—"I was not sorrowful, but only tired / Of everything that ever I desired." At last, "the evening came, / And left me sorrowful, inclined to weep / With all my memories that could not sleep." In this quiet series of recognitions the work's emotional high point is reached. The chorus enters with a muted hymn, an atheist's ode to décadence—"They are not long, the days of wine and roses, / Out of a misty dream our path emerges for a while, then closes / Within a dream."

In marked contrast to the religious works which were the staple of choral festivals at the time, Songs of Sunset still bears the seeds of controversy. After conducting a performance by its dedicatees, the Elberfeld Choral Society, Delius' German champion, Hans Haym, wrote that "this is not a work for a wide public, but rather for a smallish band of musical isolates who are born decadents and life's melancholics."

This work was premiered by (not yet Sir) Thomas Beecham at Queen's Hall, London, June 16, 1911.

© Adrian Corleonis, All Music Guide