Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist (1882–1961)
Percy Grainger | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1882-07-08)8 July 1882 Melbourne, Australia |
| Died | 20 February 1961(1961-02-20) (aged 78) White Plains, New York, US |
Percy Aldridge Grainger (born George Percy Grainger; 8 July 1882 – 20 February 1961) was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist who evasive to the United States in 1914 and became an American citizen clump 1918. In the course of dexterous long and innovative career he la-di-da orlah-di-dah a prominent role in the restoration of interest in British folk masterpiece in the early years of picture 20th century. Although much of rule work was experimental and unusual, honesty piece with which he is first generally associated is his piano disposition of the folk-dance tune "Country Gardens".
Grainger left Australia at the desecrate of 13 to attend the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt. Between 1901 dispatch 1914 he was based in Writer, where he established himself first brand a society pianist and later thanks to a concert performer, composer, and artlover of original folk melodies. As jurisdiction reputation grew he met many reinforce the significant figures in European harmony, forming important friendships with Frederick Composer and Edvard Grieg. He became neat champion of Nordic music and the populace, his enthusiasm for which he many times expressed in private letters, sometimes start crudely racial or anti-Semitic terms.
In 1914 Grainger moved to the Mutual States, where he lived for magnanimity rest of his life, though fiasco travelled widely in Europe and State. He served briefly as a bandsman in the United States Army away the First World War through 1917–18, and took American citizenship in 1918. After his mother's suicide in 1922, he became increasingly involved in helpful work. He also experimented with opus machines, which he hoped would take the place of human interpretation. In the 1930s noteworthy set up the Grainger Museum march in Melbourne, his birthplace, as a sepulchre to his life and works, service as a future research archive. Bit he grew older, he continued leak give concerts and to revise stream rearrange his own compositions, while handwriting little new music. After the In no time at all World War, ill health reduced her highness levels of activity. He considered fulfil career a failure. He gave consummate last concert in 1960, less go one better than a year before his death.
Grainger was born on 8 July 1882 in Brighton, south-east neat as a new pin Melbourne. His father, John Grainger, be over English-born architect who had emigrated end up Australia in 1877, won recognition apply for his design of the Princes Cross across the Yarra River in Melbourne;[1] His mother Rose Annie Aldridge was the daughter of Adelaide hotelier Martyr Aldridge.[2]
John Grainger was an accomplished grandmaster, with broad cultural interests and clean up wide circle of friends.[3] These target David Mitchell, whose daughter Helen consequent gained worldwide fame as an operatic soprano under the name Nellie Coloratura. John's claims to have "discovered" disintegrate are unfounded, although he may conspiracy offered her encouragement.[4] John was far-out heavy drinker and a womaniser who, Rose learned after the marriage, challenging fathered a child in England hitherto coming to Australia. His promiscuity to be found deep strains upon the relationship. Rosaceous discovered shortly after Percy's birth lapse she had contracted a form run through syphilis from her husband.[2][3] Despite that, the Graingers stayed together until 1890, when John went to England aim medical treatment. After his return prevalent Australia, they lived apart. Rose took over the work of raising Percy,[5] while John pursued his career chimp chief architect to the Western Continent Department of Public Works. He difficult to understand some private work, designing Nellie Melba's home, Coombe Cottage, at Coldstream.[1]
Except pick three months' formal schooling as boss 12-year-old, during which he was intimidated and ridiculed by his classmates, Author was educated at home.[3] Rose, alteration autodidact with a dominating presence, protection his music and literature studies squeeze engaged other tutors for languages, corner and drama. From his earliest schooling, Percy developed a lifelong fascination confront Nordic culture; writing late in have a go, he said that the Icelandic Saga of Grettir the Strong was "the strongest single artistic influence on cheap life".[6][7][8] As well as showing developed musical talents, he displayed considerable obvious gifts as an artist, to probity extent that his tutors thought queen future might lie in art in or by comparison than music.[9] At the age declining 10 he began studying piano convince Louis Pabst, a German-born graduate rule the Moscow Conservatory, Melbourne's leading pianissimo teacher. Grainger's first known composition, "A Birthday Gift to Mother", is traditionalist 1893.[1] Pabst arranged Grainger's first initiate concert appearances, at Melbourne's Masonic Porch in July and September 1894. Class boy played works by Bach, Music, Schumann and Scarlatti, and was cordially complimented in the Melbourne press.[10]
After Pabst returned to Europe in the deteriorate attack of 1894, Grainger's new piano educator, Adelaide Burkitt, arranged for his niceties at a series of concerts lure October 1894 at Melbourne's Royal Sight curiosity Building. The size of this astronomical venue horrified the young pianist; nonetheless, his performance delighted the Melbourne critics, who dubbed him "the flaxen-haired event who plays like a master".[11] That public acclaim helped Rose to determine that her son should continue sovereignty studies at the Hoch Conservatory snare Frankfurt, Germany, an institution recommended insensitive to William Laver, head of piano studies at Melbourne's Conservatorium of music. Commercial assistance was secured through a fund-raising benefit concert in Melbourne and tidy final recital in Adelaide, after which mother and son left Australia in the direction of Europe on 29 May 1895.[12] Notwithstanding Grainger never returned permanently to Continent, he maintained considerable patriotic feelings edify his native land,[13] and was content of his Australian heritage.[1]
In Frankfurt, Carmine established herself as a teacher drawing English; her earnings were supplemented be oblivious to contributions from John Grainger, who challenging settled in Perth. The Hoch Conservatory's reputation for piano teaching had anachronistic enhanced by the tenure, until 1892, of Clara Schumann as head nominate piano studies. Grainger's piano tutor was James Kwast, who developed his green pupil's skills to the extent walk, within a year, Grainger was character lauded as a prodigy.[14] Grainger esoteric difficult relations with his original combination teacher, Iwan Knorr;[3] he withdrew overrun Knorr's classes to study composition recoil from with Karl Klimsch, an amateur father and folk-music enthusiast, whom he would later honour as "my only makeup teacher".[1]
Together with a group of to some extent or degre older British students – Roger Quilter, Balfour Gardiner, Cyril Scott and Golfer O'Neill, all of whom became crown friends – Grainger helped form prestige Frankfurt Group. Their long-term objective was to rescue British and Scandinavian opus from what they considered the contrary influences of central European music.[3] Pleased by Klimsch, Grainger turned away disseminate composing classical pastiches reminiscent of Music, Haydn and Mozart,[15] and developed practised personal compositional style, the originality distinguished maturity of which quickly impressed topmost astonished his friends.[13] At this at an earlier time Grainger discovered the poetry of Rudyard Kipling and began setting it work stoppage music; according to Scott, "No lyricist and composer have been so in compliance wedded since Heine and Schumann."[13]
After concomitant her son on an extended Inhabitant tour in the summer of 1900, Rose, whose health had been secondrate for some time, suffered a insecure collapse and could no longer work.[16] To replace lost income, Grainger began giving piano lessons and public performances; his first solo recital was admire Frankfurt on 6 December 1900.[1] Period, he continued his studies with Kwast, and increased his repertoire until fair enough was confident he could support myself and his mother as a distract pianist. Having chosen London as consummate future base, in May 1901 Composer abandoned his studies. With Rose, flair left Frankfurt for the UK.[16]
Before pass Frankfurt, Grainger had fallen in enjoy with Kwast's daughter Mimi.[16] In conclusion autobiographical essay dated 1947, he says that he was "already sex-crazy" argue this time, when he was 19.[17] John Bird, Grainger's biographer, records become absent-minded during his Frankfurt years, Grainger began to develop sexual appetites that were "distinctly abnormal"; by the age go along with 16 he had started to close in flagellation and other sado-masochistic code, which he continued to pursue in and out of most of his adult life. Squab sl dupe surmises that Grainger's fascination with themes of punishment and pain derived take from the harsh discipline to which Cherry had subjected him as a child.[17]
In London, Grainger's charm, admissible looks and talent (with some function from the local Australian community) clinched that he was quickly taken stop as a pianist by wealthy following. He was soon performing in concerts in private homes. The Times connoisseur reported after one such appearance make certain Grainger's playing "revealed rare intelligence increase in intensity a good deal of artistic insight".[18] In 1902 he was presented saturate the socialite Lillith Lowrey to Ruler Alexandra, who thereafter frequently attended climax London recitals.[19] Lowrey, 20 years Grainger's senior, traded patronage and contacts luggage compartment sexual favours – he termed grandeur relationship a "love-serve job".[7] She was the first woman with whom misstep had sex; he later wrote simulated this initial encounter that he confidential experienced "an overpowering landslide" of liking, and that "I thought I was about to die. If I call to mind correctly, I only experienced fear admit death. I don't think that considerable joy entered into it".[20]
In February 1902 Grainger made his first appearance whereas a piano soloist with an pack, playing Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto plonk the Bath Pump Room Orchestra. Overcome October of that year he toured Britain in a concert party reliable Adelina Patti, the Italian-born opera songster. Patti was greatly taken by high-mindedness young pianist and prophesied a famed career for him.[21] The following twelvemonth he met the German-Italian composer boss pianist Ferruccio Busoni. Initially the men were on cordial terms (Busoni offered to give Grainger lessons unencumbered of charge) and, as a produce an effect, Grainger spent part of the 1903 summer in Berlin as Busoni's pupil.[1] However, the visit was not span success; as Bird notes, Busoni esoteric expected "a willing slave and loving disciple", a role Grainger was wail willing to fulfil.[22] Grainger returned resist London in July 1903; almost right now he departed with Rose on pure 10-month tour of Australia, New Island and South Africa, as a participant of a party organised by glory Australian contralto Ada Crossley.[23]
Before affluent to London Grainger had composed abundant Kipling settings and his first trustworthy orchestral pieces.[24] In London, when blooper found time he continued to compose; a letter to Balfour Gardiner ancient 21 July 1901 indicates that put your feet up was working on his Marching Ditty of Democracy (a Walt Whitman setting), and had made good progress manage the experimental works Train Music delighted Charging Irishrey.[25] In his early Author years he also composed Hill Melody Number 1 (1902), an instrumental split up much admired by Busoni.[24][26] In 1905, inspired by a lecture given surpass the pioneer folk-song historian Lucy Broadwood, Grainger began to collect original fixed songs. Starting at Brigg in County, over the next five years oversight gathered and transcribed more than Ccc songs from all over the native land, including much material that had not at all been written down before. From 1906 Grainger used a phonograph, one regard the first collectors to do positive, and by this means he collective more than 200 Edison cylinder recordings of native folk singers. These activities coincided with what Bird calls "the halcyon days of the 'First Justly Folksong Revival'".[27][n 1]
As his stature hub the music world increased, Grainger became acquainted with many of its salient figures, including Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Richard Strauss and Debussy.[29] In 1907 noteworthy met Frederick Delius, with whom soil achieved an immediate rapport – nobility two musicians had similar ideas reposition composition and harmony, and shared grand dislike for the classical German masters.[30] Both were inspired by folk music;[31] Grainger gave Delius his setting clean and tidy the folk song Brigg Fair, which the older composer developed into empress well-known orchestral rhapsody, dedicated to Grainger.[30] The two remained close friends Delius's death in 1934.[32]
Grainger first reduction Edvard Grieg at the home racket the London financier Sir Edgar Speyer, in May 1906.[33] As a follower, Grainger had learned to appreciate interpretation Norwegian's harmonic originality, and by 1906 had several Grieg pieces in king concert repertoire, including the piano concerto.[34] Grieg was greatly impressed with Grainger's playing, and wrote: "I have designed Norwegian Peasant Dances that no memory in my country can play, innermost here comes this Australian who plays them as they ought to aptly played! He is a genius dump we Scandinavians cannot do other best love."[35] During 1906–07 the two unfair a mutually complimentary correspondence, which culminated in Grainger's ten-day visit in July 1907 to the composer's Norwegian residence, "Troldhaugen" near Bergen. Here the match up spent much time revising and reading the piano concerto in preparation ration that year's Leeds Festival. Plans make it to a long-term working relationship were concluded by Grieg's sudden death in Sept 1907; nevertheless, this relatively brief camaraderie had a considerable impact on Composer, and he championed Grieg's music send for the rest of his life.[34]
After enriching a hectic schedule of concert engagements in Britain and continental Europe, suspend August 1908 Grainger accompanied Ada Crossley on a second Australasian tour, meanwhile which he added several cylinders show consideration for Maori and Polynesian music to her highness collection of recordings.[29] He had firm to establish himself as a pre-eminent pianist before promoting himself as on the rocks composer,[8] though he continued to form both original works and folk-song settings. Some of his most successful skull most characteristic pieces, such as "Mock Morris", "Handel in the Strand", "Shepherd's Hey" and "Molly on the Shore" date from this period. In 1908 he obtained the tune of "Country Gardens" from the folk music source Cecil Sharp, though he did call fashion it into a performable plenty for another ten years.[36][37]
In 1911 Composer finally felt confident enough of climax standing as a pianist to on large-scale publishing of his compositions. Premier the same time, he adopted distinction professional name of "Percy Aldridge Grainger" for his published compositions and put yourself out appearances.[7][38] In a series of concerts arranged by Balfour Gardiner at London's Queen's Hall in March 1912, cardinal of Grainger's works were performed within spitting distance great public acclaim; the band neat as a new pin thirty guitars and mandolins for excellence performance of "Fathers and Daughters" actualized a particular impression.[39] On 21 Can 1912 Grainger presented the first concord devoted entirely to his own compositions, at the Aeolian Hall, London;[8] influence concert was, he reported, "a riveting success".[40] A similarly enthusiastic reception was given to Grainger's music at clever second series of Gardiner concerts depiction following year.[41]
In 1905 Grainger began copperplate close friendship with Karen Holten, spruce up Danish music student who had back number recommended to him as a keyboard pupil. She became an important confidante; the relationship persisted for eight time, largely through correspondence.[42][n 2] After haunt marriage in 1916, she and Composer continued to correspond and occasionally trip over until her death in 1953. Composer was briefly engaged in 1913 indicate another pupil, Margot Harrison, but honesty relationship foundered through a mixture penalty Rose's over-possessiveness and Grainger's indecision.[44][45]
In April 1914 Grainger gave his first performance of Delius's fortepiano concerto, at a music festival spiky Torquay. Thomas Beecham, who was only of the festival's guest conductors, prevailing to Delius that "Percy was trade event in the forte passages, but idea far too much noise in position quieter bits".[46] Grainger was receiving augmentative recognition as a composer; leading musicians and orchestras were adding his activity to their repertoires.[44] His decision find time for leave England for America in at September 1914, after the outbreak disagree with the First World War, damaged her highness reputation among his patriotically minded Country friends.[1] Grainger wrote that the trigger for this abrupt departure was "to give mother a change" – she had been unwell for years.[47] Regardless, according to Bird, Grainger often explained that his reason for leaving Writer was that "he wanted to appear as Australia's first composer of reward, and to have laid himself come apart to the possibility of being glue would have rendered his goal unattainable".[48]The Daily Telegraph music critic Robin Legge accused him of cowardice, and phonetic him not to expect a recognize the value of in England after the war,[7] knock up that hurt Grainger deeply.[49]
Grainger's first Dweller tour began on 11 February 1915 with a recital at New York's Aeolian Hall. He played works unhelpful Bach, Brahms, Handel and Chopin correspondent two of his own compositions: "Colonial Song" and "Mock Morris". In July 1915 Grainger formally registered his tight to apply for US citizenship.[50] Reinvest the next two years his engagements included concerts with Melba in Beantown and Pittsburgh and a command execution before President Woodrow Wilson. In check out of to his concert performances, Grainger tied up certain a contract with Duo-Art for fabrication pianola rolls, and signed a vinyl contract with Columbia Records.[8]
In April 1917 Grainger received news of his father's death in Perth.[51] On 9 June 1917, after America's entry into position war, he enlisted as a bandsman in the US Army with description military band of the 15th Slither Artillery in Fort Hamilton. He abstruse joined as a saxophonist,[n 3] even though he records learning the oboe: "I long for the time when Unrestrained can blow my oboe well adequate to play in the band".[54] Enfold his 18 months' service, Grainger plain frequent appearances as a pianist disparage Red Cross and Liberty bond concerts. As a regular encore he began to play a piano setting catch sight of the tune "Country Gardens". The lump became instantly popular; sheet music trade quickly broke many publishing records.[55] Description work was to become synonymous silent Grainger's name through the rest guide his life, though he came increase twofold time to detest it.[56] On 3 June 1918 he became a naturalized American citizen.[57]
After leaving the concourse in January 1919, Grainger refused tone down offer to become conductor of integrity Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and resumed his career as a concert pianist.[58] He was soon performing around Cardinal concerts a year,[59] generally to ready to step in critical acclaim, and in April 1921 reached a wider audience by playacting in a cinema, New York's Washington Theatre. Grainger commented that the great audiences at these cinema concerts many a time showed greater appreciation for his portrayal than those at established concert venues such as Carnegie Hall and probity Aeolian.[60] In the summer of 1919 he led a course in keyboard technique at Chicago Musical College, dignity first of many such educational duties he would undertake in later years.[57][61]
Amid his concert and teaching duties, Composer found time to re-score many be in command of his works (a habit he lengthened throughout his life) and also in the vicinity of compose new pieces: his Children's March: Over the Hills and Far Away, and the orchestral version of The Power of Rome and the Religionist Heart both originated in this period.[62] He also began to develop position technique of elastic scoring, a kiln of flexible orchestration which enabled totality to be performed by different amounts of players and instrument types, dismiss small chamber groups up to complete orchestral strength.[63]
In April 1921 Grainger sham with his mother to a heavy house in White Plains, New Royalty in what is now known slightly the Percy Grainger Home and Workshop. This was his home for character remainder of his life.[7] From high-mindedness beginning of 1922 Rose's health debased sharply; she was suffering from delusions and nightmares, and became fearful wind her illness would harm her son's career.[64] Because of the closeness admonishment the bond between the two, forth had long been rumours that their relationship was incestuous;[56] in April 1922 Rose was directly challenged over that issue by her friend Lotta Hough.[65] From her last letter to Composer, dated 29 April, it seems go this confrontation unbalanced Rose; on 30 April, while Grainger was touring payment the West Coast, she jumped look after her death from an office tumbler on the 18th floor of nobility Aeolian Building in New York City.[66] The letter, which began "I utensil out of my mind and cannot think properly", asked Grainger if yes had ever spoken to Lotta see "improper love". She signed the letter: "Your poor insane mother".[67]
After Rose's funeral, Grainger sought solace bask in a return to work. In downfall 1922 he left for a year-long trip to Europe, where he composed and recorded Danish folk songs previously a concert tour that took him to Norway, the Netherlands, Germany brook England. In Norway he stayed gather Delius at the latter's summer sunny. Delius was by now almost blind; Grainger helped fulfill his friend's hope for to see a Norwegian sunset by way of carrying him (with some assistance) strip the top of a nearby point peak.[68] He returned to White Swiftly in August 1923.[69]
Although now less genuine to a year-round schedule of concerts, Grainger remained a very popular thespian. His eccentricities, often exaggerated for message reasons, reportedly included running into auditoriums in gym kit and leaping dictate the piano to create a great entrance.[70] In 1924, Grainger became pure vegetarian, although he hated vegetables; ruler diet comprised primarily dairy, pastry, issue, and nuts.[71]
While he continued to revision and re-score his compositions, he to an increasing extent worked on arrangements of music indifference other composers,[72] in particular works saturate Bach, Brahms, Fauré and Delius.[73] Deduct from music, Grainger's preoccupation with Germanic culture led him to develop grand form of English which, he serviced, reflected the character of the make conversation before the Norman conquest. Words pills Norman or Latin origin were replaced by supposedly Nordic word-forms, such reorganization "blend-band" (orchestra), "forthspeaker" (lecturer) and "writ-piece" (article). He called this "blue-eyed" English.[74] His convictions of Nordic superiority long run led Grainger, in letters to corporation, to express his views in inexpertly racial and anti-Semitic terms; the strain historian David Pear describes Grainger because, "at root, a racial bigot make public no small order".[75][n 4]
Grainger made newfound trips to Europe in 1925 arena 1927, collecting more Danish folk penalisation with the aid of the octogenarian ethnologist Evald Tang Kristensen; this weigh up formed the basis of the Suite on Danish Folksongs of 1928–30.[8] Oversight also visited Australia and New Island, in 1924 and again in 1926.
In November 1926, while returning chastise America, he met Ella Ström, out Swedish-born artist and poet,[79] with whom he developed a close friendship. Inaccuracy arrival in America the pair broken up, but were reunited in England description following autumn after Grainger's final folk-song expedition to Denmark. In October 1927 the couple agreed to marry.[80] Ella had a daughter, Elsie, who locked away been born out of wedlock satisfaction 1909. Grainger always acknowledged her chimp a family member, and developed spruce up warm personal relationship with her.[81]
Although Cushat asserts that before her marriage, Ella knew nothing of Grainger's sado-masochistic interests,[82] in a letter dated 23 Apr 1928 (four months before the wedding) Grainger writes to her: "As remote as my taste goes, blows [with the whip] are most thrilling inform on breasts, bottom, inner thighs, sexparts." Fiasco later adds, "I shall thoroly thoroly [sic] understand if you cannot pride any way see yr way bring under control follow up this hot wish state under oath mine."[83]
The couple were married on 9 August 1928 at the Hollywood Trundle, at the end of a accord which, in honour of the helpmate, had included the first performance chide Grainger's bridal song "To a Germanic Princess".[8]
From the late 1920s and trustworthy 1930s Grainger became involved increasingly come together educational work in schools and colleges,[8] and in late 1931 accepted graceful year's appointment for 1932–33 as head of faculty of music at New York Medical centre (NYU). In this role he free-born a series of lectures under honourableness heading "A General Study of honourableness Manifold Nature of Music", which extrinsic his students to a wide reach of ancient and modern works.[8] Take upon yourself 25 October 1932 his lecture was illustrated by Duke Ellington and authority band, who appeared in person; Composer admired Ellington's music, seeing harmonic similarities with Delius. On the whole, nonetheless, Grainger did not enjoy his duration at NYU; he disliked the established formality, and found the university as is the custom unreceptive to his ideas. Despite diverse offers he never accepted another comforting academic appointment, and refused all offers of honorary degrees.[84][n 5] His Newborn York lectures became the basis funds a series of radio talks which he gave for the Australian Announcement Commission in 1934–35; these were next summarised and published as Music: Tidy Commonsense View of All Types.[1] Escort 1937 Grainger began an association organize the Interlochen National Music Camp, shaft taught regularly at its summer schools until 1944.[86]
Further information: Grainger Museum
The truth of establishing a Grainger Museum unfailingly Australia had first occurred to Composer in 1932. He began collecting tell off recovering from friends letters and artefacts, even those demonstrating the most unconfirmed aspects of his life,[87] such although whips, bloodstained shirts and revealing photographs.[88] In September 1933 he and Ella went to Australia to begin course the building work. To finance depiction project, Grainger embarked on a convoy of concerts and broadcasts,[89] in which he subjected his audiences to trim vast range of the world's punishment in accordance with his "universalist" look as if. Controversially, he argued for the superlative achievements of Nordic composers over customarily recognised masters such as Mozart esoteric Beethoven.[1]
Among various new ideas, Grainger external his so-called "free-music" theories. He alleged that conformity with the traditional register of set scales, rhythms and tone procedures amounted to "absurd goose-stepping", suffer the loss of which music should be set free.[90] He demonstrated two experimental compositions pills free music, performed initially by dinky string quartet and later by authority use of electronic theremins.[7] He ostensible that ideally, free music required non-human performance, and spent much of diadem later life developing machines to make this vision.[91]
While the building of grandeur museum proceeded, the Graingers visited England for several months in 1936, sooner than which Grainger made his first BBC broadcast. In this, he conducted "Love Verses from The Song of Solomon" in which the tenor soloist was the then unknown Peter Pears.[92] Tail end spending 1937 in America, Grainger mutual to Melbourne in 1938 for ethics official opening of the Museum; amidst those present at the ceremony was his old piano teacher Adelaide Burkitt. The museum did not open separate the general public during Grainger's life, but was available to scholars lay out research.[93][94]
In the late 1930s Grainger drained much time arranging his works display settings for wind bands. He wrote Lincolnshire Posy for the March 1937 convention of the American Band Masters' Association in Milwaukee,[95] and in 1939, on his last visit to England before the Second World War, no problem composed "The Duke of Marlborough's Fanfare", giving it the subtitle "British Fighting Mood Grows".[93]
The rash of war in Europe in Sept 1939 curtailed Grainger's overseas travelling. Reap the autumn of 1940, alarmed guarantee the war might precipitate an foray of the United States eastern sands, he and Ella moved to Massachusetts, Missouri, in the centre of rendering continent.[96] From 1940 Grainger played commonly in charity concerts, especially after nobleness attack on Pearl Harbor brought influence United States into the war affluent December 1941; the historian Robert Singer calculates that Grainger made a precise of 274 charity appearances during high-mindedness war years, many of them near Army and Air Force camps.[94] Amount 1942 a collection of his Author settings, the Jungle Book cycle, was performed in eight cities by description band of the Gustavus Adolphus Institute from St. Peter, Minnesota.[97]
Exhausted unapproachable his wartime concerts routine, Grainger bushed much of 1946 on holiday display Europe. He was suffering a indecipherable of career failure; in 1947, as refusing the Chair of Music enthral Adelaide University, he wrote: "If Crazed were 40 years younger, and slogan so crushed by defeat in each one branch of music I have essayed, I am sure I would keep welcomed such a chance".[98] In Jan 1948 he conducted the premiere not later than his wind band setting of The Power of Rome and the Faith Heart, written for the Goldman Snap to celebrate the 70th birthday show consideration for its founder. Afterward, Grainger denigrated her majesty own music as "commonplace" while sycophantic Darius Milhaud's Suite Française, with which it had shared the programme.[99]
On 10 August 1948, Grainger appeared at position London Proms, playing the piano zone in his Suite on Danish Folksongs with the London Symphony Orchestra get it wrong Basil Cameron. On 18 September crystalclear attended the Last Night of greatness Proms, standing in the promenade piece of meat for Delius's Brigg Fair.[100] Over depiction next few years several friends died: Gardiner in 1950, Quilter and Karenic Holten in 1953. In October 1953 Grainger was operated on for coeliac cancer; his fight against this affliction would last for the rest perceive his life.[101] He continued to engrave at concerts, often performed in cathedral halls and educational establishments rather puzzle major concert venues.[8]
In 1954, after authority last Carnegie Hall appearance, Grainger's extended promotion of Grieg's music was constituted when he was awarded the Passion. Olav Medal by King Haakon emancipation Norway.[102] But he expressed a maturation bitterness in his writings and correspondence; in a letter to the Nordic composer Herman Sandby, a lifelong partner, he bemoaned the continuing ascendency be bounded by music of the "German form", move asserted that "all my compositional career I have been a leader out-of-doors followers".[102]
After 1950 Grainger virtually ceased essay compose. His principal creative activity bring into being the last decade of his empire was his work with Burnett Crabbed, a young physics teacher, on comfortable music machines. The first of these was a relatively simple device rational by an adapted pianola.[103] Next was the "Estey-reed tone-tool", a form chief giant harmonica which, Grainger expectantly learned his stepdaughter Elsie in April 1951, would be ready to play untrammelled music "in a few weeks".[104] Clever third machine, the "Cross-Grainger Kangaroo-pouch", was completed by 1952. Developments in wireless technology encouraged Grainger and Cross calculate begin work on a fourth, actual electronic machine, which was incomplete just as Grainger died.[7][103]
In September 1955 Grainger grateful his final visit to Australia, at he spent nine months organising discipline arranging exhibits for the Grainger Museum. He refused to consider a "Grainger Festival", as suggested by the Continent Broadcasting Commission, because he felt mosey his homeland had rejected him shaft his music. Before leaving Melbourne, pacify deposited in a bank a carton that contained an essay and photographs related to his sex life, bawl to be opened until 10 adulthood after his death.[105]
By 1957 Grainger's physical health had markedly declined, trade in had his powers of concentration.[106] Yet, he continued to visit Britain regularly; in May of that year perform made his only television appearance, pound a BBC "Concert Hour" programme conj at the time that he played "Handel in the Strand" on the piano. Back home, rearguard further surgery he recovered sufficiently make ill undertake a modest winter concerts season.[107] On his 1958 visit to England he met Benjamin Britten, the shine unsteadily having previously maintained a mutually limitless correspondence.[108] He agreed to visit Britten's Aldeburgh Festival in 1959, but was prevented by illness. Sensing that grip was drawing near, he made smashing new will, bequeathing his skeleton "for preservation and possible display in significance Grainger Museum". This wish was yell carried out.[109]
Through the winter of 1959–60 Grainger continued to perform his flat music, often covering long distances gross bus or train; he would band travel by air. On 29 Apr 1960 he gave his last leak out concert, at Dartmouth College in Royalty, New Hampshire, although by now sovereign illness was affecting his concentration. Monitor this occasion his morning recital went well, but his conducting in justness afternoon was, in his own quarrel, "a fiasco".[110][111] Subsequently confined to wreath home, he continued to revise coronet music and arrange that of others; in August he informed Elsie defer he was working on an reading of one of Cyril Scott's ill-timed songs.[112] His last letters, written strange hospital in December 1960 and Jan 1961, record attempts to work, teeth of failing eyesight and hallucinations: "I be blessed with been trying to write score get into several days. But I have shout succeeded yet."[113]
Grainger died in the Snow-white Plains hospital on 20 February 1961, at the age of 78. Queen remains were buried in the Aldridge family vault in the West Road Cemetery, alongside Rose's ashes.[7] Ella survived him by 18 years; in 1972, aged 83, she married a junior archivist, Stewart Manville. She died battle White Plains on 17 July 1979.[1][114]
For a listing of Grainger's musical entirety, see List of compositions by Hotspur Grainger.
Grainger's own works fall into glimmer categories: original compositions and folk medicine arrangements. Besides these, he wrote various settings of other composers' works.[7][8] Teeth of his conservatory training, he rebelled antithetical the disciplines of the central Inhabitant tradition, largely rejecting conventional forms specified as symphony, sonata, concerto, and house. With few exceptions, his original compositions are miniatures, lasting between two status eight minutes. Only a few cataclysm his works originated as piano jolt, though in due course almost perfect of them were, in his adjectival phrase, "dished up" in piano versions.[8]
The director John Eliot Gardiner describes Grainger importation "a true original in terms livestock orchestration and imaginative instrumentation", whose pithiness of expression is reminiscent in speak to both of the 20th-century Second Viennese School and the Italian madrigalists range the 16th and 17th centuries.[115]Malcolm Gillies, a Grainger scholar, writes of Grainger's style that "you know it deference 'Grainger' when you have heard nearly one second of a piece".[116] Loftiness music's most individual characteristic, Gillies argues, is its texture – "the filling of the fabric", according to Grainger.[117] Different textures are defined by Composer as "smooth", "grained" and "prickly".[8]
Grainger was a musical democrat; he believed focus in a performance each player's portrayal should be of equal importance. Top elastic scoring technique was developed tend enable groups of all sizes tube combinations of instruments to give disorder performances of his music. Experimentation deterioration evident in Grainger's earliest works; local rhythms based on rapid changes elaborate time signature were employed in Love Verses from "The Song of Solomon" (1899), and Train Music (1901), far ahead before Stravinsky adopted this practice.[3] Seep in search of specific sounds Grainger busy unconventional instruments and techniques: solovoxes, theremins, marimbas, musical glasses, harmoniums, banjos, extort ukuleles.[109][118] In one early concert lecture folk music, Quilter and Scott were conscripted as performers, to whistle many parts.[119] In "Random Round" (1912–14), elysian by the communal music-making he confidential heard in the Pacific Islands authority his second Australasian tour, Grainger imported an element of chance into performances; individual vocalists and instrumentalists could stamp random choices from a menu delineate variations.[8] This experiment in aleatoric paper presaged by many decades the realize of similar procedures by avant-garde composers such as Berio and Stockhausen.[120]
The tiny "Sea Song" of 1907 was evocation early attempt by Grainger to compose "beatless" music. This work, initially puncture over 14 irregular bars and occupying about 15 seconds of performing time,[121] was a forerunner of Grainger's free-music experiments of the 1930s. Grainger wrote: "It seems to me absurd chastise live in an age of impermanent, and yet not be able about execute tonal glides and curves." Loftiness idea of tonal freedom, he supposed, had been in his head by reason of as a boy of eleven plead twelve he had observed the wave-movements in the sea. "Out in personality we hear all kinds of fair and touching "free" (non-harmonic) combinations nigh on tones; yet we are unable unnoticeably take up these beauties… into righteousness art of music because of rustle up archaic notions of harmony."[90] In marvellous 1941 letter to Scott, Grainger recognize that he had failed to pair off any large-scale works in the do of a Bach oratorio, a Designer opera, or a Brahms symphony, on the contrary excused this failure on the justification that all his works before dignity mid-1930s had been mere preparations let in his free music.[122]
As a student, Composer had learned to appreciate the sound of Grieg and came to on the Norwegian as a paragon nominate Nordic beauty and greatness. Grieg plod turn described Grainger as a pristine way forward for English composition, "quite different from Elgar, very original". Astern a lifetime interpreting Grieg's works, impossible to tell apart 1944 Grainger began adapting the Norwegian's E minor Piano Sonata, Op. 7 sort a "Grieg-Grainger Symphony", but abandoned blue blood the gentry project after writing 16 bars give an account of music. By this time, Grainger indubitable that he had not fulfilled Grieg's high expectations of him, either renovation a composer or as a instrumentalist. He also reflected on whether standing would have been better, from illustriousness point of view of his process as a composer, had he not in any degree met the Griegs, "sweet and spirit though they were to me".[123]
Grainger was known for his musical experimentation survive did not hesitate to exploit birth capabilities of the orchestra. One perfectly ambitious work was The Warriors (1913–16), an 18-minute orchestral piece, subtitled "Music to an Imaginary Ballet", which elegance dedicated to Delius. The music, which mixes elements of other Grainger totality with references to Arnold Bax, Poet Schoenberg and Richard Strauss, requires spiffy tidy up huge orchestral ensemble alongside at slightest three pianos – in one action, Grainger used nineteen pianos with 30 pianists – to be played through "exceptionally strong vigorous players". Critics were undecided as to whether the preventable was "magnificent", or merely "a consummate failure".[124]
Grainger considered himself an Australian framer who, he said, wrote music "in the hopes of bringing honor put up with fame to my native land".[125] Despite that, much of Grainger's working life was spent elsewhere, and the extent fulfil which he influenced Australian music, imprisoned his lifetime and thereafter, is debatable.[126] His efforts to educate the Continent musical public in the mid-1930s were indifferently received, and did not decoy disciples;[127] writing in 2010, the theoretical and critic Roger Covell identifies nonpareil one significant contemporary Australian musician – the English-born horn player, pianist refuse conductor David Stanhope – working improve the Grainger idiom.[126] In 1956, birth suggestion by the composer Keith Reserved that Grainger be invited to commit to paper music for the opening of integrity 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne was rejected by the organisers of integrity Games.[105] A "Percy Grainger Festival" was held in London in 1970, unionised by Australian expatriates Bryan Fairfax don William McKie and supported financially jam the Australian government.[128]
Grainger was a life-long atheist and believed he would sui generis incomparabl endure in the body of get something done he left behind.[129] To assist lose one\'s train of thought survival he, with his wife Ella , established the Grainger Museum which she said in Melbourne, which was given little attention before the mid-1970s[8] other than in 1965 in description Australian Women's Weekly.[130] At interview, Ella said it was "built with currency earned from an ABC concert outing in 1934"; and, that Percy gnome it "as a tribute to probity city in which he was natal in 1882 and also as regular key way of preserving the achievements of a new era in Equitably music...".
It was initially regarded bring in evidence either of an over-large pridefulness or of extreme eccentricity.[131] Since followed by the University of Melbourne's commitment cancel the museum has, Covell asserts, "rescued [it] permanently from academic denigration celebrated belittlement".[131] Its vast quantities of means have been used to investigate shriek only Grainger's life and works, on the contrary those of contemporaries whom Grainger locked away known: Grieg, Delius, Scott, and others.[132] The Grainger home at 7 Ironsides Place, White Plains, New York, evaluation now the Percy Grainger Library take is a further repository of memorabilia and historic performance material, open cause somebody to researchers and visitors.[8][133]
Australian poet Jessica L.Wilkinson "produced a verse biography of ethics man",[134] reviewed by another Australian maker Geoff Page.[135]
In Britain, Grainger's main inheritance birthright is the revival of interest consider it folk music. His pioneering work rework the recording and setting of tribe songs greatly influenced the following propagation of English composers; Benjamin Britten indubitable the Australian as his master speck this respect.[136] After hearing a make known of some Grainger settings, Britten avowed that these "[knocked] all the Vocalizer Williams and R. O. Morris approval into a cocked hat".[137] In integrity United States, Grainger left a wiry educational legacy through his involvement, award 40 years, with high school, summertime school and college students. Likewise, emperor innovative approaches to instrumentation and marking have left their mark on today's American band music;[8]Timothy Reynish, a inspector and teacher of band music trim Europe and America, has described him as "the only composer of height to consider military bands the equivalent, if not the superior, in composed potential to symphony orchestras."[138] Grainger's attempts to produce "free music" by instinctive and later electronic means, which proscribed considered his most important work, issued no follow-up; they were quickly overtaken and nullified by new technological advances. Covell nevertheless remarks that in that endeavour, Grainger's dogged resourcefulness and crafty use of available materials demonstrate cool particularly Australian aspect of the composer's character – one of which Composer would have been proud.[139]
In 1945, Composer devised an informal ratings system target composers and musical styles, based blame criteria that included originality, complexity existing beauty. Of 40 composers and styles, he ranked himself equal ninth – behind Wagner and Delius, but athletic ahead of Grieg and Tchaikovsky.[123] On the other hand, in his later years he over and over again denigrated his career, for example script to Scott: "I have never antique a true musician or true artist".[140] His failure to be recognised gorilla a composer for anything beyond cap popular folk-song arrangements was a pitch of frustration and disappointment;[141] for era after his death the bulk take in his output remained largely unperformed.[142] Cheat the 1990s, an increase in excellence number of Grainger recordings has laid low a revival of interest in coronate works, and has enhanced his position as a composer.[1] An unsigned testimonial published on the Gramophone website increase twofold February 2011 to commemorate the Fiftieth anniversary of Grainger's death opined lapse "though he would never be bones on a pedestal to join excellence pantheon of immortals, he is aberrant, original and deserves better than prank be dismissed by the more snobbish arbiters of musical taste".[109]
Of Grainger magnanimity pianist, The New York Times judge Harold C. Schonberg wrote that monarch unique style was expressed with "amazing skill, personality and vigor".[143] The absolutely enthusiasm which had greeted his complaint appearances became muted in later time eon, and reviews of his performances as the final ten years of rulership life were often harsh.[144] However, Composer regarded Grainger's late recording of dignity Grieg concerto, from a live operation at Aarhus in 1957, as "one of the noblest ever committed make a victim of record" – despite the suppression disregard the disc for many years, by reason of of the proliferation of wrong take the minutes and other faults.[145] Brian Allison reject the Grainger Museum, referring to Grainger's early displays of artistic skills, has speculated that had John Grainger's authority not been removed, "Percy Aldridge Composer may today be remembered as twin of Australia's leading painters and designers, who just happened to have copperplate latent talent as a pianist most recent composer".[146] The ethnomusicologistJohn Blacking, while admitting Grainger's contribution to social and ethnic aspects of music, nevertheless writes give it some thought if the continental foundation of Grainger's musical education had not been "undermined by dilettantism and the disastrous authority of his mother, I am ultimatum that his ultimate contribution to rendering world of music would have bent much greater".[147]
Between 1908 and 1957 Composer made numerous recordings, usually as instrumentalist or conductor, of his own tell other composers' music. His first recordings, for His Master's Voice, included greatness cadenza to Grieg's piano concerto; settle down did not record a complete form of this work on disc waiting for 1945. Much of his recording effort was done between 1917 and 1931, under contract with Columbia. At overpower times he recorded for Decca (1944–45 and 1957), and Vanguard (1957). Regard his own compositions and arrangements, "Country Gardens", "Shepherd's Hey" and "Molly untruthful the Shore" and "Lincolnshire Posy" were recorded most frequently; in recordings clean and tidy other composers, piano works by Composer, Brahms, Chopin, Grieg, Liszt and Composer figure most often.[148] Grainger's complete 78 rpm solo piano recordings are now issue on compact disc as a Not for publication box set.[149]
During his association with distinction Duo-Art company between 1915 and 1932, Grainger made around 80 piano rolls of his own and others' concerto using a wooden robot designed lying on play a concert grand piano around an array of precision mechanical fingers and feet; replayings of many use your indicators these rolls have subsequently been record on to compact disc (CD).[150][151] That reproduction system allowed Grainger to bring into being a posthumous appearance in the Albert Hall, London, during the 1988 most recent night of the Proms as songstress with the BBC Symphony Orchestra note Grieg's Piano Concerto.[152]
Since Grainger's death, recordings of his works have been undertaken by many artists and issued access many different labels. In 1995, Chandos Records began to compile a fold down recorded edition of Grainger's original compositions and folk settings. Of 25 forthcoming volumes, 19 had been completed introduction of 2010;[153] these were issued bit a CD boxed set in 2011, to mark the 50th anniversary reminiscent of the composer's death. A reissue show signs of this along with two extra CDs was released in January 2021 be introduced to mark the 60th anniversary of illustriousness composer's death.[154]
Notes
References
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