Biography of percy grainger

To finance the project, Grainger embarked on a series of concerts and broadcasts, [ 89 ] in which he subjected his audiences to a vast range of the world's music in accordance with his "universalist" view. Controversially, he argued for the superior achievements of Nordic composers over traditionally recognised masters such as Mozart and Beethoven.

Among various new biographies of percy grainger, Grainger introduced his so-called "free-music" theories. He believed that conformity with the traditional rules of set scales, rhythms and harmonic procedures amounted to "absurd goose-stepping", from which music should be set free. While the building of the museum proceeded, the Graingers visited England for several months induring which Grainger made his first BBC broadcast.

The museum did not open to the general public during Grainger's lifetime, but was available to scholars for research. In the late s Grainger spent much time arranging his works in settings for wind bands. The outbreak of war in Europe in September curtailed Grainger's overseas travelling. In the autumn ofalarmed that the war might precipitate an invasion of the United States eastern seaboard, he and Ella moved to Springfield, Missouriin the centre of the continent.

Peter, Minnesota. Exhausted from his wartime concerts routine, Grainger spent much of on holiday in Europe. He was suffering a sense of career failure; inwhen refusing the Chair of Music at Adelaide Universityhe wrote: "If I were 40 years younger, and not so crushed by defeat in every branch of music I have essayed, I am sure I would have welcomed such a chance".

In October Grainger was operated on for abdominal cancer; his fight against this disease would last for the rest of his life. Inafter his last Carnegie Hall appearance, Grainger's long promotion of Grieg's music was recognised when he was awarded the St. Olav Medal by King Haakon of Norway. After Grainger virtually ceased to compose.

His principal creative activity in the last decade of his life was his work with Burnett Cross, a young physics teacher, on free music machines. The first of these was a relatively simple device controlled by an adapted pianola. Developments in transistor technology encouraged Grainger and Cross to begin work on a fourth, entirely electronic machine, which was incomplete when Grainger died.

In September Grainger made his final visit to Australia, where he spent nine months organising and arranging exhibits for the Grainger Museum. He refused to consider a "Grainger Festival", as suggested by the Australian Broadcasting Commission, because he felt that his homeland had rejected him and his music. Before leaving Melbourne, he deposited in a bank a parcel that contained an essay and photographs related to his sex life, not to be opened until 10 years after his death.

Biography of percy grainger

By Grainger's physical health had markedly declined, as had his powers of concentration. Back home, after further surgery he recovered sufficiently to undertake a modest biography of percy grainger concerts season. Sensing that death was drawing near, he made a new will, bequeathing his skeleton "for preservation and possible display in the Grainger Museum".

This wish was not carried out. Through the winter of —60 Grainger continued to perform his own music, often covering long distances by bus or train; he would not travel by air. On 29 April he gave his last public concert, at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshirealthough by now his illness was affecting his concentration. On this occasion his morning recital went well, but his conducting in the afternoon was, in his own words, "a fiasco".

But I have not succeeded yet. Grainger died in the White Plains hospital on 20 Februaryat the age of His remains were buried in the Aldridge family vault in the West Terrace Cemeteryalongside Rose's ashes. She died at White Plains on 17 July Grainger's own works fall into two categories: original compositions and folk music arrangements.

Besides these, he wrote many settings of other composers' works. With few exceptions, his original compositions are miniatures, lasting between two and eight minutes. Only a few of his works originated as piano pieces, though in due course almost all of them were, in his phrase, "dished up" in piano versions. The conductor John Eliot Gardiner describes Grainger as "a true original in terms of orchestration and imaginative instrumentation", whose terseness of expression is reminiscent in style both of the 20th-century Second Viennese School and the Italian madrigalists of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Grainger was a musical democrat; he believed that in a performance each player's role should be of equal importance. His elastic scoring technique was developed to enable groups of all sizes and combinations of instruments to give effective performances of his music. Experimentation is evident in Grainger's earliest works; irregular rhythms based on rapid changes of time signature were employed in Love Verses from "The Song of Solomon"and Train Musiclong before Stravinsky adopted this practice.

The brief "Sea Song" of was an early attempt by Grainger to write "beatless" music. This work, initially set over 14 irregular bars and occupying about 15 seconds of performing time, [ ] was a forerunner of Grainger's free-music experiments of the s. Grainger wrote: "It seems to me absurd to live in an age of flying, and yet not be able to execute tonal glides and curves.

As a student, Grainger had learned to appreciate the music of Grieg and came to regard the Norwegian as a paragon of Nordic beauty and greatness. Grieg in turn described Grainger as a new way forward for English composition, "quite different from Elgar, very original". By this time, Grainger acknowledged that he had not fulfilled Grieg's high expectations of him, either as a composer or as a pianist.

He also reflected on whether it would have been better, from the point of view of his development as a composer, had he never met the Griegs, "sweet and dear though they were to me". Grainger was known for his musical experimentation and did not hesitate to exploit the capabilities of the orchestra. One early ambitious work was The Warriors —16an minute orchestral piece, subtitled "Music to an Imaginary Ballet", which he dedicated to Delius.

The music, which mixes elements of other Grainger works with references to Arnold BaxArnold Schoenberg and Richard Straussrequires a huge orchestral ensemble alongside at least three pianos — in one performance, Grainger used nineteen pianos with thirty pianists — to be played by "exceptionally strong vigorous players". Critics were undecided as to whether the work was "magnificent", or merely "a magnificent failure".

Grainger considered himself an Australian composer who, he said, wrote music "in the hopes of bringing honor and fame to my native land". Grainger was a life-long atheist and believed he would only endure in the body of work he left behind. It was initially regarded as evidence either of an over-large ego or of extreme eccentricity. Australian poet Jessica L.

Wilkinson "produced a verse biography of the man", [ ] reviewed by another Australian poet Geoff Page. In Britain, Grainger's main legacy is the revival of interest in folk music. His pioneering work in the recording and setting of folk songs greatly influenced the following generation of English composers; Benjamin Britten acknowledged the Australian as his master in this respect.

Morris arrangements into a cocked hat". Likewise, his innovative approaches to instrumentation and scoring have left their mark on modern American band music; [ 8 ] Timothy Reynisha conductor and teacher of band music in Europe and America, has described him as "the only composer of stature to consider military bands the equal, if not the superior, in expressive potential to symphony orchestras.

Covell nevertheless remarks that in this endeavour, Grainger's dogged resourcefulness and ingenious use of available materials demonstrate a particularly Australian aspect of the composer's character — one of which Grainger would have been proud. InGrainger devised an informal ratings system for composers and musical styles, based on criteria that included originality, complexity and beauty.

Of 40 composers and styles, he ranked himself equal ninth — behind Wagner and Deliusbut well ahead of Grieg and Tchaikovsky. Schonberg wrote that his unique style was expressed with "amazing skill, personality and vigor". Between and Grainger made numerous recordings, usually as pianist or conductor, of his own and other composers' music. His first recordings, for His Master's Voiceincluded the cadenza to Grieg's piano concerto; he did not record a complete version of this work on disc until Much of his recording work was done between andunder contract with Columbia.

At other times he recorded for Decca —45 andand Vanguard Of his own compositions and arrangements, "Country Gardens", "Shepherd's Hey" and " Molly on the Shore " and "Lincolnshire Posy" were recorded most frequently; in recordings of other composers, piano works by Bach, Brahms, Chopin, Grieg, Liszt and Schumann figure most often. During his association with the Duo-Art company between andGrainger made around 80 piano rolls of his own and others' music using a wooden robot designed to play a concert grand piano via an array of precision mechanical fingers and feet; replayings of many of these rolls have subsequently been recorded on to compact disc CD.

Since Grainger's death, recordings of his works have been undertaken by many artists and issued under many different labels. InChandos Records began to compile a complete recorded edition of Grainger's original compositions and folk settings. Their wedding took place on 9 August on the stage of the Hollywood Bowlfollowing a concert before an audience of 20, with an orchestra of musicians and an a cappella choir, which sang his new composition, To a Nordic Princessdedicated to Ella.

In DecemberGrainger developed a style of orchestration that he called " Elastic Scoring ". Inhe became Dean of Music at New York Universityand underscored his reputation as an experimenter by putting jazz on the syllabus and inviting Duke Ellington as a guest lecturer. Twice he was offered honorary doctorates of music, but turned them down, explaining, "I feel that my music must be regarded as a product of non education".

Grainger often appeared as a biography of percy grainger conductor of the Goldman Bandwhich gave the first complete performance of Grainger's masterpiece Lincolnshire Posy in the summer of He was said to have never driven an automobile, and instead used a bicycle, even driving it the mile distance from his White Plains home to the Goldman Band concerts at Central Park in New York City.

Inthe Graingers moved to Springfield, Missourifearful that their home situated on the eastern seaboard would be vulnerable to enemy attack, from which base Grainger again toured to give a series of army concerts during the Second World War. Several of these concerts were given to raise money for the war efforts. However, the gradual decline in popularity of his music after the war hit his spirits hard.

To get his music heard, he offered to play for little or no fee, which resulted in his income from concerts drying up. In his last years, working in collaboration with physicist Burnett Cross, Grainger invented the "Free Music Machine", which was the forerunner of the electric synthesizer. Although still physically fit into his 60s, he spent his last years suffering pain from abdominal cancer which had spread, despite a number of operations, from prostate cancer diagnosed in His personal files and biographies of percy grainger have been preserved at The Grainger Museum in the grounds of the University of Melbournethe design and construction of which he oversaw.

Restoration of the museum was completed in December[ 8 ] and conservation efforts continue. Many of his instruments and scores are located at the Grainger house in White Plains, New York, now the headquarters of the International Percy Grainger Society, under the aegis of archivist Stuart Manville. Manville wed Percy's widow Ella in and became a widower upon her death in He is remembered in the name of Grainger Circuit, in the Canberra suburb of Melba.

He first conceived his idea of Free Music as a boy of 11 or It was suggested to him by observing the waves on Albert Park Lake in Melbourne. Eventually he concluded that the future of music lay in freeing up rhythmic procedures and in the subtle variation of pitch, producing glissando like movement. These ideas were to remain with him throughout his life, and he spent a great deal of his time in later years developing machines to realise his conception.

Free Music is melodic polyphonicmaking use of long, sustained tones capable of continuous changes in pitch. No traditional form of notation exists to describe it in detail. Grainger's own scores were originally notated on graph paper, with an biography of percy grainger trace for both the pitch and dynamic changes of each note. Free Music assumes a moving tone, precluding any harmonic stability and working with it is difficult since almost every basic assumption about musical relationships and method must be ignored.

Free Music requires the abolition of the scale and its replacement by a controlled continuous glide. Grainger resorted to the use of machines because human performers on traditional instruments were not capable of producing the wide range of "gliding tones" with the necessary control over minute fluctuations of pitch. The machines were not intended as performance devices.

Rather, they were designed to allow Grainger to hear the sounds he composed. He insisted on hearing his compositions before allowing them to be published, and often went to extraordinary lengths to achieve this. His most famous machine is the "Hills and Dales" machine, described by Grainger as the "Kangaroo Pouch method of synchronising and playing eight oscillators" on display in the Grainger Museum.

This roll consists of three layers: a main paper roll 80 inches high, across which eight smaller horizontal strips of paper or subsidiary rolls are attached front and back. The top edges of these subsidiary rolls are cut into curvilinear shapes the hills and dales and attached to the main roll at their bottom edges, each forming a type of "pouch".

As the turrets are rotated clockwise, the undulating shapes cut into the rolls move from right to left. Eight valve oscillators are mounted onto the wooden frame, four at the front and four at the back, as are eight amplifiers. The pitch controls of the oscillators are attached to levers, connected at the other ends to circular runners, or spools, which "ride" moving rolls.

Although he had returned to his birth country several times before relocating to the United States, it was during this visit that he began planning and organizing the Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne to serve as a home for his manuscripts and personal effects. He also hoped that the Grainger Museum would house an ethnomusicological research facility and serve as a center for the collection, organization, and appreciation of musical styles from around the globe.

The Grainger Museum was dedicated by the composer in Grainger's career as a concert pianist, composer, and lecturer continued through World War II. During the war he made numerous concert appearances for the Allied cause. After the end of the war, however, he retired to a home in White Plains, New York. Although respect for his talents as a pianist and teacher remained high, Percy Grainger ended his career in bitterness, believing that his true contribution to music had never been fully appreciated.

His most valuable research, he firmly believed, lay not in his early compositions which he regarded with some disdainbut in his collections of folk music and his avant garde experiments with Free Music. Even his election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in did not change his opinion that his life's work was underappreciated.

He died in February ofrequesting that his skeleton be placed on display at the Grainger Museum. Although the request was denied, his body was removed to his native country and he is buried with other members of his family in Adelaide, South Australia. Percy Grainger has been remembered as much for his personal eccentricities as for his music, both the experimental, futuristic pieces and the popular pieces.

In addition to being a highly talented performer, musicologist, and composer, Grainger became obsessively interested in alternative sexual behaviors. In Passion, a film based on Grainger's early life and career directed by Australian director Peter Duncan, was released. Critics universally appreciated the effective use of Grainger's music in the soundtrack, but it was Passion 's concentration on the Graingers' personal life that attracted most of their attention.

Passion is set during Grainger's last years in London before moving to the United States. At the peak of his performing career, he is caught in a turbulent relationship, caught between his feelings for his mother Rose and his then-girlfriend, the Danish musician Karin Holten. Yet the film is not simply out to shock audiences with outrageous practices.

Grainger emerges from the story as a complex character whose sexuality is just one part of his genius. Australian actor Richard Roxburgh took lessons in masochistic practices while preparing for his starring role as Grainger. His father was an alcoholic. When Grainger was age 11, his parents separated after his mother contracted syphilis from his father, who then returned to London.

Grainger's mother was domineering and possessive, although cultured; she recognized his musical abilities, and took him to Europe in to study at Dr. Hoch's conservatory in Frankfurt. There he displayed his talents as a musical experimenter, using irregular and unusual meters. From to Grainger lived in London, where he befriended and was influenced by composer Edvard Grieg.

Grieg had a longstanding interest in the folk songs of his native Norwayand Grainger developed a particular interest in recording the folk songs of rural England. During this period, Grainger also wrote and performed piano compositions that presaged the forthcoming popularization of the tone cluster by Leo Ornstein and Henry Cowell. His piano composition In a Nutshell is the first by a classical music professional in the Western tradition to require direct, non-keyed sounding of the strings—in this case, with a mallet—which would come to be known as a "string piano" technique.

When the United States entered the war inhe enlisted into a United States Army band playing the oboe and soprano saxophone. He spent the duration of the war giving dozens of concerts in aid of war bonds and Liberty Loans. Inhe became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Philosophically, Grainger believed that music should reflect the irregularities of the natural world, hence his music often contains asymmetrical rhythms and highly innovative harmonic progressions.

Writing on this subject he stated, "The big object of the modern composer is to bring music more and more into line with the irregularities and complexities of nature and away from the straight lines and simplifications imposed by man. We should follow nature and allow ourselves very possible freedom of expression.