(This release is a tribute to the pianism of Percy Grainge...)
This release is a tribute to the pianism of Percy Grainger who died 50 years ago in February 1961. Grainger was the most reluctant of virtuosos, always wishing that he would be remembered primarily as a composer. However, the large number of recordings he made attests to his greatness as a pianist. Very few of Grainger s recordings are currently available and indeed, many have never been transferred to CD before. This landmark set reveals, in state-of-the-art transfers by Ward Marston, the true glory of Grainger the performer.
George Percy Aldridge Grainger was an Australian-born American composer, arranger and pianist.
Background
Grainger was born on July 8, 1882, in Melbourne, Australia, the son of John Harry Grainger, an architect, engineer, and amateur singer and painter who complicated the family's early years through his fondness for alcohol and women, and of Rosa Annie Aldrich. In 1895 Rose Grainger left her husband. She was an ambitious and dominating mother. In deference to her, Grainger later changed his name to Percy Aldridge Grainger. Until her suicide in 1922, mother and son were seldom separated; she was his business manager and the rigid protector of his personal life. Grainger's idiosyncrasies and fascination with sado-masochism, most particularly self-flagellation, can probably be traced to his overprotective and harsh mother and weak father.
Education
Grainger began the study of piano with his mother, then became a pupil of Louis Pabst at the Melbourne Conservatory. By age ten he was concertizing. In 1895 Rose Grainger left her husband and took Percy to Germany to continue his education. From 1895 to 1901, Grainger studied piano with James Kwast and composition with Iwan Knorr at Dr. Hoch'schen Conservatory in Frankfurt. He later briefly studied piano with Ferruccio Busoni in Berlin. He was lauded for his ability as a pianist, yet his professors severely criticized his attempts at composition.
Career
Grainger disliked performing, and devoted most of his energies to composing. Nearly all his significant music, distinct from his popular settings, was sketched or conceived before he was thirty. But, anticipating rejection, he made no early attempts to bring his music before the public. Between 1905 and 1907, Grainger collected a large body of folk tunes from the English countryside. He later expanded his collecting to Scotland, Denmark, the Faeroe Islands, and Polynesia. He was the first to collect English folk songs with the Edison wax-cylinder phonograph, his transcriptions uniquely noting the rhythmic, dialectal, and linear variations among the singers. Initially controversial, this work stands today as a scholarly contribution to folksong literature. Grainger's later instrumental and choral arrangements of some of these songs became the basis for his popularity, but they are not characteristic of his compositional style. When, in 1912, the Balfour Gardiner Choral and Orchestral Concerts brought Grainger his first public success as a composer, he allowed some of his music to be published. Although critics ridiculed his eccentricity, by 1915 his compositions for orchestra were the most frequently performed in London of all British composers. In 1914 Grainger immigrated to the United States, where he spent the rest of his life. In 1918, while serving as a musician in the army, he became an American citizen. The setting of "Country Gardens, " which he had "dished up" for a World War I bond drive, made his name a household word. In 1932 Grainger was appointed associate professor and chairman of New York University's Department of Music. The position lasted one year. Beginning in 1935, the Graingers worked at building a museum in Melbourne, Australia, to house his personal papers and mementos. Grainger held strong ties to Australia and, despite his American citizenship, pointedly described himself as an Australian composer. During his years in America, Grainger remained active as a concert pianist. World tours took him to Australia, Europe, and Africa. His interest in bands, stimulated by his army service, led to the composition of wind pieces that greatly influenced the burgeoning American band movement. The more important of these include "Irish Tune from County Derry" (1918), "Children's March" (1919), "Shepherd's Hey" (1918), and the famous "Lincolnshire Posy" (1937). Among Grainger's unusual pieces are "Random Round" (1913), perhaps the earliest composed music based on aleatory principles, and "The Warriors" (1916), which called for a gargantuan professional orchestra utilizing three conductors and combinations of pianos in threes. Yet another, "Tribute to Foster" (1916), requested the members of its chorus to rub their fingers across rims of water glasses to produce an ethereal accompaniment to their voices. Additional experiments include Grainger's attempts to achieve what he called "free music. " In 1944 he joined with Burnett Cross, a young scientist, to develop an apparatus that would produce his "free music" by reading a composer's graphic notations. Grainger's most popular works are foursquare and diatonic, and exhibit a generous feeling for melodic line. Yet he also composed the most impractical, complex pieces conventional notation would allow. These received little acknowledgment during his lifetime. Grainger died in White Plains, New York on February 20, 1961. He is buried at Adelaide, Australia.
Grainger craved vigorous daily exercise, and his hurried pace led to his being dubbed "the running pianist. " He spurned tobacco, liquor, and meat, and he slept little and irregularly. He was slight of build but muscular, with a shock of unruly orange-red hair. His habits and public statements were not a commitment to conventional behavior. Grainger would often hike between concerts dressed in army fatigues and regarded blue-eyed composers as being superior. He openly decried the gaudy trappings of civilization and spoke of the harmonium as his favorite instrument. The public and his colleagues regarded him as eccentric.
Connections
On August 9, 1928, before more than 20, 000 people at the Hollywood Bowl, Grainger married Swedish-born Ella Viola Ström during the intermission of a concert at which he performed both as soloist and as conductor. They had no children.