Academic literature on the topic 'Grainger, Percy, 1882-1961'

The national affiliation of composer-pianist Percy Grainger (1882–1961) is a complex matter. While often claimed today to have been Australian or American, he was a ‘naturally born British subject’ for the first 36 years of his life. Thereafter, he was a naturalized American. Drawing on Grainger’s letters, essays, scores and memorabilia, this article investigates the reasons behind Grainger’s adoption of American citizenship during the final months of the First World War, and the subsequent national traits within his manner of living as well as his social attitudes, musical approach and style. His contributions to instrumentation, scoring and texture, as well as to music education, are seen from this analysis to have strong American traits, and subsequent influence, while his compositional style remained essentially English, although built upon a technical base established while a teenage student in Germany.In later life, Grainger was ambivalent about remaining an American citizen and resident, not just because of an implied disloyalty to his ‘native land’, Australia, but also because of his lack of empathy with evolving American values. To a Yale University audience in 1921, he confessed to being ‘a cosmopolitan from first to last’. This article analyses Grainger’s thinking about cosmopolitanism, nationalism and universalism in the following decades, against the backdrop of his growing commitment to the racialist, later racist, cause of Nordicism. It focuses particularly upon Grainger’s series of articles about ‘Grieg: Nationalist and Cosmopolitan’ from 1943, before investigating the relationship between racial and national thinking in Grainger’s final years. This culminates in his last statement of musical ‘creed’, published in a Norwegian magazine in 1955: musically to support the ‘unity’ of the Nordic race, and to bring ‘honor and fame’ to his native land, Australia. Yet, Grainger died, in 1961, in America, and still an American citizen.

Eminent pianist and composer Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882–1961) filled his original music and folksong arrangements with detailed, though idiosyncratic instructions to performers. The extent to which his own meticulous pedal technique is mirrored in careful directions to pianists is both unusual and revelatory. Grainger's scores are examined here from the standpoint of the damper, sostenuto and una corda pedals. Numerous musical examples serve two purposes: 1) they give information concerning the complexity of Grainger's pedal technique and 2) they exhibit the array of notational methods the composer employed, at various stages in his career, to enable performers to replicate as nearly as possible his own scrupulous pedalling. As well, by examining in detail this one aspect of Grainger's rich artistry, light is shed on the relationship between composer and performer, and notation and interpretation, that Grainger sought to understand and articulate ever more clearly throughout his career.

An examination of the utilization of folk song elements in the wind band music of Australian composer David Stanhope, represented in two movements ("Lovely Joan" and "Rufford Park Poachers") from his Folk Songs for Band. Sets 1 and 2. Included is an historical overview of English folk music, emphasizing the theoretical properties of the English folk song and the events surrounding the modern renaissance of British folk music. Background information related to the musical development of Vaughan Williams, Grainger, and Stanhope is provided, noting the influence of the folk idiom in their compositional styles and Grainger's influence on the music of David Stanhope. An historical account of the two folk songs examines the events and compositional procedures related to the inclusion of "Lovely Joan" in Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on Greensleeves. and Grainger's use of "Rufford Park Poachers" in Lincolnshire Posv. Emphasis is placed on the subsequent compositional treatment of the folk elements in Stanhope's wind band compositions. A detailed analysis of Stanhope's compositional style includes structural, harmonic, melodic, and historical considerations, while specifically illuminating his contemporary and innovative approaches to scoring and instrumentation.