Comrades in Art : The Correspondence of Ronald Stevenson and Percy Grainger, 1957-61, with Interviews, Essays and Other Writings on Grainger by Ronald Stevenson

by Stevenson, Ronald

• ISBN13: 9780907689676
• ISBN10: 0907689671
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-04-23
• Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Inc

Summary

In 1957 the Australian-American composer Percy Grainger, then 75 and in failing health, received a letter from another pianist-composer, the young Ronald Stevenson, writing from his home in West Linton, below Edinburgh. That first contact - requesting Grainger's reminiscences of Ferruccio Busoni, with whom he had studied - led to an exchange of 32 letters over the four years before Grainger's death in February 1961. The two men soon found that, despite their 46-year age-difference, they had many affinities. Both were pianists of staggering abilities and composers who combined a love for folk-music and working-class art with an aesthetic that proposed a 'world music' to include the farthest reaches of humanity. Both made an art of piano transcription of a wide variety of works and were champions of little-known music and composers. And both revered the work of Walt Whitman, that great poet of inclusivity, the pioneering spirit and the open road. This book presents both the complete Grainger-Stevenson correspondence and Ronald Stevenson's many articles and lectures on Grainger and his music, edited by Teresa Balough, whose two interviews with Stevenson open and close the volume - which includes a CD of a lecture-recital on Grainger that Stevenson presented in Grainger's home in White Plains, New York, in 1976.

Author Biography

Teresa Balough is Adjunct Professor of Music at Eastern Connecticut State University. She received her bachelor and masters degrees in music at the University of kentucky and a PHD in musicology from the University of Western Australia with a thesis on The Essential Grainger: Percy Grainger's Kipling Settings. Her first publication, in 1975, was A Complete Catalog of the Works of Percy Grainger and she has since writen numerous articles, monographs and book on Grainger, including A Musical Genius from Australia: Kipling and Grainger and The Inner Fire: Spirit and Evolving Consciousness in the Work of Percy Grainger. She is also the author of May Human Beings Hear It: The Institute for the Development of Intercultural Relations through the Arts, The Sacred Dance and Voices of Conscience. In 1985 she appeared in the CBC Grainger documentary The Noble Savage and In 1988 delivered a plenary address on Grainger's vision of a world music and its importance for Music Education World Conference. In 1993 she presented the annual Grainger Lecture at the University of Melbourne on Grainger's ideas on the spiritual evolution of music and their implications for the course of human evolution. She has completed a Life and Works of Percy Grainger which awaits publication. She resides in Old Lyme, Connecticut, with her husband, Owen Peagler, and their daughter Kirin.

This book appearsas part of two Toccata Press Series. The first, Musicians in Music, brings together the writings of important composer, performers and writers, often appearing for the first time in English and sometimes never before assembled in any language. Musicians in earliertitles include Sir Adrian Boult, Otto Klemperer, William Alwyn, Havergal Brian, Luigi Dallapiccola, Vagn Holmboe and Karol Szymanowski. Musicians in Letters presents authoritative editions of the correspondence of leading composers editions of the correspondence of leading composers and performers; the series was inaugurated with The Villa-Lobos letters and will continue with Martinu's Letters Home: Fifty years of Correspondence with Family and Friends.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Percy Grainger and Ronald Stevenson - 'Camerado, I Give You My Hand!'	p. 9
Acknowledgements	p. 24
An Interview with Ronald Stevenson (November 1998)	p. 25
The Correspondence	p. 73
Stevenson's Writings on Grainger: 1966-2005	p. 125
Preface to The Young Pianist's Grainger	p. 129
Music's Mowgli	p. 134
Random Relics of Percy Grainger	p. 140
Kicking into Space: A Portrait of Percy Grainger	p. 142
Grainger and the Interaction of Australian and Scottish Cultures	p. 159
Percy Grainger and his Circle	p. 168
Bach and Wagner: A Journey in Music	p. 176
Grainger and the Piano	p. 181
Grainger: A Celtico-Nordic Alternative to Graeco-Roman Aesthetics	p. 190
Grainger's Transcriptions	p. 198
In Dahomey: An Editorial Note	p. 205
Thoughts on Whitman and Grainger	p. 209
Another Interview with Ronald Stevenson (July 2005)	p. 211
Appendix: Grainger in Ronald Stevenson's Output	p. 253
Bibliography	p. 263
Index of Grainger's Compositions	p. 265
General Index	p. 267
Audio CD: Ronald Stevenson's 'An Evening with Percy Grainger'	p. 279
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