Self-Portrait of Percy Grainger

by Gillies, Malcolm; Pear, David; Carroll, Mark

• ISBN13: 9780195305371
• ISBN10: 019530537X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-06-29
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Shortly before his death, Percy Grainger (1882-1961) lodged over twenty unpublished sketches in his Australian Museum. Self-Portrait of Percy Grainger draws exclusively from these sketches, revealing for the first time an illuminating portrait of the composer's life. With such titles as "The Aldridge-Grainger-Strom Saga," "Thunks," "Ere-I-Forget," "The Love-Life of Helen and Paris," and "Anecdotes," these manuscripts were intended as precursors to Grainger's autobiography, My Wretched Tone-Life, which he only commenced in his final years. Expertly shaping these sketches, the editors have created a "self-portrait" along the lines that Grainger himself had intended. The volume first introduces Grainger's forebears, parents, friends, wife, and himself before moving on to his views on composition, performance, and the musical world. In these sketches, Grainger addresses such topics as racial and national identity, the meaning of work, physical culture, language reform, sexual practice, and artistic patronage. Grainger also probes the nature of musical genius, discussing a broad range of composers including Igor Stravinsky, Thomas Beecham, Frederick Delius, Edvard Grieg, Charles Stanford, Cyril Scott, Fritz Kreisler, Donald Tovey, Ferruccio Busoni, and Balfour Gardiner. Among the works of his own that Grainger most featured are his The Warriors --Music for an Imaginary Ballet, Colonial Song, the Lincolnshire Posy series of band pieces, his greatest "hit" Country Gardens, and his many settings of English folk-music. Written in Grainger's own self-created "Nordic English" as well as translated from Danish, the language of his most intimate confessions, Self-Portrait of Percy Grainger sheds light on some of the most revealing details of the composer's life. The sketches trace Grainger's changing self-perception, from the romantically tinged, even lustful, views of his forties and fifties, through a period of wistfulness in his sixties, to the bitterness and self-loathing of his old age. The volume also includes several of Grainger's own drawings as well as both public and private photographs. A fascinating and revealing collection of vignettes, this extraordinary book will appeal to instructors, students, and enthusiasts in musicology, music history, cultural studies, and Australian, British, and American history.

Author Biography

Malcolm Gillies is a vice-president of The Australian National University and a leading figure in Australian higher education and research. As a musicologist, he has written extensively on twentieth-century music, including major studies of Bela Bartok and Percy Grainger. Since 1997 he has been the editor of the series Studies in Musical Genesis and Structure, published by Oxford University Press.
David Pear is a senior lecturer at Monash University (Australia) and a fellow of the Humanities Research Centre in Canberra. He holds a PhD from The University of Queensland, and other qualifications in theology, education, and music. Pear has been a co-editor of letter, reminiscence, and autobiographical volumes of Grainger's writings, and has worked extensively in the Grainger Museum (Melbourne).
Mark Carroll is a senior lecturer in Music at the Elder School of Music, University of Adelaide (Australia), from which he holds his doctoral degree. For several decades he has worked as a professional classical and popular musician. His recent publications include Music and Ideology in Cold War Europe (2003), and a co-edited volume of Grainger essays. Carroll is also a researcher for The Australian Ballet.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	xiii
Chronology	xv
Introduction	xxi
Part I. THE MAN
Forebears	5	(10)
[The Aldridge Saga Begins] (1933);
[Aldridge Family Strengths] (1933);
[Aldridge Family Weaknesses] (1933);
[Frank and Clara Aldridge] (1933)
Father	15	(12)
John H. Grainger (1956);
[John H. Grainger in Adelaide] (ca. 1933);
My Father's Comment on Cyril Scott's Magnificat (1953);
Mother's Experience with Scotch & Irish (1953);
How Would We Ordinary Men Get On If the Clever Ones Did Not Destroy Themselves? (1953);
My Father in My Childhood (1954)
Mother	27	(52)
Dates of Important Events and Movements in the Life of Rose Grainger (1923);
[How I Have Loved Her, How I Love Her Now] (1922);
Thought Mother Was `God'. Something of This Still Remains (1923);
Arguments with Beloved Mother (1926);
Mother's Neuralgia in Australia (1926);
Mother on My Love of Being Pitied (1926);
Beloved Mother's Swear-Words (1926);
Mother a Nietzschean? (1926);
Thots of Mother while Scoring To a Nordic
Princess (1928);
Bird's-Eye View of the Together-Life of Rose Grainger and Percy Grainger (1947)
Friends	79	(28)
[Dr Henry O'Hara] (1933);
Dr Hamilton Russell Called Me `A Tiger for Work' (1953);
A Day of Motoring with Dr Russell (1953);
Karl Klimsch's Purse of Money, for Mother to Get Well On (1945);
The English Are Fickle Friends, Tho Never Vicious in Their Fickleness (1954);
My First Meeting with Cyril Scott (1944);
Walter Creighton & Cyril Scott (1944);
Walter Creighton on Roger Quilter's Hide-Fain-th ((Secretiveness)) (1944);
Roger Quilter Failed Me at Harrogate (1944);
Balfour Gardiner Disliked What He Considered Political Falsification in Busoni & Harold Bauer (1953);
Balfour Gardiner with Me in Norway, 1922 (1953);
Mrs L[owrey] and My Early London Days (1945);
Frau Kwast-Hiller, Evchen, Mrs Lowrey in Berlin (1953);
Miss Devlin's Sweet Australian Ways (1953);
Jacques Jacobs on First Ada Crossley Tour (1953);
Eliza Wedgewood, Out to Buy Old Furniture from Folksingers (1953);
Sargent's and His Set's Set-of-Mind toward My Betrothal to Margot (1944)
Wife	107	(18)
On Board the `Aorangi' (1927);
The Nordic Nature of My Love for Her (1927);
My Joy in Forming a Two-Some with Her (1927);
Pevensey (1928);
[Sex-Life] (1928);
Ella's Rime-Piece `In Search of Gold' (1937);
Read This If Ella Grainger or Percy Grainger Are Found Dead Covered with Whip Marks (1932)
Self	125	(40)
[George Percy] (1933);
[For My Autobiography] (1902);
[Art and Craft] (1902);
The London Gramophone Co. (Now `His Master's Voice') & the Joseph Taylor Folksong Records (1932);
Money Spent on Ideals, Friends, Etc., 1920---End 1923 (ca. 1924);
[The Centrality of Race] (1933);
[Pure-Nordic Beauty] (1933);
[A Flawlessly Nordic Way of Living] (1933);
[The Truly Nordic Life] (1933);
The Thots I Think as I Grow Old (1937);
[Fraud with Food, Fraud with Hair] (1938);
Growing Nasty-Spoken as I Near My Sixties (1940);
Put-Upon Percy (1945);
The Things I Dislike (1954);
To Whoever Opens the Package Marked `Do Not Open until 10 Years after My Death' (1956)
Part II. THE MUSICIAN
Composer	165	(44)
[The Goal of My Art] (1922);
Notes on Whip-Lust (1948);
What Is Behind My Music (1954);
Why `My Wretched Tone Life'? (1953);
Length (Size) in Tone-Art & Other Art (1935);
The Strange Idea That I Compose for Piano & Then `Arrange' for Strings, Orchestra, Etc. (1937);
`The Inuit' at La Crosse, Wis[consin] (1923);
My Dealings with Stanford anent His `Four Irish Dances' (1949?);
Stanford Deemed My `Irish Tune' Un-Irish & My `Brigg Fair' Un-English. His Disapproval of Vaughan Williams's Norfolk Rhapsodies (1949?);
Beecham's Cheek about `Colonial Song' (1945);
Balfour Gardiner's Criticisms of Sparre Olsen, Ravel, My `Colonial Song' (1952);
Grieg's Growing Fretfulness at My Tone-Works (1949/52);
Sargent & Rathbone Lost Interest in My Compositions When Publicly Performed (1953);
Vaughan Williams's Praise of a Detail in `Irish Tune from County Derry' (1953);
Delius Hostile to Harmonium Parts in My Chamber-Music Scores (1953);
Mother Thought My Music Sounded Like Hymn-Tunes (1953);
Anent `Elastic Scoring' (1929);
[Letter to Roy Harris] (1937);
A World-Wide Tonc-Wright ((Composer)) Guild (1945)
Performer	209	(26)
[Letter to Mabel Gardner] (1901);
P. G.'s Powers during Australian Tour of 1926 (1926);
Native Art and Stage Fright (1938);
Call-to-Mindments about Delius Piano Concerto (1941);
The Lower the Fee, the Better I Play (1941);
Memories of Tchaikovsky Concertos (1943);
Percy Grainger on Ideals (mid-1920s);
Grieg on Busoni's Lightning Octaves in Grieg Concerto (1949);
Stanford Wanted to Take Me to the Norfolk, Conn. Festival, to Play His `Down Among the Dead Men' Variations (1949?);
Nina Grieg Thought Sostenuto Pedal Sounded `Unclear' in `Jeg gaRr i tusen tanker' (1949);
H. Allerdale Grainger (1953);
Cyril Scott's 1st Sonata at Bexhill (Suicidal Mood) (1953);
P.G. Rehearses `Song of the High Hills' with Frankfurt Ruhlscher Gesangverein (1953);
`The Bit You Played to Mark Hambourg' (Chopin Polonaise) (1953)
Commentator	235	(30)
[The Expressive Potential of Music] (1901);
After Reading Parry (1902);
Donald Francis Tovey's Aunt (1953);
Dr Russell's Statement: `It's Too Early. You Must Wait Till You're Dead' (1941);
Facts about Percy Grainger's Year in Europe (1923);
[`The King Is Dead, Long Live the King': World, Racial and Tone-Art Loyalties] (1933);
[Parry's `Judith'] (1935);
[The Gifted and Half-Gifted] (1935);
Balfour Gardiner's Judgement on Vaughan Williams [Holst and Bax] (1949/52);
Grieg on His Romanticism, My Scientificness, re Folksong (1952);
Mother Liked Sibelius. P. G.'s Estimate of Him & Other Nordic Music (1953);
The Cheek of Band-Bosses ((Conductors)) (1945);
Rudolf Ganz Praised Reger & Mahler to Busoni (1953);
Busoni & P. G. (1953);
My First Hearing of Fritz Kreisler, with Mrs Lowrey (1945);
Melbourne Miss Rowe and Erno RappeA's Stolen Music (1953);
Balfour Gardiner: `Obscure Successes' (1953);
Tonery (Japanese Singer, Javanese Tone-Tool, Pablo Casals) (1945);
Intelligence versus Education (1943)
List of Sources	265	(4)
Select Grainger Bibliography	269	(2)
Index	271
Photo Gallery appears after page 162