Percy Grainger   

By Shannon Cullen     

Percy George Grainger was born on the 8^th of July 1882 in Brighton, Victoria.  His father, John H. Grainger was a well-known architect whose designs included the Princes Bridge in Melbourne. 

Percy’s public education lasted only three months due to students teasing him and his disgust at the cruelty shown by them to a helpless animal.  He swore never to return and it was his mother, Rose, who assumed responsibility for his education.  Along with English, History and Mathematics, her practiced on the piano for two hours every day.  This regimen lasted from 5 years old until he was 10.

    Grainger was separated from his father in 1891, when his father became ill and moved to London for better treatment.  Grainger stayed in Australia with his mother, who stayed with him through his young adult life.

    At the age of 10, Percy studied harmony and piano with a German pianist named Louis Pabst, a student of the famous composer Anton Rubinstein.   In 1894, he made his piano debut at Melbourne’s Masonic Hall.  The audience and the critics raved that the youngster’s technique was near perfect.  A further five concerts convinced his mother they should move to Europe for further studies.  On May 29, they set sail for Germany.

    Grainger enrolled in the prestigious Dr. Hoch’s Conservatory in Frankfurt, then the major centre of European piano teaching.  Unfortunately, his studies with his composition teacher ended abruptly when his teacher made a mockery of Percy’s use of whole note scales and irregular rhythms.  These concepts were far ahead of their time.  Stravinsky was to adopt such measures only in 1913.

    Percy and his mother moved to London in 1901 where he triumphed immediately as a concert pianist.  He was given the title “The running pianist” because he was always running through the streets to concerts, bounding up steps three at a time.  It was also at this time that he became interested in collecting folksongs.  In 1906, he pioneered the use of the Edison wax cylinder recorder in the field by hiking through the Lincolnshire countryside and recording anyone who could sing a traditional folksong.  Bela Bartok was to adopt Grainger’s methods the following year.  Grainger wrote “In folksong is to be found the whole history of the people, recorded by the race itself.... It is a history compiled with deeper feeling and more understanding than any book...”

    Then, on March 15, 1907 the distinguished Norwegian composer Edward Grieg, was quoted in a Danish newspaper “What is nationality?  I have written Norwegian Peasant Dances that none of my countrymen can play and there comes this Australian who plays the way they ought to be played. Grainger is a genius that we Scandinavians cannot do other than love.”

    In the summer of that year, Grainger visited Grieg in his villa in Norway.  The two men spent hours discussing and rehearsing music, particularly Grieg’s Piano concerto in A Minor, Opus 16.  Grieg quickly became a strong father figure for Grainger.  Grieg admired Percy and asked if he would perform the concerto on a European tour with Grieg conducting.  However, a few weeks before the tour was to start, Grieg passed away.

On his return to England, he made the acquaintance of several major composers including Delius, Vaughan-Williams, Richard Strauss, Debussy and Edward Elgar.

    With the outbreak of WWI, Grainger and his mother moved to the United States, where he became an overnight success.  In 1917, Grainger enlisted in the army as a bandsman, 2^nd class, where he played the saxophone.  He began to play the piano at War Bond Rallies to help raise money for the war.  As an encore, he would frequently improvise on a theme called Country Dances.  It was quite well received and upon its publication, broke Schimer’s sales records for the past seventy-five years and continued to do so for the next twenty, selling at the rate of 40,000 copies annually in the US alone.  Grainger and his Country Dances became synonymous to the point where he began to detest the work. 

    In 1926, Grainger met his future wife on a ship returning from Australia.  Two years later, they married in the Hollywood Bowl during a Grainger concert before an audience of 20,000 people.  Around this period, Grainger began to champion the new music of Jazz.  In 1938, he was invited to perform at the White House before Franklin D. Roosevelt

    Grainger was offered many teaching posts at various American Universities; he refused them all. This, coupled with the fact that he insisted on only playing his music, made interest in him decline. 

    Grainger returned to Australia, where he died in 1961.

Percy Grainger was born on the 8^th of July 1882 in Brighton, Victoria.  His father was a famous architect who designed some important structures in Melbourne.  Schooled at home, Grainger learnt piano from 5 years of age, practicing 2 hours every day.  He began studying composition and harmony at 10 years of age. 

He gave his first public performance in Melbourne at 12 years of age.  Everyone said his technique was nearly perfect.  Soon afterwards, Grainger went to Germany to study at one of Europe’s most important conservatoriums.  He had trouble with his teacher there because Grainger’s ideas of harmony were ahead of his time. 

    Grainger moved to London in 1901 to work as a concert pianist.  He spent his spare time traveling the countryside recording the folk songs, for which he had a special interest.  His compositions, performances and improvisations were modeled on these folk tunes.

    Grainger spent time working with Nationalistic composer, Edvard Grieg, from Norway.  Later, he moved to America, where he became very popular for some time.  He moved back to Australia at the end of his life, where he died in 1961. 

Last modified: April 13, 2009