Grainger on Music
- Author: Grainger
driving, fresh imagination ... this book shows ... how he kept faith with the ideals of his boyhood ... There are bracing thoughts here, too, on the chorus as the centre of musical life, on...
Grainger on Music
- Author: Grainger
Purchase product
driving, fresh imagination ... this book shows ... how he kept faith with the ideals of his boyhood ... There are bracing thoughts here, too, on the chorus as the centre of musical life, on...
About
Cyril Scott once described Percy Grainger as a `lovable eccentric'. The Australian-American pianist, composer, ethnologist, and aspiring `all-round man' was, however, more eccentric to his own age than to ours. His views on the environment, food, the body, participatory democracy, and sex all anticipated by several decades views more typical of the mid-late twentieth century. Prolific as a composer, performer, and recording artist, Grainger was an indefatigable writer. This selection of forty-six essays about the production, promotion, and propagation of music is drawn from his over 150 public writings. Written between the turn of the century and the early 1950s, these essays reveal Grainger's youthful compositional plans, his ideas about piano technique, and his enduring high regard for the music of Edvard Grieg, Frederick Delius, and `Frankfurt Group' colleagues Cyril Scott, Roger Quilter, and Henry Balfour Gardiner. Grainger on Music also pursues his evolving thoughts about Nordic music, `Free Music', instrumental usage, and his occasional suggestions for musical development in Australia and the United States.
Contents
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I: To 1914
- 1 A Recognition (c.1898-1900)
- 2 Theme as related to Form in Music (1901)
- 3 My Musical Outlook (1902-4)
- 4 Beatless-notation Machine (1902/03)
- 5 The Music of Cyril Scott (1912)
- Part II: 1915-21
- 6 The Impress of Personality on Unwritten Music (1915)
- 7 Modernism in Pianoforte Study (1915)
- 8 A Blossom Time in Pianoforte Literature (1915)
- 9 Modern and Universal Impulses in Music (1916)
- 10 The World Music of To-morrow (1916)
- 11 Richard Strauss: Seer and Idealist (1917)
- 12 The Unique Value of Natalie Curtis' Notations of American Negro Folksongs (1917/18)
- 13 Possibilities of the Concert Wind Band from the Standpoint of a Modern Composer (1918)
- 14 Let us Sit in Wait No Longer for the Advent of Great American Composers--They are with Us Already (1919)
- 15 The Influence of Anglo-Saxon Folk Music (1920)
- 16 The Value of Icelandic to an Anglo-Saxon (1920/21)
- 17 Nordic Characteristics in Music (1921)
- Part III: 1922-30
- 18 Guide to Virtuosity: Foreword to Students (1923)
- 19 What Effect is Jazz likely to have upon the Music of the Future? (1924)
- 20 To My Fellow-Composers (1924)
- 21 The Completion of the Percussion Family in the Orchestra (1926)
- 22 Sargent's Contributions to Music (1927)
- 23 The Orchestra for Australia
- 24 The Gregarious Art of Music
- 25 Music of Ensemble Players (1927)
- 26 Impressions of Art in Europe (1929)
- Part IV: 1931-39
- 27 Democracy in Music (1931)
- 28 A General Study of the Manifold Nature of Music (1932)
- 29 Arnold Dolmetsch: Musical Confucius (1933)
- 30 Can Music become a Universal Language? (1933)
- 31 Melody versus Rhythm (1932/3)
- 32 Characteristics of Nordic Music (1933)
- 33 Can Music be Debunked? (1933/4)
- 34 Sublime and Frivolous Elements in Music (1934)
- 35 Roger Quilter: The Greatest Songwriter of our Age (1936)
- 36
- Part V: 1940 and After
- 37 The Culturing Possibilities of the Instrumentally Supplemented A Capella Choir (1942)
- 38 The Specialist and the All-round Man (1943)
- 39 Grieg: Nationalist and Cosmopolitan (1943)
- 40 English Pianism and Harold Bauer (1945)
- 41 How to Memorize Music (1948)
- 42 Music Heard in England (1949)
- 43 The Saxophone's Business in the Band (1949)
- 44 About Delius (1950-52)
- 45 Henry Balfour Gardiner: Champion of British Music (1951)
- 46 Questionnaire (1955)
- Appendix - List of Grainger's Writings
- Index
Awards and reviews
driving, fresh imagination ... this book shows ... how he kept faith with the ideals of his boyhood ... There are bracing thoughts here, too, on the chorus as the centre of musical life, on the revival of old music and on music as democratic art
