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Notions of the Universal and Spiritual in Percy Grainger’s Early British Folk-Song Settings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2018

Anne-Marie Forbes
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Abstract

Between 1905 and 1908 Percy Grainger made a major contribution to the corpus of British folk-song, collecting melodies and words of ballads, shanties and work songs, and devoting himself not just to the faithful capture of pitch and rhythm, but also the nuances of performance, with his pioneering use of the phonograph. These folk-songs became for Grainger a wellspring of compositional inspiration to which he returned time and time again. Yet while he was still a student in Frankfurt, Grainger had been making settings of British traditional tunes sourced from published collections. This article contends that these early arrangements hold the key to a deeper understanding of his later persistence in folk-song arranging and collecting, and that they prefigure the recurrent textual themes in the songs he later chose to arrange. It is argued that Grainger’s attraction to folk-song was textual and musical, tied to notions of purity, freedom and an unorthodox spirituality inspired by nature and shaped by the writings of Whitman, whereby Grainger perceived folk-song as a universal utterance. For Grainger, British folk-song was not simply a source of profound melody for appropriation; the window into a nation’s soul became a door into the souls of all humanity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Nineteenth-Century Music Review , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , April 2019 , pp. 43 - 62
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Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

I would like to thank the anonymous referees for their insightful criticisms and suggestions that have informed the revisions of this article.

References

1 See Francmanis, John, ‘National Music to National Redeemer: the Consolidation of a “Folk-Song” Construct in Edwardian England’, Popular Music 21/1 (2002): 1–25 Google Scholar and Sykes, Richard, ‘The Evolution of Englishness in the English Folksong Revival, 1890–1914’, Folk Music Journal 6/4 (1993): 446–490 Google Scholar.

2 Pear, David and Gillies, Malcolm, ‘Epilogue: Grainger Studies and the Future’, Australasian Music Research 5 (2000): 137 Google Scholar. For such claims see Percy Grainger, ‘My Wretched Tone-Life’ (1951) reproduced in Thomas Slattery, The Inveterate Innovator (Evanston IL: Instrumentalist Co., 1974), 258–60.

3 Tregear, Peter, ‘Giving Voice to “the Painfulness of Human Life”: Grainger’s Folk Song Settings and Musical Irony’, in Grainger the Modernist, ed. Suzanne Robinson and Kay Dreyfus (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 104 Google Scholar.

4 I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Dr Jennifer Hill and staff of the Grainger Museum, University of Melbourne for access to manuscript resources held in the collection.

5 Balough, Teresa, ‘The Spiritualising Influence of Music’, in The New Percy Grainger Companion, ed. Penelope Thwaites (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010), 190 Google Scholar.

6 Percy Grainger, ‘Percy Grainger to Broadcast’, undated press release c. 1934, cited in Balough, Teresa, The Inner Fire: Spirit and Evolving Consciousness in the Work of Percy Grainger (Nedlands: University of Western Australia, 1993), 36 Google Scholar.

7 Bender, Courtney, The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 182 Google Scholar. Cited in Boyce-Tillman, June, Experiencing Music – Restoring the Spiritual: Music as Well-Being (Bern: Peter Lang, 2016), 26 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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11 Letter, Grainger to D.C. Parker, 26 April 1933, reproduced in The All-Round Man: Selected Letters of Percy Grainger 1914–1961, ed. Malcolm Gillies and David Pear (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 121.

12 Gregory, E. David, The Late Victorian Folksong Revival: The Persistence of English Melody 1878–1903 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2010), 4 Google Scholar.

An example is William Chappell, A Collection of National English Airs (1838). Such collections reflected confusion between ‘popular’ and ‘folk’ already evident in Thomas D’Urfey’s Wit and Mirth: or, Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719–20). For discussion of the links between English broadside ballads and folk song, see Robert S. Thomson, ‘Development of the Broadside Ballad Trade and Transmission of English folk song’ (PhD diss., Cambridge University, 1974) and Fox, Adam, Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar. Common motifs in balladry are discussed in Atkinson, David, The English Traditional Ballad: Theory, Method and Practice (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002)Google Scholar and Gammon, Vic, Desire, Drink and Death in English Folk and Vernacular Song 1600–1900 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008)Google Scholar.

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14 Bearman, Christopher J., ‘Percy Grainger, the Phonograph, and the Folk Song Society’, Music and Letters 84/3 (2003): 436 Google Scholar. See also de Val, Dorothy, ‘“Fresh and Sweet like Wildflowers”: Lucy Broadwood, Percy Grainger, and the Collecting of Folksong’, Context 22 (Spring 2001): 131–140 Google Scholar.

15 Recent research on the contribution of Lucy Broadwood includes Gregory, E. David, ‘Before the Folk-Song Society: Lucy Broadwood and English Folk Song, 1884–97’, Folk Music Journal 9/3 (2008): 372–414 Google Scholar and Dorothy de Val, ‘Fresh and Sweet like Wildflowers’. Specific research on the contribution of Sharp includes Bearman, Christopher J., ‘Cecil Sharp in Somerset: Some Reflections on the Work of David Harker’, Folklore 113 (2002): 11–34 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. John Francmanis, ‘National Music to National Redeemer’ reassesses the contribution of Frank Kidson and the dominance of Sharp’s construct of folksong for national revival. Baring-Gould’s pioneering work with Songs and Ballads of the West (1889–1892) and English Minstrelsie (1895–96) is discussed at length in Gregory’s Late Victorian Folksong Revival, 147–96 and 461–75.

16 Tall, David, ‘Grainger and Folksong’, in The Percy Grainger Companion, ed. Lewis Foreman (London: Thames Publishing, 1981), 55 Google Scholar.

17 Percy Grainger, ‘The Museum Legends’, 25 April 1956. Grainger Museum Collection, University of Melbourne. The ‘Legends’ are the 58 display panels Grainger created for his museum. Grainger also said of Klimsch in his legend that ‘He (an amateur) was my only composition teacher; & I (a wild Australian) was his only composition pupil’. Lewis Foreman, ‘Grainger and his Contemporaries’, in The New Percy Grainger Companion, 177.

18 Cited in Bird, Percy Grainger, 33. Source given as ‘Grainger Notes on Karl Klimsch’, 19 August 1936. Grainger Archives, White Plains, NY.

19 Foreman, ‘Grainger and his Contemporaries’, 178.

20 Perhaps suggested by the Scottish interests of Klimsch, who spent his summer family vacations in Scotland. Grainger, The Museum Legends cited in Foreman, ‘Grainger and his Contemporaries’, 177.

21 The three Robert Burns settings were You wild mossy mountains (27–28 October 1898), Evan Banks (1 November 1898), Afton Water (2–4 November 1898); Arrangement of Old English Song O willow, willow (2 November 1898) Grainger Museum Collection, University of Melbourne, MG3/102-6 and 102-8. Grainger made a subsequent arrangement of ‘O willow, willow’ dated 1 February 1902 for voice, guitar, and con sordini violin, viola and 2 cellos (MG3/101:4).

22 Grainger, , ‘Why “My Wretched Tone-Life”? (1953)’, in Self-Portrait of Percy Grainger, ed. Malcolm Gillies, David Pear and Mark Carroll (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 173 Google Scholar.

23 Grainger misnumbered these songs in the manuscript. There are two songs bearing the same roman numerals and then two numbers skipped. The last song, numbered XXVI, is actually the twenty-fifth.

24 Grainger Museum, MG3/102-7-2 MSS volume English Folksongs.

25 For discussion of harmonic experimentation in this set see Dorothy de Val, ‘“A Natural Innovationist”: Percy Grainger’s Early British Folk Music Settings’, in Grainger the Modernist, 83–5.

26 Grainger, ‘Why “My Wretched Tone-Life”?’, 173.

27 De Val, ‘A Natural Innovationist’, 83.

28 Tall, ‘Grainger and Folksong’, 55, identifies these as settings of 26 melodies from Augener’s collection English Folksongs and Popular Tunes. I have not been able to identify any Augener publication of that title.

29 De Val, ‘A Natural Innovationist’, 83.

30 Hatton, J.L. and Faning, E., eds, The Songs of England: A Collection of English Melodies, Including the Most Popular Traditional Ditties and the Principal Songs and Ballads of the Last Three Centuries (London: Boosey & Co, 1873–92)Google Scholar. There was an abridged version of Chappell’s work prepared by H.E. Wooldridge as Old English Popular Songs (1893) but in spite of the title, this collection has a low correspondence with Grainger’s settings. Frank Kidson’s Traditional Tunes (Oxford: Chas. Taphouse & Son, 1891) and his Old English Country Dances (London: William Reeves, 1890) also have low correspondence with Grainger’s settings.

31 Bird, Percy Grainger, 39. Bird gives his source as Grainger ‘Ere-I-Forget – Jottingsdown’, in the Grainger archives, White Plains, 1944/5 See also Grainger, The Museum Legends as cited in Foreman, 177.

32 Barry Ould, ‘Grainger the Music Arranger’, in Facing Percy Grainger, ed. David Pear (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2006), 23. See also Bird, Percy Grainger, 39–40.

33 Macleod, A.C. and Boulton, Harold, eds, Songs of the North Gathered Together from the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland, music arranged Malcolm Lawson (London: Field & Tuer, The Leadenhall Press, [1884])Google Scholar.

34 Klimsch subsequently gave these volumes to Grainger as a gift in 1923 and they are now held in the Grainger Museum, University of Melbourne, MG c1/SONGS-4-1 and MG c1/SONGS-4-2. Volume 1 was the sixth edition and was inscribed in ink ‘Meinem lieben treuen Freund Percy Grainger/von/Karl Klimsch [rubber stamp]’. Volume 2 was a subscriber’s edition published by Cramer.

35 Ronald Stevenson, preface to his edition of Grainger’s Three Scotch Folksongs (piano solo) (New York: Henmar Press (C.F. Peters), 1983) states that these arrangements were composed ‘While in Scotland, under the impact of his first impressions of the country (and immediately afterward in London)’.

36 Grainger Museum, University of Melbourne, MG3/77.

37 Reproduced in Grainger Three Scotch Folksongs.

38 For further discussion of integrated memory, see Louise Serafine, Mary, Davidson, Janet, Crowder, Robert and Repp, Bruno ‘On the Nature of Melody – Text integration in Memory for Songs’, Journal of Memory and Language 25 (1986): 123–135 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Misspelling by Grainger. In Songs of the North this is ‘O gin I were where the Gowdie rins’. Dr John Park (1804–1865) was a clergyman, poet and composer. A collection of his songs was published posthumously in 1876 and this was the source used by Boulton and MacLeod.

40 For detailed discussion of the imaginative female heroine in broadsides and folksong see Dugaw, Dianne, Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650–1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

41 This is another of the folksongs listed by Grainger as an example of his attraction to the tragic in ‘Why “My Wretched Tone-Life”?’, 173. Furthermore, the image of tearing of hair may have had a subconscious resonance, given Grainger’s excursions into fetishism of tearing body hair, provoked by sexual frustration, and documented just a few years later. See the letter from Grainger to Karen Holten 27 December 1909, translated from Danish in The Farthest North of Humanness: Letters of Percy Grainger 1901–1914, ed. Kay Dreyfus (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1985), 329–30.

42 Programme note for Hill-Song 2, Grainger Museum, University of Melbourne, SL1 MG1/31-3-1.

43 Grainger ‘Nordic Characteristics in Music’ (1921) (Notes for Yale Lecture, March 1921), Grainger Museum. Reproduced in Grainger on Music, ed. Malcolm Gillies and Bruce Clunies Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 135.

44 Bruce Clunies Ross, ‘The Pursuit of Nordic Music’, in The New Percy Grainger Companion, 161–2.

45 St John, Donald P., ‘Whitman’s Ecological Spirituality’, The Trumpeter Journal of Ecosophy 9/3 (1992)Google Scholar, http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/article/view/423/689 (accessed 8 April 2017).

46 Walt Whitman, ‘A Song of the Rolling Earth’, Leaves of Grass (San Diego: Canterbury Classics, 2015), 208.

47 See Forbes, Anne-Marie, ‘Grainger in Edwardian London’, Australasian Music Research 5 (2000): 1–16 Google Scholar.

48 Contained in both Old English Popular Songs and Popular Music of the Olden Time.

49 Grainger Museum, University of Melbourne MG3/95-1.

50 Grainger, ‘My Wretched Tone-Life’, 259.

51 The sixth arrangement was of a Danish folksong ‘Song of Vermeland’, introduced to Grainger by his Danish friend, Herman Sandby. The arrangements were published by Vincent Music Company, London.

52 Grainger ‘My Wretched Tone-Life’, 259.

53 Gillies, Malcolm and Pear, David, ‘Great Expectations: Grieg and Grainger’, The Musical Times 148 (2007): 9 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 See Bearman, ‘Percy Grainger, the Phonograph and the Folk Song Society’, 434–55.

55 See Christopher J. Bearman, ‘The English Folk Music Movement 1898–1914’ (PhD diss., University of Hull, 2001) for a comprehensive account of the peak period of folk song collection in England and the formation of the Folk Song Society.

56 See Bearman, ‘Percy Grainger, the Phonograph and the Folk Song Society’ and Yates, Michael, ‘Percy Grainger and the Impact of the Phonograph’, Folk Music Journal 4/3 (1982): 265–275 Google Scholar.

57 Grainger, Percy, ‘Collecting with the Phonograph’, Journal of the Folk Song Society 12 (1908): 147–242 Google Scholar. Reproduced in Balough, Teresa, A Musical Genius from Australia: Selected Writings by and About Percy Grainger (Nedlands: University of Western Australia, 1982), 19–64 Google Scholar.

58 Discussed in detail in Bearman, ‘The English Folk Music Movement 1898–1914’, 134–5. See also Freeman, Graham, ‘“It Wants all the Creases Ironing Out” Percy Grainger, the Folk Song Society and the Ideology of the Archive’, Music and Letters 92/3 (2011): 410–436 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Rayborn, Tim, A New English Music: Composers and Folk Traditions in England’s Musical Renaissance from the Late 19th to the Mid-20th Century (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016), 203 Google Scholar.

60 Freeman, Graham, ‘“That Chief Undercurrent of My Mind”: Percy Grainger and the Aesthetics of English Folk Song’, Folk Music Journal 9/4 (2009): 581–617 Google Scholar.

61 Rose wrote to Percy 29 July 1907 ‘I also feel that you give up too much of yr very valuable youth to the folk-songs’. Cited in Dreyfus, The Farthest North of Humanness, 73 n41.

62 Letter, Percy Grainger to Karen Holten, 30 July 1906. Translation in Dreyfus, The Farthest North of Humanness, 72

63 Letter, Percy Grainger to Karen Holten, 3 August 1906. Translation in Dreyfus, The Farthest North of Humanness, 73.

64 Pear, David, ‘Grainger on Race and Nation’, Australasian Music Research 5 (2000): 30–31.Google Scholar

65 Letter, Grainger to Karen Holten, 6 April 1907, reproduced in Dreyfus, The Farthest North of Humanness, 105.

66 Grainger, ‘My Wretched Tone-Life’, 259.

67 See Freeman, Graham, ‘“Into a Cocked-Hat”: The Folk Song Arrangements of Percy Grainger, Cecil Sharp and Benjamin Britten’, Grainger Studies 2 (2012): 36–42 Google Scholar for stylistic comparison of Grainger’s 1908 arrangement of Bold William Taylor with that of Cecil Sharp.

68 Grainger, ‘My Wretched Tone-Life’, 260.

69 Grainger, ‘Why “My Wretched Tone-Life”?’, 177.

70 Grainger, ‘Why “My Wretched Tone-Life”?’, 178.

71 Grainger, ‘The Impress of Personality in Unwritten Music’ (1915), reproduced in Grainger on Music, 57.

72 Grainger, ‘The influence of Anglo-Saxon Folk Music’ (1920), reproduced in Grainger on Music, 113.

73 Letter, Grainger to D.C. Parker, 26 April 1933, in The All-Round Man, 118.

74 The importance of Whitman to an understanding of Grainger is reinforced by his correspondence with Ronald Stevenson in particular. See Balough, Teresa, ed., Comrades in Art: The Correspondence of Ronald Stevenson and Percy Grainger 1957–1961 (London: Toccata Press, 2010), 21 Google Scholar.

75 Letter, Grainger to Nathaniel Dett, 6 March 1925, in The All-Round Man, 73–6.

76 Whitman, ‘Song of Myself’ 5, Leaves of Grass, 31.

77 Schmidt, ‘Whitman and American Personalistic Philosophy’, 182.

78 Whitman, ‘Song of Myself’ 2, Leaves of Grass, 28.

79 Whitman, ‘Song of the Open Road’ 1, Leaves of Grass, 136.

80 Grainger, cited in Balough, ‘The Spiritualising Influence of Music’, 190.

81 Cited in Grainger on Music, 277.