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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
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.
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- © Cambridge University Press 2018
Footnotes
I would like to thank the anonymous referees for their insightful criticisms and suggestions that have informed the revisions of this article.
References
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18 Cited in Bird, Percy Grainger, 33. Source given as ‘Grainger Notes on Karl Klimsch’, 19 August 1936. Grainger Archives, White Plains, NY.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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76 Whitman, ‘Song of Myself’ 5, Leaves of Grass, 31.
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81 Cited in Grainger on Music, 277.