GRAINGER, PERCY  BIOGRAPHY

Percy Aldridge Grainger was a musician of unusual breadth and vision whose interests encompassed Aboriginal to Zulu music by way of twelfth-century part-songs, Javanese gamelan orchestras, folk-song collecting from Britain, Scandinavia and the Pacific Islands and composers ranging from Bach and Dowland to Duke Ellington, Gershwin and Richard Strauss. Born in Brighton, a suburb of the Australian city of Melbourne on 8 July 1882, he was christened George Percy Grainger and was brought up and tutored mainly by his mother Rose. At the age of ten he gave his first public recital. Three years later, he and his mother sailed for Europe where the young Grainger enrolled at the Hoch Conservatorium in Frankfurt, Germany. From here mother and son travelled to England, and settled in London between 1901 and 1914. During this productive period, Grainger’s life as a concert pianist blossomed. In 1905 Grainger attended lectures given by Lucy Broadwood of the Folk-Song Society and these spurred him into frenzied activity as a collector in his own right. His first compositions were experimental in nature, works for huge orchestras and unusual combinations of instruments are to be found amongst these, but he subsequently modified his style in the popular British Folk-Music Settings and Room-Music Tit Bits. At the outbreak of World War I, Grainger and his mother left for America where he settled until his death in 1961.