Percy Grainger

A virtuoso pianist, maverick composer and arranger, and pioneering folk-song collector, Grainger was one of music’s unclassifiable originals. He was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1882, with a phenomenal piano-playing talent that won him a place at Frankfurt’s Hoch Conservatory at age 13. While there, his composing rejected German-influenced classical tradition in favour of a unique brand of grassroots individualism, derived from the folk cultures of Britain and the Nordic countries. Moving in 1901 to London, Grainger combined his pianistic career with recording and transcribing folk music throughout the world, from England to the South Pacific, before settling in America in 1914. Almost all his music was composed in miniature forms, often rearranged over many years in multiple different versions; famous examples are Handel in the Strand, Country Gardens, Mock Morris, Shepherd’s Hey and Londonderry Air. In 1938, the Grainger Museum at Melbourne University was inaugurated, housing his vast collection of fieldwork recordings and original manuscripts. He continued to perform as a pianist until his death in White Plains, NY, in 1961.