Editorial Advisory Board
Professor Warren Bebbington (Chair) Vice-Chancellor, University of Adelaide Professor Mark Carroll
Elder Conservatorium of Music, University of Adelaide Professor Kate Darian-Smith
Professor of Australian Studies and History, School of Historical and
Philosophical Studies, Faculty of Arts; Professor of Cultural Heritage, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning; University of Melbourne
Professor Malcolm Gillies
Vice-Chancellor, London Metropolitan University Professor Kerry Murphy
Head of Musicology, Melbourne Conservatorium of Music University of Melbourne
Angus Trumble
Senior Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, Yale Center for British Art Yale University
Suzanne Bravery (ex-officio) Manager, Grainger Museum University of Melbourne
Editors
Dr David Pear (London) Dr Belinda Nemec (Melbourne)
Grainger Studies:
An Interdisciplinary Journal
Number 2 2012
The University Library
University of Melbourne
Grainger Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal
www.msp.unimelb.edu.au/index.php/graingerstudies ISSN 1838-8884 (print)ISSN 1838-8892 (online)
Published by the University Library, 4th floor, Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia.
Grainger Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal is available online free of charge at www.msp.unimelb.edu.au/index.php/graingerstudies. Printed copies may be purchased through the Co-op Bookshop, University of Melbourne,
www.coop-bookshop.com.au.
Copyright of this collection © University of Melbourne 2012. Copyright of individual articles © the author(s). Material from this publication may not be reproduced without prior written permission from the University of
Melbourne and the relevant author(s) and where applicable the image copyright owner(s).
Cover design by Boschen Design. Grainger Studies logo design by Gavin Leys, University of Melbourne Library.
Front cover image: Benjamin Britten on Aldeburgh Beach, 1959. Photograph by Hans Wild. Image reproduced courtesy of www.britten100.org.
Back cover image: Percy Aldridge Grainger, Blind-eye score (Hill-Song II), large- format music score used by Grainger as a visual aid while conducting;
watercolour and crayon on paper, 39.3 x 61.2 cm (detail). Grainger Museum, University of Melbourne.
CONTENTS
Grainger Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal Number 2, 2012
Introduction
David Pear and Belinda Nemec vii
Percy Grainger’s aleatoric adventures:
The Rarotongan part-songs
Paul Jackson 1
‘Into a cocked-hat’: The folk song arrangements of Percy Grainger, Cecil Sharp and Benjamin Britten
Graham Freeman 33
Object of desire: Portraits of Percy Grainger from his London period
Stella Gray 55
Understanding John Grainger through the prism of an architectural rivalry
Andrew Dodd 83
Guidelines for contributors 101
Introduction
David Pear and Belinda Nemec
It is with much pleasure that we are now able to make available the complete second issue of Grainger Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, representing work published online in 2012. With this volume we have adopted contemporary eJournal production practice, by making articles available to the public electronically at the first possible opportunity, rather than waiting until the entire issue is complete. This is an incremental process, undertaken article by article until the entire publication is ready and available both online free of charge and in hard copy for purchase. Sadly, our original printers have ceased production, and a move to another supplier has somewhat delayed the printing of this volume. We apologise if this has inconvenienced anybody. But as editors we are delighted with the high quality of the new printed journal, and are confident that this change will be to our advantage in the longer term.
Not all our readers will be familiar with Australian children’s literature, so the joys of Norman Lindsay’s book The magic pudding will have escaped some of them. It is a delightful story, the main character of which, as the title suggests, is a magic, endless ‘cut-and-come-again pudding’ that deserving characters can dip into until they reach their fill. What is more important is that each consumer tastes the type of pudding that he or she most desires: the pudding is our culinary dream come true. Appropriately however, this walking-talking pudding is no passive provider, but a feisty Australian larrikin, keeping everyone in the plot on their toes. In one sense, Percy Grainger is a cultural magic pudding. Those of you who are familiar with the holdings of the Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne will know that the sources are apparently endless. The collections that Grainger put together are remarkable in their breadth, depth and variety. Renewed inquiry regularly turns up manuscripts, documents, paintings, photographs, scores and artefacts that will tempt the appetite of any hungry researcher.
More importantly, perhaps, the ways in which such documents might be
‘tasted’ or interpreted are as diverse as their readership. And that’s exactly how Grainger would have liked it. He was acutely sensitive to the nuances of translation, transcription and interpretation, whether linguistic or musical. To Grainger, noting down folk song was no mere mechanical act, but rather an exercise in the understanding and interpretation of a culture. British musicologist Paul Jackson illuminates this in the first part of his extensive two-part article which begins in this issue, entitled ‘Percy Grainger’s aleatoric
Grainger Studies, number 2, 2012 viii
adventures: The Rarotongan part-songs’. Jackson quotes from a letter written by Grainger’s New Zealand friend and fellow folk-song collector, Alfred J.
Knocks, to the 27-year-old Grainger, in which Knocks warns the young composer of the difficulty of translating accurately this highly syllabic Polynesian language into English:
I tell you what I find in connection with my attempt at translation of words of Rarotongan song into English, that to do anything like justice to the composition it takes a lot of consideration, and it is a matter that can not possibly be hurried, however to give you an idea, I am sending herewith a rough copy, which will show what the composer meant, but it is indeed rough as it now stands, the great difficulty is, one is tied to so many syllables—or notes—no more no less, and to make sense of it, or rather to translate without
destroying the sense of it, is difficult, you might easily improve on what I have done, that is if you can find the time.1
Jackson’s article begins an exploration of just how Grainger tackled such a complex musical task—and succeeded. In our next issue, to appear in 2013, Jackson will continue his theme in a concluding article, examining Grainger’s Random round.
Canadian scholar Graham Freeman turns his attention to Grainger’s collection of English folk-song settings. Most importantly, Freeman does not consider these in isolation, but traces their conception and their subsequent birth and even rebirth in the works of others, such as no less a composer than Benjamin Britten. Indeed, this article could serve as a springboard for further consideration of Grainger’s folk-song legacy, which until recent years has largely been limited to the (admittedly substantial) study of Grainger’s work in isolation. Freeman’s article is in this way a sign of Grainger’s current standing in musicology and in music performance.
Few composers or pianists have been as popular with painters and photographers as was Grainger, who lived at a time when photography was establishing itself as an art form, and when it was taken more seriously as such than it generally has been until recent years. Art historian Stella Gray considers five manifestations of Grainger’s image, demonstrating just how rich was the artistic milieu in which he lived—particularly during those lush
1 Alfred J. Knocks, Letter to Percy Grainger, 8 March 1909. Grainger Museum, University of Melbourne.
Introduction ix
Edwardian years in London. Again, this article leaves us wanting more—for all the right reasons—while at the same time addressing some important questions about the almost iconic status of Grainger’s physical appearance, which Grainger exploited to the full in furthering his career.
John Grainger, Percy’s father, was an architect and engineer of considerable ability and status, a status later overshadowed by his decline into alcoholism and the pitiless clutches of syphilis. This was no rare phenomenon in his era (the painter Charles Conder suffered a similar fate, for instance), but Andrew Dodd’s article helps redress the balance. Dodd presents the individual to whom history has awarded little recognition: a man who was highly informed, very cultured, and much respected in his own field. It is revealing to read an article that approaches the man with tribute, rather than blame, and that places John Grainger in the context of the highly competitive architectural milieu of colonial Australia.
As with issue 1 (2011), the articles in the journal cover a wide range of topics, from portraiture to architecture to folk music. We are pleased that in this way the publication is meeting its aim of fostering and disseminating interdisciplinary research that is unified by a connection to Percy Grainger or one of his many interests.
Library Digitised Collections
Author/s:
Pear, David;Nemec, Belinda Title:
[Front matter and Introduction]
Date:
2012
Persistent Link:
http://hdl.handle.net/11343/118258
