I didn't get up to White Plains when in New York. I really should have. I've long loved Percy Grainger's music - in many respects he was and still is Australia's premier classical composer - and White Plains is where he spent the second half of his life (1921-61). There are places in New York he would have frequented of course. NYU is where he made that intriguing statement about Bach, Delius and Duke Ellington being the greatest composers.
I like to think Grainger went to my school, though. John Bird, in his biography of Grainger, says that if Grainger had any formal schooling at all it was probably at a state school in South Yarra (Melbourne). I went to South Yarra State School and the older building there was a Victorian-era building which might easily have been around when Grainger was a boy.
I do, also, know Albert Park Lake in Melbourne and was there recently.
Concreted now, it was a natural lagoon when Grainger boated here in the1880s and derived inspiration for his later Free Music experiments from the sight of the wave patterns made by his paddle. Grainger would have hated the fact that it's now concreted. He wrote from North Queensland once about a wild river that was being straightened and made navigable, despairing of the shrinking options in this world for real life and adventure; for the 'chap-who-wants-to-find-the-sagas-everywhere'.
But as I say, he was Australia's premier composer. I remember seeing a front page of The New York Times from 1922. 'GRAINGER'S MOTHER IS KILLED IN FALL' said one of the headlines. No first name, or further explanation. Everyone in New York, it seems, would have been expected to know who Grainger was.
I doubt if any Australian classical composer, even now, could be identified overseas as easily as that.
But 'Grainger's mother is killed in fall'? Makes me think about the dramatisations I've seen (and even conceived myself) of Grainger's life. They might show his eccentricities, like the way he would throw an egg over a house and run down the centre hallway to catch it on the other side or walked the 75 kms (46 miles) from Yarram to Sale between concerts. They might show him dressing up in his towelling clothes. Or they might tell of his London years when, admittedly, he wrote his best music... but no particular biographical arc is described (apart from the fact that the 'chap who wanted to find the sagas everywhere', who was titillated by Nibelungenlied descriptions of men being hewn to the waist by broadaxes, shipped off to the US rather than risk being conscripted for WWI - not much of an ending.)
But the dramatically compelling real story is how his mother became distraught when rumours of incest surfaced and ended up fallen from the upper storeys of a New York skyscraper. Jumped or fell? There was a chair next to the open window.
How about this for a dramatic shape? How Grainger is away on tour as usual (his daily and sometimes several-times-daily letters home to 'mumsy' being some of the most vivid descriptions of mid-20th century American life you'll find). Up to now, his girlfriends have always accepted that they play second fiddle to his mother's 'smother-love', but now 'E' decides that something is not right and she is jealous. She spreads rumours. Grainger, away on tour, can do nothing to assuage his mother's sense of rising panic. His effusive reassurances only make things worse. Signoffs like the one for the telegram which read: 'LONGING CLASP YOU IN MY ARMS' can hardly calm Rose Grainger's anxieties about making the right impression. And eventually she goes to visit Percy's agent and disappears out a window when Ms Sawyer steps out of the office for a moment.
(Percy and his mother's relationship certainly was strange, even if not incestuous. As John Bird says in his biography: 'Percy Grainger was mad. And he was made mad by a mother who never allowed him to grow up.' (I guess there is a place for stories about how he would throw an egg over a house...))
But to go on: Grainger gets the telegram telling him his mother has died after he has come offstage after playing with the Los Angeles Phil. He takes the long, painful train journey home to New York, tells 'E' he never wants to see her again (of course) and throws himself into his work.
Life is not fun however, and he still has to tour to earn an income. Turning around in a customs queue while coming back from New Zealand he sees Ella Viola-Strom and falls in love at first sight. She is his ideal of the Nordic beauty (the kind of beauty his mother brought him up to idealise?). He woos her. They wed at Hollywood Bowl before between 15,000-23,000 people after a performance that has included To a Nordic Princess. Despite comments to the contrary, Ella has already come to know of Percy's violent sexual preferences, his 'blue roses' as Grainger and Rose called them. In Malcolm Gillies' and David Pear's book, The All-Round Man, there is a letter Grainger wrote to Ella from Kansas City some months before the wedding describing how he saw a mother rain a 'sheaf of quick hand blows' on a little boy. 'Can you not,' he asked Ella, 'be sometimes suddenly masterfully cruel to me as that mother was to her child?....(when you are outoftheway-putout) make me strip & whip me thoroly?' And apparently she did.
But how does Ella reconcile herself to all this? The boy Rose had created? What is the process? Surely she thinks about all those other Edwardian-era women back in London obliging his tastes. And how does she (does she?) come to equal his mother in his eyes? What does she think of his mother? It was easy to put a foot wrong if you didn't share his idolisation. What is the process? Because finally she does come to a way of living with it, of loving him, and nurturing his creativity although 'it was hell to be with him; hell to be without him'.
Here is something to explore dramatically but it's an exploration of relationships, not a biopic of a composer's life. Celebrating his music would not be the primary dramatic intention, except that when he 'throws himself into his work', you could bring in his musical achievements; reveal his futuristic Free Music experiments and compare them with his earlier, delightful folksong arrangements.
I suppose it's not to be wondered at that Australians looking to tell 'our stories' light on Grainger's worth as a composer. Grainger was basically a lovely musician, 'a whale of a pianist' (according to New York critic Harold C. Schonberg), musically open-hearted, breezy, refreshingly tolerant, especially for his age. He embraced and was inspired by all sorts of music from Raratongan part-song (long before the fad for World Music) to barbershop quartets (when no-one would have believed it would now be seeing a revival); I'm glad he got to hear (in 1909) Baldwin Spencer's wax cylinders of chants of the Aranda (who do live with their sagas everywhere and ever-present) and considered them 'more melodic than stupid remarks in music histories'. I'm glad he left behind a treasure trove of really beautiful folksong settings. But I do think there was some sort of disconnect between the grand epic life he believed he led and the miniatures he created. Wildness and violence in his music? A certain vigorous folk-fiddling kind of counterpoint, but inspired as much by Bach's Brandenburgs as by any rawness or brutal chill of down-and-dirty life. The gulf between what he wrote and what he thought he wrote provides perhaps another tragic dimension.
Australia's greatest composer? Still the one with broadest and longest-lasting appeal. But I'm trying to figure out what got me onto this. I supposed it was seeing colleagues at the end of the League of American Orchestras conference last week in Dallas heading home to New York, while I went on to Sydney, and thinking that Grainger is Australian classical music's most famous New Yorker. I reflected on his stature. And the fact that Americans are often surprised to learn he is not one of their own.
If you are interested in other of my articles on composers, please see:
Sousa and the Sioux, 19 August 2012
"...above the canopy of stars..." - Beethoven's Ninth, 28 May 2012
A Star and his Stripes - Bernstein, the populist, 29 June 2012
Igor in Oz: Stravinsky Downunder, 17 July 2012
Wagner - is it music or drama? 27 July 2012
"Beautiful...sad": Puccini's La boheme, 29 July 2012
Philippa - an opera [blog 1], idea for an opera on Philippa Duke Schuyler, 16 September 2012
I like to think Grainger went to my school, though. John Bird, in his biography of Grainger, says that if Grainger had any formal schooling at all it was probably at a state school in South Yarra (Melbourne). I went to South Yarra State School and the older building there was a Victorian-era building which might easily have been around when Grainger was a boy.
I do, also, know Albert Park Lake in Melbourne and was there recently.
But as I say, he was Australia's premier composer. I remember seeing a front page of The New York Times from 1922. 'GRAINGER'S MOTHER IS KILLED IN FALL' said one of the headlines. No first name, or further explanation. Everyone in New York, it seems, would have been expected to know who Grainger was.
 |
| Publicity photograph of Grainger from 1921. Public domain |
But 'Grainger's mother is killed in fall'? Makes me think about the dramatisations I've seen (and even conceived myself) of Grainger's life. They might show his eccentricities, like the way he would throw an egg over a house and run down the centre hallway to catch it on the other side or walked the 75 kms (46 miles) from Yarram to Sale between concerts. They might show him dressing up in his towelling clothes. Or they might tell of his London years when, admittedly, he wrote his best music... but no particular biographical arc is described (apart from the fact that the 'chap who wanted to find the sagas everywhere', who was titillated by Nibelungenlied descriptions of men being hewn to the waist by broadaxes, shipped off to the US rather than risk being conscripted for WWI - not much of an ending.)
But the dramatically compelling real story is how his mother became distraught when rumours of incest surfaced and ended up fallen from the upper storeys of a New York skyscraper. Jumped or fell? There was a chair next to the open window.
How about this for a dramatic shape? How Grainger is away on tour as usual (his daily and sometimes several-times-daily letters home to 'mumsy' being some of the most vivid descriptions of mid-20th century American life you'll find). Up to now, his girlfriends have always accepted that they play second fiddle to his mother's 'smother-love', but now 'E' decides that something is not right and she is jealous. She spreads rumours. Grainger, away on tour, can do nothing to assuage his mother's sense of rising panic. His effusive reassurances only make things worse. Signoffs like the one for the telegram which read: 'LONGING CLASP YOU IN MY ARMS' can hardly calm Rose Grainger's anxieties about making the right impression. And eventually she goes to visit Percy's agent and disappears out a window when Ms Sawyer steps out of the office for a moment.
(Percy and his mother's relationship certainly was strange, even if not incestuous. As John Bird says in his biography: 'Percy Grainger was mad. And he was made mad by a mother who never allowed him to grow up.' (I guess there is a place for stories about how he would throw an egg over a house...))
But to go on: Grainger gets the telegram telling him his mother has died after he has come offstage after playing with the Los Angeles Phil. He takes the long, painful train journey home to New York, tells 'E' he never wants to see her again (of course) and throws himself into his work.
Life is not fun however, and he still has to tour to earn an income. Turning around in a customs queue while coming back from New Zealand he sees Ella Viola-Strom and falls in love at first sight. She is his ideal of the Nordic beauty (the kind of beauty his mother brought him up to idealise?). He woos her. They wed at Hollywood Bowl before between 15,000-23,000 people after a performance that has included To a Nordic Princess. Despite comments to the contrary, Ella has already come to know of Percy's violent sexual preferences, his 'blue roses' as Grainger and Rose called them. In Malcolm Gillies' and David Pear's book, The All-Round Man, there is a letter Grainger wrote to Ella from Kansas City some months before the wedding describing how he saw a mother rain a 'sheaf of quick hand blows' on a little boy. 'Can you not,' he asked Ella, 'be sometimes suddenly masterfully cruel to me as that mother was to her child?....(when you are outoftheway-putout) make me strip & whip me thoroly?' And apparently she did.
But how does Ella reconcile herself to all this? The boy Rose had created? What is the process? Surely she thinks about all those other Edwardian-era women back in London obliging his tastes. And how does she (does she?) come to equal his mother in his eyes? What does she think of his mother? It was easy to put a foot wrong if you didn't share his idolisation. What is the process? Because finally she does come to a way of living with it, of loving him, and nurturing his creativity although 'it was hell to be with him; hell to be without him'.
Here is something to explore dramatically but it's an exploration of relationships, not a biopic of a composer's life. Celebrating his music would not be the primary dramatic intention, except that when he 'throws himself into his work', you could bring in his musical achievements; reveal his futuristic Free Music experiments and compare them with his earlier, delightful folksong arrangements.
I suppose it's not to be wondered at that Australians looking to tell 'our stories' light on Grainger's worth as a composer. Grainger was basically a lovely musician, 'a whale of a pianist' (according to New York critic Harold C. Schonberg), musically open-hearted, breezy, refreshingly tolerant, especially for his age. He embraced and was inspired by all sorts of music from Raratongan part-song (long before the fad for World Music) to barbershop quartets (when no-one would have believed it would now be seeing a revival); I'm glad he got to hear (in 1909) Baldwin Spencer's wax cylinders of chants of the Aranda (who do live with their sagas everywhere and ever-present) and considered them 'more melodic than stupid remarks in music histories'. I'm glad he left behind a treasure trove of really beautiful folksong settings. But I do think there was some sort of disconnect between the grand epic life he believed he led and the miniatures he created. Wildness and violence in his music? A certain vigorous folk-fiddling kind of counterpoint, but inspired as much by Bach's Brandenburgs as by any rawness or brutal chill of down-and-dirty life. The gulf between what he wrote and what he thought he wrote provides perhaps another tragic dimension.
Australia's greatest composer? Still the one with broadest and longest-lasting appeal. But I'm trying to figure out what got me onto this. I supposed it was seeing colleagues at the end of the League of American Orchestras conference last week in Dallas heading home to New York, while I went on to Sydney, and thinking that Grainger is Australian classical music's most famous New Yorker. I reflected on his stature. And the fact that Americans are often surprised to learn he is not one of their own.
If you are interested in other of my articles on composers, please see:
Sousa and the Sioux, 19 August 2012
"...above the canopy of stars..." - Beethoven's Ninth, 28 May 2012
A Star and his Stripes - Bernstein, the populist, 29 June 2012
Igor in Oz: Stravinsky Downunder, 17 July 2012
Wagner - is it music or drama? 27 July 2012
"Beautiful...sad": Puccini's La boheme, 29 July 2012
Philippa - an opera [blog 1], idea for an opera on Philippa Duke Schuyler, 16 September 2012
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