Percy Grainger

It was what was invented by Thomas Edison, the phonogram.

And a lot of these folk songs, including that one, The Little Gypsy Girl by Eliza Carthy, were first recorded by a composer called Percy Grainger who went out into Lincolnshire and all into the countryside around there, and all round through the Midlands, with one of these wax cylinder machines, and he recorded musicians singing their songs because he thought there's something unique about this folk tradition, and if I don't record it, it's gonna get lost.

So he made hundreds and hundreds of recordings which are, you know, the basis for, I think it's wh-

Sure

[laughs]

So it's got really sort of atmospheric sound, you know?

Tell us about Percy Grainger 'cause we've got one of his earliest recordings.

He collected the previous track, didn't he? Gypsy Girl.

If counterpoint and the logical habit of mind that counterpoint implies are taken away from us, the highest potentialities of music will be lost for ever.

among our young composers percy grainger can still write counterpoint and it is for that reason that he is so virile and direct but his compositions which have been so far only in the smaller forms when he gets away from folk-songs are merely and shockingly sentimental One very important thing, however, he has done, and that is to show once more that no instrument can equal the human voice in expressiveness when it is allowed to vocalise freely and hampered by words.

The old monks knew it when they introduced wordless melismata into plain chant.

The Italians knew it in the 18th century when they improvised rifiuri toras during an operatic aria.

I hope you've enjoyed my selection and will join me again next Thursday at nine.

So to play us out then, Percy Grainger, Handel in the Strand.

A mixture, said Grainger himself, of the clog dance and Handel.

So it reflects both Handel and English musical comedy.

[eerie music] Our mystery drama, The Silent Woman, is based on a story by Leopold Kompert.

It was adapted especially for the Mystery Theater by Percy Grainger, and stars John Beal and Robert Dryden.

[eerie music] Laughing at fools is one of the oldest ... [audio cuts out] ... mankind.

We are pleased to consider ourselves superior to such people.

Very important place in the history of folk song collection.

In 1905, Percy Grainger, who was an Australian classical composer, pianist, he came here because like a lot of classical musicians at the time, he was looking for the inspiration, the melodic inspiration that could be found in traditional music.

And he came here and he organized a song competition in 1905, and the man who won the song competition was Joseph Taylor of Saxby All Saints, who really turned out to be one of the greatest English traditional singers.

A man who arguably, some of the traditional singers were very plain, very unadorned.

But he had a great repertoire, great voice.

And you say if you listen to it, that means there must've been recordings made.

In 1908, Percy Grainger came back with his wax cylinder recording machine, which they say is in Cecil Sharp House now.

I'm not sure if it's the same one, but certainly the same kind of thing.

Now, here's a racial version of patriotism.

There's an Australian composer, Percy Grainger, and he's ethnically British by origin, but he idolized the Northern European cultures and thought they were racially superior, and through his music tried to elevate them.

I think he makes them end up looking quite brutal.

But there's a short song he did called "Father and Daughter," which is him representing something from the Faroe Islands, now a territory of Denmark.

Mm.

Not sure what else you would deem inappropriate, maybe Percy Grainger's Country Gardens.

In an English country garden.

Sorry, I was hoping to keep this short, but as usual with the podcast, it hasn't happened.

Which colourful politician made a mockery of this man's prediction by defiantly standing on the beach at Glenelg on the predicted day of the disaster? Okay, question 10, the last of round two, multiple choice.

In 1928, Australia's brilliantly eccentric and erotically fixated musical genius Percy Grainger married his wife Ella in an extraordinary ceremony.

Where was their wedding held? A, the stage of the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California; B, the upper pedestrian walkway of the Tower Bridge, London, England; C, on the steps of the Great Pyramid in Giza, Egypt; or D, atop the south pylon of the still under-construction Harbour Bridge, Sydney, Australia.

Round two is done.

Question nine asked which South Australian politician in 1976 stood on Glenelg Beach to defy a predicted tsunami.

Don Dunstan, then state premier and fancier of pink shorts, though he didn't deposit them in an ashtray on his desk.

And the answer to question 10, in 1928, Percy Grainger got married, A, on the stage of the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California.

There were 22,000 people in the audience.