So much has been written about Grainger that one hesitates to add more, but no book on Australian piano music can be complete without some reflection on this strange figure.
For someone who on the surface seems to be a real model of the composer-pianist, additionally having even studied with a figure such as Ferruccio Busoni, Grainger has a small output of original music. Moreover, he had an instinctive
distaste for the piano, which he saw as a really limited instrument, so all the 'dished-up' versions (Percy's own term) of works for solo piano were possibly done for commercial reasons.
There is firstly the question of all the folksong settings. How does one regard them? Are they sufficiently tempered with Grainger's own style to be listed as – at least partially – original works? If they are, why is Grainger constantly tampering with them and arranging them yet further, for various combinations of instruments? Was he dissatisfied with the piano versions? Was his aesthetic such that there was no such thing as a definitive piano version of a work, or definitive version in any arrangement? Was it a fixation on one piece for a while? Was it poverty of ideas? Most of the piano solos are in fact arrangements of works originally written for other instruments. There are a handful of pre-1900 pieces originally for piano.
One could further argue that some of Grainger's original music is very much like his folksong arrangements. Thus, is not the very popular and attractive Colonial Song very much like, say, the setting of Danny Boy (Irish Tune from County Derry)? where the original becomes a recreation of a sort of folk melody. Even the Colonial Song (sometimes listed as Sentimentals No. 1), exists in multiple versions. The result is that there is almost no Grainger that is exclusively and recognizably for solo piano, a strange position for someone who was in his day a world-famous pianist! Another example might be Handel in the Strand, a very well-known piece; but it was composed as early as 1911, with the version for solo piano only appearing in 1930; originally called Clog Dance by Grainger, it is yet another instance of a composed quasi-folk piece. Clearly, however, black and white classification is difficult to achieve! The clunky chords predominant in this piece, and a defining feature of Grainger's approach to the piano, may also be found in the music of friends and imitators, such as Kitty Parker and Alex Burnard.
The British folksong settings are very well known: there is the ubiquitous Country Gardens, together with other Morris Dances. The settings tend to be very bouncy and quick or else somewhat slow and sentimental. A favourite device is to have short, full staccato chords under the melodic line. The printed scores still look fresh and idiosyncratic, with Grainger's rather quirky use of the English language and very precise pedaling instructions.
64 Australian Piano Music of the Twentieth Century
Ex. 90:1. P. Grainger. Colonial Song, bars 1-6.
Ex. 91:1. P. Grainger. Irish Tune from County Derry, bars 18-21.
In his Lullaby from Tribute to Foster uses the sostenuto pedal to create a harmonic resonance in the background of the piece:
Ex. 92:1. P. Grainger. Lullaby from Tribute to Foster, bars 1-5.
The Foster melody is surrounded by a kind of gamelan-like haze throughout. As far as Grainger was concerned, setting a Foster melody was not unlike setting a 'real' folk-tune. He treated Gershwin and Brahms similarly, as great melodists and therefore grist for his compositional mill. There are also more conventional paraphrases from Tchaikovsky, Bach, Handel and Richard Strauss, that at least plug much more comfortably into the tradition of the great romantic pianist/transcribers. Some of these 'rambles' are deeply offensive today: a piece called In Dahomey (Cakewalk Smasher) says under the title: "Using tune from Darkie Comic Opera "In Dahomey" by Will Marion Cook and tunes from Arthur Pryor's A coon band contest.
The Immovable Do (or The Cyphering C) is an interesting concept and could have produced, in other hands, a far more interesting and adventurous piece; in Grainger's piano solo version – 'dished-up by the tone-wright' (i.e. composer) seven years after the original version, it turns out to be yet another folk-like piece saturated with four-bar phrases.
There are some musicians in Australia who look on Grainger as a kind of father figure, a parallel to Charles Ives. But Grainger is far too conventional a figure musically to be regarded in such a light. Playing through Grainger's complete pinao music, as I've done for this book, one is both exhilarated and depressed:
exhilarated because the high latent energy in the music is still vibrantly there, as well as sheer exuberance of the settings and the comfortable and enjoyable use of the keyboard; depressing, because so much of it is numbingly the same, over and over again. And all of Grainger's piano works are essentially miniatures, only lasting a few minutes - he never attempted an original piano work in an extended form after 1900.
Grainger's colourful life has lent a kind of aura to his personality, and he himself regarded his sexual preferences as important to understanding his music. I am personally somewhat dubious about this level of self-absorption; moreover it is really difficult to regard Grainger as a founding father of Australian piano music, given his really awful racial theories, his various sado-masochistic practices and expressed preferences for incestuous love.