Great Composers: Percy Grainger

[@f1_verstappen33]

My great great grandfather’s cousin was Percy Grainger. I am not a Grainger, however my great grandmother’s maiden name was Grainger. I am honoured to be related to such a genius. Hopefully his music will continue to make people happy for generations to come.

[@catinhat6891]

That’s awesome!! His music is so good

[@MheganneLumsden]

I'm also a descended Grainger and am so proud to be related to Percy.

[@johnappleseed8369]

Amazing! I never knew anything about his life but used to listen to a vinyl of "Grainger plays Grainger" and chamber ensemble pieces, he was a fantastic composer.

[@johnappleseed8369]

I forgot The Power Of Rome and The Childrens March. he was an odd character

[@donnix1192]

Grainger is the finest composer/arranger of the twentieth century in my humble opinion. He was a strong advocate for the American symphonic band, concert band, wind ensemble, or whatever other moniker you prefer. There is nothing like a well balanced, well playing, and warm sounding symphonic band. His works championed this sound and I don’t think he gets the credit deriving of this accomplishment.

[@kimsteel366]

A very strange and interesting person Grainger was. I knew nothing about him other than his arrangements of pieces by Debussy and Ravel -- his imitation of a gemelian ensemble in "Pagodas" and his version of "Bruyeres" for wind ensemble are super charming, and his take on Ravel's "Valley of the bells" for percussion and strings is simply sublime. He may have had a twisted and dark side, but the man was a musical genius.

[@donnix1192]

Indeed he was, He is without a doubt my favorite composer/arranger of the twentieth century. He was a great advocate for the American symphonic band, concert band, wind ensemble, or whatever moniker you prefer. An odd character , I always envision him hauling a phonograph around the English countryside while compiling the folk tunes from local singers that were the basis for his masterpiece Lincolnshire Posy. Molly on the Shore, Shepherds Hey,Irish Tune are all incredible works. To me there is nothing like a well balanced, well playing, warm sounding symphonic band and Grainger truly championed this art form.

[@PamelaJean2013]

Whew. As I am about to present the Sussex Mummer's Carol to a group of organists tonight, discussing Christmas music, I found your presentation enlightening, and the ensuing melee provocative. It's interesting to me that the academics and Grainger specialists seemed determined to deny Grainger was a racist.

[@ClassicalNerd]

I've noticed that people's enthusiasm will often blind them, to the point that merely pointing out objective historical facts is offensive to their sensibilities. It's the logical end result of conflating art and artist: you either like the music and must convince yourself that the artist has been slandered (as if there would be some musicological conspiracy to drag certain composers through the mud?) or you despise the person and therefore remove yourself from anything about their music (thus depriving yourself of many potentially great listening experiences). I run into people of both camps every time I cover a controversial composer, and it can border on exhausting.

[@PamelaJean2013]

@@ClassicalNerd Keep at it!

[@seanramsdell4172]

Delius, please?

[@boneeatingsilicate580]

One of his students the great Bernard Herrmann

[@sprucescentedschizoid]

I love Grainger, great music and an intriguing personality study. He's my anti-hero,

[@CharlesDavis-b6p]

I've heard quite enough of Percy.

[@Waldvogel45]

than you; amazing how so much fine music came from such a weirdo. Ignorance thereof is bliss* ! I LOVE his orchestration of La Vallée des Cloches, which matches your talk so well.THANK YOU. * Conclusion ? Lets judge an artist by his work ONLY

[@wildbill6926]

You have a lot of information here that isn't contained in the general books on Grainger. I would be very interested in your citations and sources. Thank you.

[@ClassicalNerd]

This video was made nearly four years ago when my production quality was a lot poorer, so I think you'll be happy to learn of my upcoming project to remake older videos with more visual interest. Take a look at my more recent biographies (such as my series on the Mighty Handful) to get a sense of what I'm up to now. I would hate for your opinion of my content to be tarnished by something that was made so long ago, in Internet years! That being said, most of the information in this video actually comes from the John Bird biography, supplemented by (as is my custom in researching videos) doctoral dissertations and journal articles, as the Bird biography-thorough as it is-got some facts wrong here and there. Since my video on Morton Feldman (produced in March 2019), I made a habit of including these sources in the description, but at the time I made this, I had maybe a hundred subscribers and people did not use these videos as jumping-off points for their own research. The number of e-mails I've gotten about this since 2019 is what led me to start including this information. Unfortunately, since I cannot go back in time (or remotely access information on the computer upon which I edited this video), I can at least give examples of the kinds of sources I seek out for videos. These would include things like information from exhibitions of the Grainger Museum [ grainger.unimelb.edu.au/research/publications?a=1307086 ], MM dissertations [ minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/bitstream/handle/11343/39757/311309_Natalie%20Bellio%20Master%20Thesis%20Final.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y ], DMA dissertations [ shareok.org/bitstream/handle/11244/755/3135695.PDF?sequence=1&isAllowed=y ], other books [ www.nla.gov.au/sites/default/files/facingpercygrainger.pdf ], et cetera. What's available on publicly-accessible servers of educational institutions and museums changes over time, but this is a sampling of the information I find, read, take notes on, and then rearrange those notes into a coherent narrative. Hope this helps!

[@yehbuddy4251]

+classical nerd did Bartók know Grainger?

[@ClassicalNerd]

The closest their paths came to crossing, I believe, was in the article Bartók wrote as rebuttal to Grainger's more outlandish ideas. Considering their mutual interest in ethnomusicology, I wonder what kind of stories we would have if they had ever met in person!

[@wildbill6926]

@@ClassicalNerd Could you cite that article, please. Thanks.

[@donnix1192]

@@ClassicalNerd Center Grove High School 1997 show is a great example of Bela Bartok’s work showcased in a marching program. Earned second place at the Bands of America Grand National Championship that fall.

[@wildbill6926]

I would also like to understand you assessment criteria on what constitutes racism vs bias vs prejudice. These are important and sensitive topics in our age. Most people do not delve deeply into composers and, subsequently, come across something like this or the parents of their band kids find it and this is their only source. The quirks of many composer over the past 220 years are well know by those of us who study music history and societies in general. I offer that you give a presentation that is fact yet entices people to dig deeper for some of the items you just put out in a brief presentation.

[@ClassicalNerd]

Bias or prejudice against people of a certain skin tone or ethnic background is racism by most reasonable definitions. (Any definition which seeks to redefine it as only the prejudice of one particular majority group against another particular minority group is narrow-minded and generally agenda-driven.) That said, it's a shame that "cancel culture" has made it so far into the public consciousness that some people feel as though they need to defend the personal lives and views of "problematic" artists from history in an attempt to keep their work around. I've seen this in plenty of places and am disheartened by it. I take a moderate position that, while it's important and often entertaining to learn about and understand the lives of great artists from the past-after all, why else would I do so many biographies on this channel?-it is unfair to remove their art from society unless that art is expressly divisive in and of itself. I don't think we should remove Grainger from the wind ensemble repertoire any more than we should remove Wagner from the operatic repertoire, but that's not an excuse to sanitize their lives or views, as doing so would just not be historically accurate or honest to those who are legitimately looking for biographical information.

[@wildbill6926]

@Classical Nerd We should never sanitize history. We've had way too much of that here in the US. Context is essential and referencing scholarly books and expert authors is required. There are a vast number of books with details that clarify every aspect that you just touch on. Most will not do that kind of research. It's the duty of musicologists to present the essence of a composer and entice the reader to dig in deep. A good example would be, a lecturer would not begin their brief presentation by saying,"WE will now cover the homosexual deviants Copland, Barber, Menotti and Cowell" and then proceed at the conclusion to state how wonderful their music is. Know your audience. Something I learned from a style manual The Little Brown Book.

[@ClassicalNerd]

As far as I can tell, "The Little Brow Book" is less of a style manual and more of a "Complete Eyebrow Shaping, Filling, and Defining Kit." But what does Amazon know, anyway?

[@swymaj02]

​@@wildbill6926if u want more sanitised, the UK is bad when it comes to coming clean about these things. That, and race and class tend to mingle with each other this side of the pond.

[@jimmymileski9716]

18:12 do you want us to listen to the piano or what you are saying? I can't easily do both.

[@magdalene2229]

A super-racist Australian? That doesn't narrow it down at all... Victoria, Australia was the blueprint for Apartheid South Africa.

[@p.r.h.7283]

Great composer but what a freak.

[@leroyosmon]

Mr. Nerd, I find your comment about Percy being a "super raciest" being both uninformed, lacking of understanding of the historic time and offensive. You simply do not understand this composer nor his personal life. Seems you have read John Birds Bio, however, you missed several important points. You might have - at least - addresses the money he gave to various "black" organizations over his life or his invitations to blacks to his concerts. This would include his concert tour to South Africa. Nor did you address his years as director of the Chicago College of Music and his invitation to the then, most popular black band leader in America to guest speak to his students. Nor the fact that he considered that the three "B's" should include Basie! Hardly a man that was a "super raciest". As a board of directors member of the International Percy Grainger Society for more than 15 years, I have found it distressful when people throw out such statements as your without knowing the facts - the total facts. To state he was a "super raciest" does not speak highly of your knowledge of what made Percy Grainger "tick". There are other points that you miss about this composer that I simply will not take the time to address. The sad thing is that many people will leave this "lecture" and not really know much about this amazing composer. He deserves better.

[@ClassicalNerd]

1. It's spelled "racist," not "raciest." Grainger was indeed quite "racy," but I don't think that's _quite_ the point of your contention. 2. I have taken the time to know many of Grainger's works intimately, and have read _several_ detailed biographical studies. As such, I'm afraid that I must take issue with your assertion that I "do not understand" his life. The Bird biography is the most extensive of my collection, but given its publication date, I checked every fact against modern musicological research and made the appropriate changes. If you feel like there is a specific claim that I made within the video that is factually incorrect, I would very much care to know so I can look deeper into it and see if there is an error, and if so, to correct it. 3. No serious musicologist doubts the veracity of Grainger holding extremely backwards and extremely racist views. Look no further than his desire to "purify" the English language of all words not of northern European origin. His love of Duke Ellington does not preclude him from being racist. His fascination with world music never eclipsed his firm belief in the supremacy of all things Western. Offense need not be taken when facts are the only things under consideration. Wagner employed Jews, but he was _still_ a profound antisemite. Picking and choosing "non-racist" actions for Grainger, while certainly possible, is intentionally selective and ignores what should be unignorable. 4. Your membership on the Percy Grainger Society board is commendable, and I would assume that it means you are responsible for the promulgation of performances and recordings, for which you have my sincere thanks. However-and this goes for many avowed fans of certain artists-love of a certain figure should not endear you to them past their faults. I see this with many controversial figures, and have received textual ripostes for my coverage of Wagner, Liszt, and Paganini-and, now, Grainger. Oftentimes, these folks are _huge_ fans of whatever figure I've covered, and want me to paint said figure in a more positive light than what the truth actually entails. I hold no biases when I make these videos, just a lot of interest in musicology and a high regard for the truth. 5. Just because Grainger held conflicting and occasionally quite bigoted views should not preclude the listening public from hearing his works. I do not like the postmodernist conflation of art with artist; the two should be non-overlapping magisteria. Because they are separate, Grainger's antics and beliefs should not cast any aspersions on what he accomplished in the realms of composition or performance. Likewise, Wagner's beliefs shouldn't keep us from the beauty of _Tristan und Isolde._ 6. Even in a biographical sketch that encompasses the better part of a half-hour, there are always going to be things that are left on the "cutting room floor," to borrow a term from the world of cinema. Otherwise, I would just read a biography and each episode would take the better part of a day. That said, I am more than happy to continue conversations about composers and their historical significance in the comments or even do follow-up videos looking into specific pieces.

[@themajor2072]

1. Everyone holds biases, by the very nature of being human you will inevitably form a bias when receiving new information. For instance, your stance on racism affects how you view Grainger and Wagner, in that it would lead you to draw the conclusion that they were bad (or at the very least misguided) people. This underlying bias is made manifest when you separate Wagner from his music with the intent of categorizing one as good and the other as bad. By simply drawing the conclusion that Grainger and Wagner were bad men you have revealed your bias. Now of course it is a bias almost everyone agrees with, given the extreme unpopularity of racism, but it is a bias. 2. Western (or more acurattely Nordic) culture is not the same as any sort of race, and as such any feelings of cultural superiority cannot and should not be assumed to be on racial grounds. To suggest that Grainger was a racist on the grounds that he believed in Nordic cultural superiority simply does not hold up to scrutiny. 3. Dismissing Grainger's "non-racist actions" is equally selective, and to ignore these is to oversimplify the nature of racism. If Grainger were really the racist you claim he is (which is already dubious considering my last point), then why would he bother doing any of those things? Wagner worked with Jews out of necessity, and even then only begrudgingly. For instance, when working on Parsifal, he only chose Levi because Richter was not available at the time and Bulow had long since broken off from Wagner, leaving Levi as the most capable conductor at his disposal; and even then Wagner constantly tried to talk Levi into being baptized. Grainger didn't have to like Basie, but Wagner had to work with Levi.

[@brianandrewleahy1]

Have you examined Grainger's lifelong and voluminous correspondence? They were published in two volumes the first being "The Farthest North of Humanness" and a second which contained his letters towards the end of his life? I cannot take 100% seriously any study of Grainger that has not taken the time to access these fascinating volumes. I think my quibble with your characterizations of Grainger's beliefs is that you have diluted them giving a rather superficial portrait of this amazing musician. Percy was a very strange and conflicted human being. He also had one of the most brilliant and all-encompassing minds i have had the pleasure to read about. He was a very complex and at times self-contradictory human being. Grainger's essence lay in those letters and you really owe it to yourself to study them. Amazing stuff! :)

[@swymaj02]

Idk. I feel somewhat turned off by Percy's portrayal. But I mean, his home life really should've been way more positive. Ed Gein without the mental derangement and serial killing.

[@johnnicholls5344]

Lovely to have your analysis. However, it's a bit unfair to Percy to label him right from the outset of your talk as a racist. Percy was a lot of things but the reason why one wants to talk and know about Percy is because of his musical talents and his wonderful music, not because of the various aspects of his beliefs and prejudices even if they did influence his music.

[@TheCompetentBlackMan]

I don’t understand what’s unfair about the truth.

[@BrendanCalliesComposer]

You said yourself they affect his music, so it doesn't make sense to ignore it unless you are bothered by Mr. Nerd bringing up his racism

[@wildbill6926]

From a well published scholar on Percy Grainger. I will need to publish this in more than one comment: Response to Thomas Little's The Musical Nerd KZbin Presentation "Great Composers: Percy Grainger" I am literally shaking with vexation after listening to the 20-year old (at the time)Thomas Little's rapid-fire summary of the life and work of Percy Grainger. I am horrified by the fact that his broadcasts are reported to be used as supplementary material by educational institutions. It is indicated that the Grainger program has been viewed so far by over 2500 people, all of whom will now have a very distorted view of Grainger. Mr. Little does get a few things right, but for the most part he is laboring under very false concepts of not only Grainger's philosophy but the facts of his life as well. I will enumerate a few key points. Little starts right off the bat calling Grainger "a super racist Australian" and continues this theme throughout his 25-minute lecture. This is a bold pejorative which can be proved factually untrue through Grainger's own writings on the subject. Yes, Grainger did promote British/Australian/Nordic music at a time when it was either being denigrated or ignored by the academic world of music; but he also wrote and published many beautiful statements about the universality of music and the need to listen to all the world's music, all of which he considered to be perfect. Although Little admits that Grainger admired Duke Ellington, he omits the fact that among other things Grainger also promoted the music of African-American composer Nathaniel Dett, played benefits for the Manassas Colored School, considered The Fisk Jubilee Singers to be one of the most formative of his early musical experiences (along with the music of J.S. Bach, who certainly couldn't be considered a Nordic composer) and wrote his masterpiece The Warriors as a paean to the warriors of all nations. Grainger noticed from an early age that the English language was riddled with words and word-roots of foreign derivation and decided to restore it to its natural form in his own writings; hence, his development of words free of foreign derivation, which he called Nordic-English, and his decision to use only English terms and titles for his own compositions. For Grainger this was less a case of racial bias than an attempt to restore the original dignity of an adulterated language. How is this in any way different than the Italian movement to speak pure Italian or the French movement to speak pure French? Yet Mr. Little would have his listeners believe that even this is rooted in "incredible racism", and insists that Grainger was "so racist that he called his music 'room-music' rather than chamber music." Now who is being extreme? Little's portrayal of Grainger as a neo-Nazi sympathizer is perhaps the most unjust of his statements when considering the thoughts of a man who wrote in 1921: does not his personal message [speaking of Richard Strauss] contain the exact reaction most needed from the present world-wide immersion in strife and commercial enslavement and competition, the message that the seer, however, at all times has to proclaim to the empirical world; that the real gold dwells in the heart within, and is not to be captured any other place, and that the real hero is he who, turning dissatisfied away from the outer world's illusionary shows of victory and defeat, finds contentment finally within himself in viewing in the mirror of his own contemplative soul the whole universe suffused in a glory of love and understanding. [Percy Grainger, "Richard Strauss: Seer and Idealist," Musical Courier (November 17,1 921), p. 6] 2 Some of the facts regarding Grainger's biographical life are also incorrect. Mr. Little indicates that both Percy and his mother Rose received emotional abuse at the hands of Percy's father John Grainger; but according to Percy himself, he never experienced emotional abuse from his father, although they were never very close. It was Rose Grainger who received the abuse from her husband and parted from him when Percy was nine years old. Rose came from a family in which the father disciplined his sons with a horse whip, and she had used a whip to fend off the unwelcome advances of her husband once it was revealed that he had syphilis and had given the disease to her. Percy observed this and did not think it unnatural that she should use the whip on him as well to correct a child's naughty behavior. He loved his mother fiercely, felt that he had to make up to her the unhappy circumstances of her own emotional life, and came to see her corporal punishment of him as expressions of her deep love for him. Is it any wonder that he became a flagellant? And once Rose discovered his secret, was it any wonder that she tried to control as many aspects of his life as she could to prevent it becoming known and destroying his chances for a successful professional career? It is a complex subject, best studied through the words of Percy's physician and friend Dr. K.K. Nygaard, and an aspect of his life that Grainger himself felt ambivalent about but did not wish to alter. The final assessment comes from Percy's wife Ella who said, "he never did me any harm." This very personal aspect of Grainger's life has been given far too much vicarious attention at the expense of his artistic work. I'm sure that when Grainger wrote that he hoped a future science would be able to understand and explain such aberrations, he did not have in mind such offhand remarks as those made by Mr. Little and others.

[@wildbill6926]

It is also worth considering that Grainger felt he owed it to his mother to look after her for the rest of her life and bring her what comfort he could. For how long the effects of syphilis affected her mind one can only conjecture; but it is fairly certain that some of her actions, such as "playing dead" or "faking convulsions", could have been a result of mental decline; and these ploys actually started when Percy was still a boy. Grainger wrote that his mother did begin to pressure him to marry as time went on as she feared that his sexual behavior would become public; and his way of putting her off was to make remarks to her about how he would love to have children "in order to be able to whip them". With his mother's mental health as fragile as it was, he certainly realized that marriage for him was out of the question; and, in fact, he did not marry for some years after her death. Some of these statements made by Grainger have been publicly quoted out of context, which often happens in writings about public figures; and I am sure that is what Mr. Little picked up on. In other areas, Little's remarks are sometimes off the mark, such as his avowal that young Percy did not play with other children. In his own autobiographical writings Grainger speaks of children that he played with and the often very athletic games that they played together. Although he was home-schooled, taught by governesses and received private instruction in art and music until attending the Hoch Conservatorium, there appear to have been a number of other young people in his life. Little also infers that Grainger's claim to early musical innovations are less than honest since, for example, his use of the whole-tone scale parallels that of Debussy whose music he often performed. What Little is not taking into consideration, however, is the fact that at the time of his experimenting with whole-tone scales, while still at student at the Hoch Conservatorium, he had not yet heard of Debussy. In later life Grainger documented his early innovations in Percy Aldridge Grainger's Remarks about His Hill-Song No.1 as an attempt to show that an Australian, and hence Australian music, had conceived of them prior to their appearance in European music. For whatever reason, Mr. Little has also chosen to denigrate Grainger's joining the U.S. Army following America's entrance into WWI, suggesting that it was for self-serving reasons. Grainger's Red Cross Concerts alone raised thousands of dollars for the cause, none of which went into Grainger's pockets. His experience in the Army band would, however, result in a first-hand knowledge of the potentials of wind instruments which he would make superb use of in his scoring for the wind band. Grainger's often exuberant and athletic personality has also been taken to task by Little as being something to draw attention to himself. Numerous writings by those who knew or were close to Grainger testify to the fact that this was not something put on for concert audiences or other musicians but was a fundamental part of his life: always challenging himself to new and more varied athletic feats. Unfortunately, Mr. Little has even chosen to make fun of Grainger's pictorial tribute to his mother after her death (Photos of Rose Grainger and of 3 short accounts of her life by herself, in her own hand writing, private printing 1923) citing his inclusion of a picture of her taken after her death which shows her looking beautiful and serene; but such a memorial, which those of us who have lost loved ones realize, is a way to somewhat mitigate and soothe the emotional pain felt by the loss of someone close to us. Grainger's dear friend and colleague Cyril Scott comes in for ridicule too due to his belief in spirituality and his stating to Percy that he had contact with Rose Grainger's spirit following her death.

[@wildbill6926]

Grainger's ground-breaking lecture series at New York University, where Grainger served as chairman of the music department from 1932-33, A General Study of the Manifold Nature of Music, is dispensed with as "delusional and contradictory" in spite of the fact that Grainger was one of the first music educators to speak in terms of ethnomusicology and the need to study all the world's musics. I must take special offense to Little's relegating of Grainger's Free Music experiments to the virtual trash heap of "Willy Wonka" machines as I have just completed in collaboration with Dr. Kay Dreyfus an edition of Grainger's letters to his collaborator Burnett Cross on free music (Lyrebird Press, 2020 (hopefully)). This was a very serious philosophical as well as musical endeavor to add to the musical lexicon a means of presenting music freed from the restrictions of set melody, harmony and rhythm; and it is something that he had been developing in his mind since his days as a child in Australia. The concept was not a precursor to synthesizers as Mr. Little subscribes but a corollary for something which would not exist until years after Grainger's death. Grainger was a futurist in addition to being a lover of the preservation of all musics (hence his love of folk-song and his founding of a museum in Melbourne to be used in part as a center for the study of ethnic music). There are a few things which Mr. Little gets right in his talk: Grainger's extreme generosity to family and friends, his love of Oriental music and jazz, his friendship with Grieg, the praise for Grainger's folk-music work, and his final claim for Grainger as "one of the most fascinating characters in all of music history." The really distressing fact about his presentation is that it perpetuates a "received opinion" that paints Grainger as something less than the far-seeing iconoclast that he was. Grainger was a man whose emotional burdens would have destroyed a lesser man, instead he harnessed them to his creative engine and left behind a legacy not only of beautiful works for piano, chorus, band, orchestra, and a wide variety of ensembles but also left behind a legacy of wisdom regarding the universality of music and its power to make humanity better. It is this latter message which needs to be made more widely known rather than the man's emotional burdens and scars, which, after all, are only the periphery of his artistic life. Dr. Teresa Balough

[@ClassicalNerd]

Y’know, it seems to me-from context-that your initial comment asking me about my research methods was in bad faith and that you’ve gone so far as to send this video to someone else just so you could post this little reply. I hope you understand that this comes across as both obsessed (since you evidently return to this video every couple of days) and petty (since you appear to be little more than an intermediary in this situation). While it’s clear that whatever I say will not make a dent in your abysmally low opinion of me and the little project that this channel represents, it nevertheless behooves me to respond, seeing as public debates do not represent a legitimate exchange of ideas between the two sides and have become more of a performative spectacle. I deeply dislike such spectacles and I do not anticipate there being a need for me to respond further than clearing the air on a few points: First of all, my channel is not “The Musical Nerd,” it’s “Classical Nerd.” I would hope such a well published scholar is not in the habit of making such glaring factual errors. The question of Grainger being “racist” is simple. He believed, ultimately, in the separation of cultures; that those of one heritage should not overlap with the other in many facets, including the linguistic realm. This view, at its heart, is no different than the rhetoric of modern white nationalists who ostensibly want separate homelands for separate racial and ethnic groups. Whether or not you or anyone else wants to label this particular view as “racist” is purely a matter of semantics, but it is far-fetched indeed to claim that such a view isn’t bigoted. I have yet to meet a fan or scholar of Grainger who doesn’t admit to Grainger’s bigotry, as clearly stated in his letters. I find it difficult to believe that Dr. Balough, who has spent time compiling and annotating Grainger’s letters, would have such a revisionist take on this matter. Consider, for instance … literally _any_ of the egregiously unsettling racial comments that Grainger made. Here I cite Malcolm Gillies and David Pear’s article “Great Expectations: Greig and Grainger” from the Autumn ’07 edition of _The Musical Times:_ “In the early 1930s [Grainger’s perspective] took a racist turn through increasing advocacy of a line of Nordic racial superiority, even in some of his public writings. In his most private writings, this racism manifests itself as racial hatred … He considered ‘pride of race’ as more important even than his feelings for himself … ‘must we stand by silently forever while the lower races (French, German, Jews) tell us they own powers & gifts that we know they don’t?’ [wrote Grainger].” Again from later in that article: “Grainger gave stern advice [to pianist Storm Bull] in 1932 against studying in Europe, and especially against studying with a Jew … : ‘it is disgraceful that a gifted, sweet, clean-raced young Nordic like Storm should have his esthetic purity besmirched by a filthy German, a filthy Hungarian or a filthy Jew … Storm is a member of the master race … he must not be swayed or guided by lower races.” If that’s not enough, he would later write Storm’s wife Ellen that he feared of “race-purity-suicide.” Additionally, the 24th of 25 qualities that Grainger described as “a truly Nordic life” was “to out-law from our Nordic lands all Jews & all other races that see to us to upset or hinder the [establishment] & unfoldment of flawless Nordic living …” So … yeah. Grainger was bigoted. He was racist. He was a racial purist and an identitarian. Of this there is no serious musicological debate. The fact that he was willing to interact or promote people he found inferior does not absolve him any more than a racist who makes a derogatory comment against African-Americans can claim that they “have a Black friend” as a puerile defense. The views that Grainger espoused repeatedly in his correspondences are not in any way, shape, or form good qualities; the question is how we deal with them in the context of presenting a biography. Of _course_ we need to understand “problematic” composers in the context of their times. I have, despite these indefensible statements, _defended_ Grainger and Wagner and a host of other “problematic” composers in contexts where they are trying to be “canceled.” I despise “cancel culture” and its terminology, and one of its many hidden downsides is that it makes fans of “problematic” composers’ music think that, in order to feel okay with liking the music, they must then turn around and find arguments that defend their favorite composers against people who are falsely and harmfully equating art with the artist. My moderate position that art is separate from the artist has been angrily denounced by extremists on both sides of this spectrum, so I must be doing _something_ right.

[@ClassicalNerd]

Some of the other points, such as the details on young Percy’s interactions with other kids or John Grainger’s abusive tendencies, are new to me and I welcome those nuances and additions. I have never claimed that my material is above reproach, and on numerous occasions I have made pinned comments to clarify or correct points, from a misspelled date here or there to just plain getting some things backwards. I’m only human. The point is that, in the years that this channel has been going, I’ve gotten better at what I do. You don’t seem to have seen any of my more recent biographies, which would have proven this point for me. Grainger’s service in World War I is a point either misstated (as-and I don’t know how many times I need to say this-this video is four years old, which is a lifetime in Internet terms) or misunderstood. Either way, to say that Grainger’s service is self-serving isn’t wrong whatsoever, considering that his motivation to make music in the armed services was in part to avoid having to shoot people or get shot at. Those who can often did. It turned out to be a win-win situation for him and the Red Cross, as he got that firsthand knowledge and the Red Cross made money. It was self-serving in the sense that it served his interests. The fact that it aligned with everyone else’s doesn’t undercut that. My musicological grand-teacher, Alfred Mann (since we’re appealing to authority here) did much the same thing and had to learn the piccolo in a single day to get away with it. I would not say for a minute that doing so is a dishonorable thing to do. Postmortem photography is quite odd by today’s cultural standards, and I pointed out something very similar in my video on Anton Bruckner. What struck me as odd there wasn’t that Bruckner did it (after all, it’s pretty much the _least_ weird thing he did vis-à-vis dead people) but more that he had it on his desk so that students who wanted theory help had to see it. In this case, sending it to others struck me as more than a little odd. One of the critiques that _I_ have when it comes to my earlier videos is that I did not strike an equal balance between the biography of these composers, discussion and analysis of their music and its underlying philosophy (if any), and the overarching cultural and social context in which they lived. It’s still a moving target that depends a lot on the composer in question and the available research on them. In this case, as with plenty of videos from 2016, I focused more on the former, which is a remnant of what I initially envisioned this channel to be: tiny, bite-sized biographies that would help complete novices understand a little more about the people whose music they were listening to. This video’s topical lopsidedness is typical of the channel’s early growing pains as I explored what I wanted it to be. In particular, I do wish that I hadn’t glossed over the section on free music. However, as a composer who has worked extensively with modern music technology, I am deeply struggling to understand how Grainger’s experiments were _not_ the first stabs at the kind of modern-day synthesis and signal processing capabilities that have evolved in the past generation and are now available to musicians in the form of such programs as MaxMSP, PureData, and SuperCollider. It’s literally a precursor to modern-day synthesis technology. A synthesizer is more than an electronic keyboard, after all. If I were to make this video today, I would certainly have access to some of the finer points of his life and upbringing that I did not have at my disposal when making this video so early in my undergraduate years, and I would certainly attempt to weave the biography into a discussion of his musical philosophy to talk about things like free music or open scoring in more nuance and detail. Heck, back in these old days, I didn’t even cut away for musical examples.

[@wyattwahlgren8883]

This video makes me sad, because Lincolnshire Posy is really fun. Now, I am not saying that we can''t study his music, but it just makes me really sad. I thought the "louden" instead of "crescendo" was humor. Not racism. I am still going to enjoy playing Lincolnshire Posy when I play it, but it's definitely not going to be as fun now.

[@mikedemike5393]

how being proud of his heritage make him racists.

[@percussion7881]

fff allegro 8va ......mp adagio loco ./. ./. ./. ./. ./. ./. DC

[@samanthabell5988]

I don't understand why he would write Irish Tune? He is racist and ignorant why would he write about another culture? I understand that he liked folk songs but is that the only reason why he wrote such piece

[@wildbill6926]

He wasn't a racist as T. Little presents. Having preferences for one type of music or composer over another doesn't make you a racist. This is why I've asked some of the top, most experienced and well-researched musicologists to address this slanderous misrepresentation.

[@epthopper]

He’s a contradictory person. His actions and his words tell two very different stories about his racism.

[@mikedemike5393]

he befriends zulu warriors but he is racist.

[@BrendanCalliesComposer]

Yes, you toad. I don't see what is so hard to understand about that

[@kermitthemutantlevitatingfrog]

Bro he was such a weirdo

[@Belfreyite]

Both Grainger and Delius polarise opinion.

[@wildbill6926]

Penny Dreadful Musicology

[@jean-paul7251]

What a load of crap! Millenia. Interpretation in 2020!

[@Medtszkowski]

I agree

[@BrendanCalliesComposer]

Fool

[@BrendanCalliesComposer]

Foolish boy