PERCY GRAINGER, COMPOSER

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 22, 20 October 1917, Page 12

PERCY GRAINGER, COMPOSER

AUSTRALIAN MUSICIAN'S SUCCESS

A GREAT SYMPHONIC POEM

f Mr. Percy Grainger is well remembered by New Zealand concert audiences as a masterful exponent oi' the pianoforte. The. following notes of his success ns a composer will be read with interest.l Heretofore serious musicians have not been disposed to regard too seriously the brilliant popular successes of Percy Grainger (says the American "Current Opinion"). Now at a bound the composer of "Molly on the Shore," "Tin Seventeen Come Sunday," "Handel iu the Strand," and other catchy rhythms and spicy oddities, has revealed himself as a'serious and ultra-modern composer of astounding originality and an erudition worthy of Strauss. From tho important Norfolk Festival comes the report of "The Warriors," a symphonic poem which, in the words of one musical critic, "makes' Stravinsky sound like Mozart." In intricacy, daring, largoness of design and breadth of conception, "The Wnrriors" appears to bo the most startling novelty of the eeaeon. The interpretation furnished b.v Mr. Grainger himself is interesting. By warriors ho does not mean, apparently, the great generals of history, who busied themselves with the science of military strategy and tactics, but the naturalborn fighters, lovers of personal combat, of all apes and climes—"lazy, pleasureloving men and women who would rather fight than work for a living.' . He eays: "Often the scenes of a ballet have flitted beforo the eyes ..of my imagination in which the ghosts of female warrior types qf, nil times and places are spirited together for an orgy of warlike dances, processions, and merrymakings, broken, or accompanied, by amorous interludes; their frolics tinged with jtist that faint enspicion of wistfulness all holiday gladness wears. At times the lovemakers close at hand hear from afar the proud passage of harnessed fighting men. and for the final picture I lifco to think of them all living up together in brotherly fellowship and wholesale animal glee; all bitter and vengeful monjories vanished; all hardships forgot; a sort of Valhalla gathering of childishly overbearing tmd arrogant savage men and women of all ages —the old Greek heroes with fluttering liorse-hairtd helms; shining black Zulus, thoir perfect limbs lit with fire-red blossoms; fluxon-haired Vikings clad in scarlet or sky-bluo; litho, bright Aruazons.'in wind-swept garments side by side with squat Greonland women in ornately patterned furs; red Indians resplendent in bead-heavy drosses, and nogrito Fijians terrible with sharks' teoth ornaments, their wooly hair dvod pale ochre with lime; graceful cannibal Polynesians of both sexes, thoir golden ] skins wreathed with flowers and winding tondrills—these and all the rest arm j in arm in a united show of gay and innocent pride and animal spirits fierce and exultant." "It may be imagined," says Mr. Aldrich, musical critic of the Now York "Times," "that Mr. Grainger let looseall tlio powers of his imagination and oiicued the flood-gates of his orchestral rhetoric in embodying this. The niece is rather terrifying at first, but it" has that in it which gains greater significance on repeated hearing. . . . The din which _ rises to an almost unbearable point in at least two passages is not a more noise-making but the product of a perfectly traceable thematic treatment." : Grainger has .worked on his symphonic poem for the last five years. If tho work embodies his ultimate artistic aims, even his stoutest-Tiearted admirers may quail, Mr. Aldrich suggests, before ho carries out to what may be the final issue "his reveling in the mere sound and volume qf strange and unusual instruments, hie fondness for {nvwing and sorting out and strangely combining timbers, old and new, for the piling up of sonorities, for grinding together immeasurable harmonies anil tones and rhythms in a sort of ruthless counterpoint." Besides tho ordinary instrument of the full orchestra, Mr. Grainger employs tTie members of his beloved marimba family, and in addition the glockenspiel, the xylopliono, seven belle and two pinnafortes! There aro ftt least fifteen, themes in it, and abundant passages of real beauty, of true expressiveness and poetry, even of genuine ability. Grenville Vernon. of the NewYork "Tribune," calls it a triumph of virtuosity. The attitude of musicians generally is one of astonishment for the ability shown. Percy Grainger hails from Australia, and, according to tho author of "Tho Art of Music," if Australia had not produced him, "the concert-agents of the world would have had to invent him." Ho "never writes a dull note," "his playing is wonderful," and "he ranges from the Faroe Islands to the Antipodes." The latest event in the life of this musical adventnrer has been his enlistment as an oboist in the Fort Hamilton Band of the Coaat Artillery, stationed at Fort Totten, New York. For Percy Grainger, there is nothing ludicrous in this reduction from receiving a thousand dollars for a conceit to 30 dollars a month as a third-class musician—it is simply the natural, inevitable, and "joyously delightful thing to do." "It is especially interesting musically," he is quoted in the New York "Evening Post." "One gets to know the instruments, all about ench one, and how they work together. . . . Ttesta, the hand leader here, is a particularly brilliant musician." Pctc.v Grainger has always loved fitransre combinations, of instruments. Sounding brass and tinkling cymbals are not empty futile things to him. Army music, continues the "Post," is folk-music to him. and it is irorked out through these odd instruments. That Iris is not nose is quite patent in the news that he has sacrificed his somewhat startling shock of hair and has token out his first papers to become an American citizen. It remains to be seen whether Percy Grainger, as bandsman, will be as crent a success as Percy Grainger, virtuoso and composer.