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Grainger: Percy Grainger
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Australian-American composer, pianist, and folksong collector Percy Grainger was an accomplished pianist and innovative composer. At a young age, Grainger was educated by his mother, Rose, who instilled in him a love for the arts and a heroic outlook on life. Grainger continued his studies at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, Germany. He is best known for his work in the British folksong tradition.
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Percy Grainger was an obsessive autoarchivist who left the University of Melbourne a diverse and internationally recognised archive and artefact collection numbering over 100,000 items. His collection reflects his many enthusiasms and parallel interests including his experience as a virtuosic concert pianist, his career as a composer and arranger, and ‘free music’ experimenter, his pioneering work in folk song collecting and his untiring voice as a social commentator.
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I[N] the summer of 1907 Grainger visited Grieg at his villa, "Troldhaugen", in Norway. The two men spent many hours discussing and rehearsing music, particularly Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 16. Grieg quickly became a strong father figure to the younger man. He admired Percy greatly and asked if he would perform the concerto on a European tour with Grieg conducting. A few weeks before the tour was to start... Grieg became seriously ill and died. As a result of this brief friendship which had been so rewarding, Grainger became the leading interpreter of the A minor Concerto and performed it more frequently than any other concert pianist throughout his career. Grieg's widow, Nina, gave him her husband's gold pocket watch as a remembrance of his friend.
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Originally called the "Music Museum and Grainger Museum", and later the "Grainger Museum", the building was constructed for Percy Grainger between 1935 and 1938. It was officially opened in December 1938 and remains at its original location at the University of Melbourne, facing Royal Parade (campus map).
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Percy Grainger was adept in many aspects of music, as a performer, as a collector of folk songs, and as an inventor of music-making machines. To band leaders, teachers, and musicians... he is known, in his compositions and arrangements for wind ensembles, as an originator of the concert band, In his hands, the band, which was largely confined to marches in the manner of Sousa, became an instrument for serious concert music.
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Percy Grainger