Percy Aldridge Grainger (born George Percy Grainger; July 8, 1882 – February 20, 1961) was an Australian composer, arranger, and pianist who moved to the United States in 1914 and became an American citizen in 1918. Over his long and creative career, he played an important part in bringing more attention to British folk music during the early 1900s. Although much of his work was unusual, the piece he is most known for is his piano arrangement of the folk-dance tune "Country Gardens."
Grainger left Australia at age 13 to study at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt. From 1901 to 1914, he lived in London, where he first became a pianist for society events and later performed in concerts, composed music, and collected original folk melodies. As his fame grew, he met many important European musicians and formed friendships with Frederick Delius and Edvard Grieg. He supported Nordic music and culture, often writing about it in private letters, sometimes using words that were not kind or fair.
In 1914, Grainger moved to the United States, where he lived for the rest of his life, though he traveled widely in Europe and Australia. He briefly served as a bandsman in the U.S. Army during World War I from 1917 to 1918 and became a U.S. citizen in 1918. After his mother’s suicide in 1922, he focused more on educational work. He also created music machines he hoped would replace human performance. In the 1930s, he established the Grainger Museum in Melbourne, his birthplace, as a place to honor his life and work and for future research. As he aged, he continued to perform and revised his own compositions, but wrote little new music. After World War II, poor health limited his activities. He believed his career was not successful. He gave his final concert in 1960, less than a year before his death.
Early life
Grainger was born on July 8, 1882, in Brighton, which is located in the southeast of Melbourne, Australia. His father, John Grainger, was an English-born architect who moved to Australia in 1877. He gained recognition for designing the Princes Bridge over the Yarra River in Melbourne. His mother, Rose Annie Aldridge, was the daughter of George Aldridge, an Adelaide hotel owner.
John Grainger was a skilled artist with a strong interest in culture and had many friends. One of his friends was David Mitchell, whose daughter, Helen, later became a famous operatic soprano known as Nellie Melba. John claimed he discovered Helen, but this is not true. He may have encouraged her, however. John was known for heavy drinking and having many romantic relationships. After marrying Rose, she learned that John had a child in England before moving to Australia. His unfaithfulness caused serious problems in their marriage. Rose later found out she had contracted syphilis from John. Despite this, the Graingers remained married until 1890, when John went to England for medical treatment. After returning to Australia, they lived separately. Rose took responsibility for raising their son, Percy, while John continued his work as chief architect for the Western Australian Department of Public Works. He also designed Nellie Melba’s home, Coombe Cottage, in Coldstream.
Except for three months of formal schooling at age 12, during which he was bullied by classmates, Percy was homeschooled. Rose, who was self-taught and very involved in Percy’s education, taught him music and literature and hired other teachers for languages, art, and drama. From an early age, Percy showed a strong interest in Nordic culture. He later wrote that the Icelandic Saga of Grettir the Strong had the greatest influence on his life. Percy also showed early talent in music and art, with some teachers believing he might become an artist instead of a musician. At age 10, he began piano lessons with Louis Pabst, a German-born graduate of the Moscow Conservatory and Melbourne’s top piano teacher. Grainger’s first known composition, "A Birthday Gift to Mother," was written in 1893. Pabst arranged for Grainger to perform publicly at Melbourne’s Masonic Hall in July and September 1894. He played works by Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, and Scarlatti, and received praise from Melbourne newspapers.
After Pabst returned to Europe in 1894, Grainger’s new piano teacher, Adelaide Burkitt, arranged for him to perform at a series of concerts in October 1894 at Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building. The large size of the venue frightened Grainger, but his performance impressed critics, who called him "the flaxen-haired phenomenon who plays like a master." This public recognition helped Rose decide to send Percy to study at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, Germany, a school recommended by William Laver, head of piano studies at Melbourne’s Conservatorium of Music. Financial support was raised through a benefit concert in Melbourne and a final recital in Adelaide. Rose and Percy left Australia for Europe on May 29, 1895. Although Grainger never returned permanently to Australia, he always felt proud of his Australian heritage.
In Frankfurt, Rose worked as an English teacher, and John Grainger, who had settled in Perth, sent her money. The Hoch Conservatory was known for its piano teaching, partly because Clara Schumann, a famous pianist, had taught there until 1892. Grainger’s piano teacher was James Kwast, who helped him develop his skills so quickly that he was soon called a prodigy. Grainger had difficult relationships with his composition teacher, Iwan Knorr, and left his classes to study privately with Karl Klimsch, an amateur composer and folk music enthusiast. Grainger later honored Klimsch as "my only composition teacher."
Grainger joined a group of British students, including Roger Quilter, Balfour Gardiner, Cyril Scott, and Norman O’Neill, who became his friends. Their goal was to protect British and Scandinavian music from the influence of central European styles. Encouraged by Klimsch, Grainger stopped writing classical-style music and developed his own unique style, which impressed his friends. During this time, he discovered the poetry of Rudyard Kipling and began setting it to music. According to Cyril Scott, "No poet and composer have been so suitably matched since Heine and Schumann."
After accompanying her son on a long European tour in the summer of 1900, Rose, who had been unwell for some time, suffered a nervous breakdown and could no longer work. To earn money, Grainger began giving piano lessons and performing publicly. His first solo recital was in Frankfurt on December 6, 1900. He continued studying with Kwast and expanded his repertoire until he felt confident he could support himself and his mother as a concert pianist. Choosing London as his future home, Grainger left Frankfurt in May 1901 with his mother.
Before leaving Frankfurt, Grainger fell in love with Kwast’s daughter, Mimi. In an autobiographical essay from 1947, he wrote that he was "already sex-crazy" at age 19. His biographer, John Bird, noted that during his time in Frankfurt, Grainger began exploring sexual interests that were "distinctly abnormal," including practices involving pain and pleasure, which he continued throughout his life. Bird suggested these interests may have been influenced by the strict discipline Rose imposed on him as a child.
London years
In London, Grainger’s charm, good looks, and musical talent, along with support from the local Australian community, helped him gain the attention of wealthy people who became his patrons. He quickly began performing in private home concerts. A critic from The Times wrote after one of these performances that Grainger’s playing showed "rare intelligence and a good deal of artistic insight." In 1902, a socialite named Lillith Lowrey introduced Grainger to Queen Alexandra, who then regularly attended his London performances. Lowrey, who was 20 years older than Grainger, offered him support and connections in exchange for personal favors. Grainger described this relationship as a "love-serve job." She was the first woman with whom he had a sexual relationship. He later wrote that he felt an overwhelming wave of emotion during this experience, saying he "thought I was about to die" and that he only felt fear, not joy.
In February 1902, Grainger made his first appearance as a piano soloist with an orchestra, performing Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto with the Bath Pump Room Orchestra. In October of that year, he toured Britain with the famous Italian opera singer Adelina Patti, who was impressed by his talent and predicted a successful career for him. The following year, he met the German-Italian composer and pianist Ferruccio Busoni. At first, their relationship was friendly, and Busoni offered to teach Grainger for free. As a result, Grainger spent part of the summer of 1903 in Berlin as Busoni’s student. However, the visit was not successful, as Busoni expected Grainger to be a devoted follower, which he was not willing to be. Grainger returned to London in July 1903 and soon left with Rose on a 10-month tour of Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa as part of a group organized by the Australian singer Ada Crossley.
Before moving to London, Grainger had already composed many pieces based on the works of Rudyard Kipling and created his first mature orchestral compositions. In London, he continued composing when time allowed. A letter from July 21, 1901, to Balfour Gardiner showed he was working on Marching Song of Democracy (a setting of a poem by Walt Whitman) and had made progress on experimental works like Train Music and Charging Irishrey. During his early years in London, he also composed Hill Song Number 1 (1902), an instrumental piece admired by Busoni. In 1905, inspired by a lecture by Lucy Broadwood, a pioneer in collecting folk songs, Grainger began gathering original folk songs. Starting in Brigg, Lincolnshire, he collected and wrote down more than 300 songs from across England, many of which had never been recorded before. From 1906, Grainger used a phonograph, one of the first collectors to do so, and recorded over 200 Edison cylinder recordings of folk singers. These efforts took place during what Bird called "the halcyon days of the 'First English Folksong Revival.'"
As Grainger’s reputation grew, he met many important figures in the music world, including Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Richard Strauss, and Debussy. In 1907, he met Frederick Delius, with whom he formed a strong connection. Both shared similar ideas about composition and harmony and disliked the classical German masters. They were both inspired by folk music, and Grainger gave Delius a setting of the folk song Brigg Fair, which Delius later developed into an orchestral piece dedicated to Grainger. They remained close friends until Delius’s death in 1934.
Grainger first met Edvard Grieg at the home of Sir Edgar Speyer, a London financier, in May 1906. As a student, Grainger had studied Grieg’s music and appreciated his unique harmonies. By 1906, Grainger included several Grieg pieces in his concert repertoire, such as the piano concerto. Grieg was impressed by Grainger’s performance and wrote: "I have written Norwegian Peasant Dances that no one in my country can play, and here comes this Australian who plays them as they ought to be played! He is a genius that we Scandinavians cannot do other than love." Between 1906 and 1907, the two exchanged letters full of praise, and Grainger visited Grieg’s home in Norway, "Troldhaugen," near Bergen. There, they worked together on revising the piano concerto for the 1907 Leeds Festival. Their plans for a long-term collaboration ended when Grieg died suddenly in September 1907. Despite the brief relationship, Grainger continued to promote Grieg’s music for the rest of his life.
After performing frequently in Britain and Europe, Grainger joined Ada Crossley on a second tour of Australasia in August 1908. During this trip, he added recordings of Maori and Polynesian music to his collection. He aimed to first establish himself as a top pianist before focusing on his work as a composer, though he continued to write both original pieces and settings of folk songs. Some of his most famous works, such as Mock Morris, Handel in the Strand, Shepherd’s Hey, and Molly on the Shore, were created during this time. In 1908, he obtained the tune for Country Gardens from the folk music expert Cecil Sharp, though he did not turn it into a complete piece until 10 years later.
In 1911, Grainger felt confident enough in his status as a pianist to begin publishing his compositions on a large scale. At the same time, he adopted the professional name "Percy Aldridge Grainger" for his published works and performances. In March 1912, a series of concerts arranged by Balfour Gardiner at London’s Queen’s Hall featured five of Grainger’s works, which were well-received by the public. A performance of Fathers and Daughters with a group of 30 guitars and mandolins created a strong impression. On May 21, 1912, Grainger held the first concert entirely devoted to his own compositions at London’s Aeolian Hall, which he described as a "sensational success." A similar enthusiastic response followed when his music was performed again in a series of Gardiner concerts the following year.
In 1905, Grainger formed a close friendship with Karen Holten, a Danish music student who had been recommended to him as a piano pupil. She became an important confidante, and their relationship lasted for eight
Career maturity
In April 1914, Grainger performed Delius's piano concerto for the first time at a music festival in Torquay. Thomas Beecham, a guest conductor at the festival, told Delius that Grainger played well during loud parts of the piece but made too much noise during quieter sections. Grainger was becoming more well-known as a composer, and many musicians and orchestras began including his music in their performances. His decision to leave England for America in early September 1914, after World War I began, upset some of his British friends who were proud of their country. Grainger said he left because he wanted to give his mother a change, as she had been sick for years. However, Bird wrote that Grainger also said he wanted to become Australia's first great composer and avoid the risk of being killed in the war. A music critic from The Daily Telegraph, Robin Legge, accused Grainger of being cowardly and said he would not be welcomed in England after the war, which deeply hurt Grainger.
Grainger's first American tour started on February 11, 1915, with a concert at New York's Aeolian Hall. He played music by Bach, Brahms, Handel, and Chopin, along with two of his own pieces: "Colonial Song" and "Mock Morris." In July 1915, Grainger officially applied for U.S. citizenship. Over the next two years, he performed with singer Melba in Boston and Pittsburgh, and gave a special concert for President Woodrow Wilson. In addition to concerts, Grainger made piano rolls for Duo-Art and signed a recording contract with Columbia Records.
In April 1917, Grainger learned of his father's death in Perth. After the United States entered the war in June 1917, Grainger joined the U.S. Army as a bandsman in the 15th Coast Artillery at Fort Hamilton. He initially played the saxophone but later learned the oboe, saying he hoped to play it well enough to join the band. During his 18 months in the army, Grainger performed at Red Cross and Liberty bond concerts. He often played a piano version of "Country Gardens" as an encore, and the piece became very popular. Sheet music sales for the piece broke many records, though Grainger later disliked it. On June 3, 1918, Grainger became a naturalized American citizen.
After leaving the army in January 1919, Grainger turned down a job as conductor of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and returned to performing as a pianist. He gave about 120 concerts each year, often receiving praise from critics. In April 1921, he performed in a cinema, New York's Capitol Theatre, reaching a wider audience. Grainger said that audiences at cinema concerts often appreciated his music more than those at traditional venues like Carnegie Hall and Aeolian Hall. In the summer of 1919, he taught a course on piano technique at the Chicago Musical College, the first of many teaching roles he would take on later.
While working as a performer and teacher, Grainger revised many of his own compositions and created new pieces, including "Children's March: Over the Hills and Far Away" and an orchestral version of "The Power of Rome and the Christian Heart." He also developed a technique called "elastic scoring," which allowed his music to be played by different numbers of musicians, from small groups to full orchestras.
In April 1921, Grainger moved with his mother to a large house in White Plains, New York, now known as the Percy Grainger Home and Studio. This was his home for the rest of his life. In 1922, Grainger's mother, Rose, became very ill and began having delusions and nightmares. Rumors had long suggested that Grainger and Rose had an incestuous relationship, and in April 1922, Rose was directly asked about it by her friend Lotta Hough. Rose wrote to Grainger that this confrontation made her feel unbalanced. On April 30, while Grainger was touring on the West Coast, Rose jumped from an office window on the 18th floor of the Aeolian Building in New York City. Her final letter to Grainger, dated April 29, said, "I am out of my mind and cannot think properly," and asked if he had ever spoken to Lotta about "improper love." She signed it, "Your poor insane mother."
After Rose's death, Grainger returned to work. In the fall of 1922, he took a one-year trip to Europe, where he collected and recorded Danish folk songs before giving concerts in Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, and England. In Norway, he visited Delius at the composer's summer home. Delius was nearly blind at the time, and Grainger helped him see a Norwegian sunset by carrying him to the top of a mountain. Grainger returned to White Plains in August 1923.
Although he performed less frequently, Grainger remained a popular pianist. He was known for unusual behavior, such as running into concert halls wearing gym clothes or leaping over the piano for dramatic entrances. In 1924, Grainger became a vegetarian, though he disliked vegetables. His diet included dairy, pastry, fruit, and nuts.
Grainger continued to revise his own compositions and arranged music by other composers, including works by Bach, Brahms, Fauré, and Delius. He was also interested in Nordic culture and created a version of English that he believed reflected the language before the Norman Conquest. He replaced words of Norman or Latin origin with words he thought were more Nordic, such as "blend-band" (orchestra) and "forthspeaker" (lecturer). He called this "blue-eyed" English. His belief in Nordic superiority led him to write letters expressing crude racial and anti-Semitic views. Music historian David Pear described Grainger as "at root, a racial bigot of no small order."
Grainger traveled to Europe again in 1925 and 1927, collecting more Danish folk songs with the help of the 80-year-old ethnologist Evald Tang Kristensen. These songs formed the basis of his Suite on Danish Folksongs (1928–1930). He also visited Australia and New Zealand in 1924 and 1926.
In November 1926, Grainger met Ella Ström, a Swedish-born artist and poet, during a trip to America. They separated when he returned to the United States but reunited in England the following year after Grainger's final folk-song expedition to Denmark. In October 1927, the couple agreed to marry. Ella had a daughter, Elsie, born out of wedlock in 1909. Grainger always recognized Elsie as part of his family and had a warm relationship
Later career
The war in Europe in September 1939 limited Grainger's travel abroad. In the fall of 1940, fearing the war might lead to an attack on the eastern coast of the United States, Grainger and his wife, Ella, moved to Springfield, Missouri, in the middle of the country. From 1940, Grainger performed often in charity concerts, especially after the United States entered the war following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. A historian named Robert Simon recorded that Grainger gave 274 charity performances during the war years, many at Army and Air Force camps. In 1942, a collection of his music based on stories by Kipling, called the Jungle Book cycle, was performed in eight cities by the band of Gustavus Adolphus College from St. Peter, Minnesota.
Tired from his many concerts during the war, Grainger took a vacation in Europe in 1946. He felt he had failed in his career; in 1947, when he refused a job as Chair of Music at Adelaide University, he wrote, "If I were 40 years younger and not so discouraged by my failures in music, I would have accepted this opportunity." In January 1948, Grainger conducted the first performance of his wind band piece, The Power of Rome and the Christian Heart, written for the Goldman Band to celebrate the 70th birthday of its founder. Later, Grainger described his own music as "commonplace" while praising another composer's work that was performed alongside his.
On August 10, 1948, Grainger played the piano part in his Suite on Danish Folksongs with the London Symphony Orchestra at the London Proms. On September 18, he attended the Last Night of the Proms, standing in the audience for a piece by Delius called Brigg Fair. Over the next few years, several friends died: Gardiner in 1950, Quilter and Karen Holten in 1953. In October 1953, Grainger had surgery for abdominal cancer, a disease he would fight for the rest of his life. He continued to perform, often at church halls and schools rather than major concert venues.
In 1954, after his final performance at Carnegie Hall, Grainger was honored with the St. Olav Medal by King Haakon of Norway for his long support of the music of Grieg. However, he expressed growing frustration in his writings, writing to a friend that he felt the "German form" of music was dominating, and that he had always been a leader without followers.
After 1950, Grainger stopped composing. His main creative work in his final years was with a young physics teacher named Burnett Cross, designing machines for free music. The first machine used a modified pianola. A second, called the "Estey-reed tone-tool," was a large harmonica-like instrument. A third, the "Cross-Grainger Kangaroo-pouch," was completed by 1952. Advances in transistor technology led Grainger and Cross to begin work on a fourth, electronic machine, which was not finished when Grainger died.
In September 1955, Grainger visited Australia for nine months, organizing exhibits for the Grainger Museum. He refused to hold a "Grainger Festival" as suggested by the Australian Broadcasting Commission, believing his homeland had rejected him and his music. Before leaving Melbourne, he left a parcel containing an essay and photos about his personal life to be opened 10 years after his death.
By 1957, Grainger's health had worsened, and his ability to focus had declined. However, he continued to visit Britain regularly. In May 1957, he made his only television appearance, playing a piece by Handel on the piano. After more surgery, he recovered enough to perform a short winter concert series. During his 1958 visit to England, he met Benjamin Britten, a composer with whom he had exchanged friendly letters. He planned to visit Britten's Aldeburgh Festival in 1959 but was unable due to illness. Near the end of his life, he made a new will, leaving his skeleton to be preserved and displayed in the Grainger Museum, a request that was not fulfilled.
In the winter of 1959–60, Grainger continued to perform his own music, traveling by bus or train instead of airplane. His final public concert was on April 29, 1960, at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. His morning recital went well, but his afternoon conducting was, in his own words, "a fiasco." Confined to his home later, he revised his music and arranged works by others. In August 1960, he told his stepdaughter Elsie he was working on an adaptation of a song by Cyril Scott. His last letters, written from the hospital in December 1960 and January 1961, described his struggles with failing eyesight and hallucinations: "I have been trying to write score for several days. But I have not succeeded yet."
Grainger died on February 20, 1961, at the age of 78, in White Plains Hospital. His body was buried in the Aldridge family vault at West Terrace Cemetery, next to the ashes of his wife, Rose. Ella outlived him by 18 years; in 1972, at 83, she married a young archivist named Stewart Manville. She died on July 17, 1979, in White Plains.
Music
Grainger's musical works are divided into two main types: original compositions and arrangements of folk music. He also created many versions of music written by other composers. Although he studied at a music school, Grainger did not follow the strict rules of traditional European music styles. He avoided common forms like symphonies, sonatas, concertos, and operas. Most of his original pieces are short, lasting between two and eight minutes. Only a few were first written for piano, but later, most were adapted for piano performances.
Conductor John Eliot Gardiner called Grainger a unique musician who used creative orchestration and unusual instruments. He compared Grainger's style to both the 20th-century Second Viennese School and 16th- and 17th-century Italian madrigalists. Scholar Malcolm Gillies noted that Grainger's music is instantly recognizable, even after hearing just one second of a piece. Grainger believed the most special part of his music was its texture, which he described as "smooth," "grained," or "prickly."
Grainger believed that every musician in a performance should have equal importance. He developed a flexible scoring method to allow groups of any size or instrument combination to perform his music effectively. His early works showed experimentation, such as using unusual rhythms in pieces like Love Verses from "The Song of Solomon" (1899) and Train Music (1901). These techniques were later used by other composers like Stravinsky. Grainger used unusual instruments, including solovoxes, theremins, marimbas, and musical glasses, to create unique sounds. In one performance, he asked two musicians to whistle parts of a folk song. In Random Round (1912–14), inspired by music he heard in the Pacific Islands, he allowed performers to choose randomly from different musical variations. This approach to music, called aleatoric composition, was later used by composers like Berio and Stockhausen.
In 1907, Grainger wrote a short piece called Sea Song, which was one of his early attempts at "beatless" music. This work used irregular rhythms and was a precursor to his later experiments with free music in the 1930s. Grainger believed that music should reflect the natural, flowing sounds he observed in the ocean. He felt that traditional harmony rules limited the ability to capture these natural sounds in music. In a 1941 letter, he admitted he had not created large-scale works like those of Bach, Wagner, or Brahms, but he explained that his earlier works were preparation for his free-music experiments.
As a student, Grainger admired the music of Edvard Grieg and saw him as a model of Nordic musical excellence. Grieg, in turn, praised Grainger as a new and original voice in English music. After years of performing Grieg's works, Grainger tried to adapt Grieg's E minor Piano Sonata, Op. 7 into a "Grieg-Grainger Symphony" in 1944. He abandoned the project after writing only 16 bars of music. At this time, Grainger acknowledged he had not met Grieg's high expectations as a composer or pianist. He also wondered if avoiding Grieg might have helped his own musical development.
Grainger was known for his bold musical experiments and for pushing the orchestra's capabilities. One of his ambitious early works was The Warriors (1913–16), an 18-minute orchestral piece inspired by an imaginary ballet. Dedicated to composer Frederick Delius, the piece combined elements of other Grainger works with references to Arnold Bax, Arnold Schoenberg, and Richard Strauss. It required a large orchestra and at least three pianos. In one performance, Grainger used nineteen pianos played by thirty musicians. Critics had mixed opinions, calling the piece either "magnificent" or "a magnificent failure."
Legacy
Percy Grainger considered himself an Australian composer who aimed to bring honor and fame to his homeland. However, much of his professional life took place outside Australia, and the impact he had on Australian music during his lifetime and afterward remains uncertain. His efforts to teach Australians about music in the 1930s were not well received, and few musicians followed his style. In 2010, an academic named Roger Covell noted only one Australian musician, David Stanhope, who worked in Grainger’s musical style. In 1956, a proposal to invite Grainger to compose music for the opening of the Melbourne Olympics was rejected by the event organizers. A "Percy Grainger Festival" was held in London in 1970, organized by Australian expatriates Bryan Fairfax and William McKie, and supported by the Australian government.
Grainger was an atheist who believed his legacy would live on through his compositions. With his wife, Ella, he founded the Grainger Museum in Melbourne. It received little attention before the 1970s, except for a mention in 1965 in The Australian Women’s Weekly. Ella explained the museum was built using money from a 1934 concert tour by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. She said Grainger viewed the museum as a tribute to the city where he was born in 1882 and as a way to preserve achievements in English music.
Initially, the museum was seen as a sign of either excessive pride or unusual behavior. However, the University of Melbourne’s support helped protect the museum from criticism. Its collections have been used to study Grainger’s life and work, as well as those of his contemporaries, such as Grieg, Delius, and Scott. The Grainger home in White Plains, New York, is now the Percy Grainger Library and holds memorabilia and historical performance materials for researchers and visitors.
Australian poet Jessica L. Wilkinson wrote a verse biography about Grainger, which was reviewed by another Australian poet, Geoff Page.
In Britain, Grainger’s main contribution was reviving interest in folk music. His recordings and arrangements of folk songs influenced later English composers, including Benjamin Britten, who acknowledged Grainger as a teacher in this area. After hearing some of Grainger’s work, Britten said it surpassed other folk song arrangements by composers like Vaughan Williams and R. O. Morris. In the United States, Grainger’s teaching career over 40 years left a strong educational impact on students in high schools, summer programs, and colleges. His creative ideas about musical instruments and scoring also influenced modern American band music. Timothy Reynish, a conductor and teacher, called Grainger "the only composer of note to see military bands as equal or better than symphony orchestras in expressing music." Grainger’s attempts to create "free music" using mechanical and electronic methods, which he considered his most important work, were not continued and were soon replaced by newer technology. Despite this, Covell noted that Grainger’s persistence and clever use of available tools showed a uniquely Australian quality in his character, one he might have valued.
Assessment
In 1945, Grainger created an informal system to rate composers and musical styles, using standards such as originality, complexity, and beauty. He ranked himself as equal ninth among 40 composers and styles, placing him behind Wagner and Delius but ahead of Grieg and Tchaikovsky. However, in his later years, he often criticized his own career, writing to Scott: "I have never been a true musician or true artist." His lack of recognition as a composer beyond his popular folk-song arrangements caused frustration and disappointment. For many years after his death, most of his compositions remained largely unperformed. Starting in the 1990s, an increase in recordings of Grainger's work led to renewed interest in his music and improved his reputation as a composer. An unsigned tribute on the Gramophone website in February 2011, marking the 50th anniversary of Grainger's death, stated: "Though he would never be placed among the most famous musicians, he was original and deserves more recognition than he often received."
Regarding Grainger as a pianist, The New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg noted his unique style was expressed with "amazing skill, personality, and vigor." Early excitement about his performances faded over time, and reviews of his later concerts were often negative. However, Britten praised Grainger's late recording of the Grieg concerto, made during a live performance in Aarhus in 1957, as "one of the noblest ever committed to record," despite the disc being unavailable for many years due to errors in the recording. Brian Allison from the Grainger Museum suggested that if John Grainger's influence had not been removed, "Percy Aldridge Grainger may today be remembered as one of Australia's leading painters and designers, who just happened to have a latent talent as a pianist and composer." Ethnomusicologist John Blacking acknowledged Grainger's contributions to music's social and cultural aspects but wrote that if Grainger's musical education had not been "undermined by amateurish approaches and the harmful influence of his mother, I am sure his ultimate contribution to music would have been much greater."
Recordings
From 1908 to 1957, Grainger recorded many musical performances, often as a pianist or conductor, of his own compositions and those by other composers. His earliest recordings, made for His Master's Voice, included a special section of Grieg's piano concerto called the cadenza. He did not record the full version of this piece until 1945. Most of his recordings were made between 1917 and 1931 while under contract with Columbia Records. Later, he recorded for Decca Records (1944–45 and 1957) and Vanguard Records (1957). His most frequently recorded works included "Country Gardens," "Shepherd's Hey," "Molly on the Shore," and "Lincolnshire Posy." He also often recorded piano pieces by composers such as Bach, Brahms, Chopin, Grieg, Liszt, and Schumann. All of Grainger's 78 rpm solo piano recordings are now available on compact disc in a box set.
Between 1915 and 1932, Grainger worked with the Duo-Art company to create about 80 piano rolls of his own and others' music. These rolls used a wooden robot with mechanical fingers and feet to play a concert grand piano. Many of these recordings were later transferred to compact disc. This system allowed Grainger's music to be played again after his death, including a performance at London's Albert Hall in 1988 during the last night of the Proms, where he appeared as a soloist with the BBC Symphony Orchestra playing Grieg's Piano Concerto.
After Grainger's death, many musicians recorded his works, and these recordings were released by various labels. In 1995, Chandos Records began creating a complete collection of Grainger's original compositions and folk arrangements. By 2010, 19 of the 25 planned volumes had been completed and released as a box set in 2011 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his death. A new version of this collection, including two additional CDs, was released in January 2021 to mark the 60th anniversary of his death.