Quick Link: GraingerWindSymphony.asn.au/percygrainger
Percy Aldridge Grainger
Born in Brighton, Australia, Percy Aldridge Grainger
is best remembered as a pianist of great skill and a composer of many
memorable tunes for piano.
The arrangement and compositional skills shown in his
settings of many folk songs collected by him, as well as his original
works for wind ensembles, are still considered pinnacles of achievement
over half a century later.
Many of his works are of consummate difficulty to perform
but demonstrate superbly the amazing range of tonal colour and expression
that a good wind band can produce.
Percy Grainger was a great admirer of the sounds of Wind
ensembles. In his own program notes about Lincolnshire Posy he
wrote:
'Why this cold-shouldering of the wind band by most
composers? Is the wind band, with its varied assortments of reeds, so much
richer than the reeds of the symphony orchestra, its complete saxophone
family that is found nowhere else (to my ears the saxophone is the most
expressive of all wind instruments – the one closest to the human
voice. And surely all musical instruments should be rated according to
their tonal closeness to man’s own voice!), its army of brass, both
wide-bore and narrow-bore, – not the equal of any medium ever conceived?
As a vehicle of deeply emotional expression it seems to me
unrivalled.