Percy Grainger
Grainger Edition vol. 8, Works for Wind Orchestra 2

* The Power of Rome and the Christian Heart*
* Children's March*
* Bell Piece*^
* Blithe Bells
* The Immovable Do
* Hill Song I
* Hill Song II
* Irish Tune from County Derry*
* Marching Song of Democracy

^James Gilchrist (tenor)
Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra/Clark Rundell, *Timothy
Reynish
Chandos CHAN9630 Total time: 65:04

Summary for the Busy Executive: Re-thinking.

This CD boasts several recording premieres, but of different versions
of well-known pieces. Grainger tinkered with his music to an unusual
extent, sometimes to re-interest performers in his music (Stokowski,
for example, in classic accounts), sometimes to find the best, or even
another, expression of the basic ideas. I'm a Grainger nut, but, even
so, several of the pieces are new to me: The Power of Rome and the
Christian Heart, Bell Piece, the Hill Song I, and the Marching Song of
Democracy. Some of the titles here are also on volume 4, also devoted
to Grainger's wind ensemble music, but in premiere recordings of new
versions startlingly different from their more familiar siblings. Chandos
seems determined to record everything, thank goodness. Perhaps Grainger
will finally get his due as an extraordinarily interesting musical mind
(he pioneered, among other things, graphic music and synthesized music),
rather than as a bizarrely twee miniaturist, with all the condescension
that implies.

While volume 4 concentrated on Grainger's genius as a setter of folk
tunes, this one covers mainly original work, including some of Grainger's
longest pieces. At about twelve minutes, The Power of Rome and the
Christian Heart certainly qualifies. The piece comes from Grainger's
experience in the American army during World War I. He worked as a
bandsman and, indeed, caught his enthusiasm for large wind ensemble here.
Grainger intended it to portray, oddly enough, his pacifism and the
individual conscience acquiescing to or defying the power of the State.
The music doesn't overtly describe any of this but springs from those
thoughts. Grainger remained proud of it, although its highly chromatic
harmonies began to pall on him as "conventional." I have no idea what
he means. From its opening measures, the progressions - and the piece's
ideas are (unusually for Grainger) mainly harmonic - come from so far
off the beaten track, you may find yourself well wondering how on earth
he came up with them. Grainger writes chromatically almost as if Liszt
and Wagner had never lived. These harmonies, like Prokofiev's, come from
the twentieth, rather than the nineteenth century.  The progressions
have almost a somatic result, as the muscles in your head try to get
them around your mind. One also notes the unusual, beautiful orchestration,
from the opening solo for the harmonium to the inclusion of harp to the
fondness for the acidic sound of double-reed winds.

Grainger loved introducing new sonorities into his wind and orchestral
works. The Children's March ("Over the hills and far away") is a case
in point. At any rate, the version here bears little resemblance to the
one usually heard. Grainger wrote it for the Goldman Band (Goldman's
account, with Grainger at the piano, used to be available, but I can't
find it currently in the U. S. or the U. K.; I have it on an old Decca
LP), but Richard Franko Goldman, the director, apparently left out certain
features of the scoring, although what remained was certainly unusual
enough. Not only does Grainger call for piano, harp, and some "tuneful
percussion" (by which Grainger usually meant bells, glockenspiels,
celestas, xylophones, marimbas, vibraphones, and chimes), but he also
asks that players not tootling at the moment sing on "oh" during the
trio. That moment will open you up like a can of tuna. The themes in
themselves throughout are joyous and give off the excess physical energy
so much a part of the composer almost to his death.

Grainger takes Bell Piece from Dowland's lute ayre "Now, oh, now I
needs must part," a great Grainger favorite. He used to sing it before
going to bed. The piece opens with a solo tenor singing to a relatively
straightforward piano accompaniment. As the tenor finishes, the clarinet
steals in and we get a more and more Grainger-like fantasy (or, in his
words, "free ramble") on the tune. The ramble strays very far indeed.
Why the title? In this version, Grainger added a part for (I think)
glockenspiel so that his wife Ella could play during performances.

The better-known Blithe Bells gives Bach's "Sheep may safely graze"
approximately the same treatment, this time with a whole mess of "tuneful
percussion." He originally wrote it for "elastic scoring" (yet another
Grainger innovation) - that is, any instruments in the right range for
the parts and, in certain cases, certain parts could be omitted. The
band version comes from 1931.

Grainger, a piano virtuoso (Grieg preferred him to all other soloists
in his concerto), hated the piano and arranged several of his works for
it almost always at the insistence of his publisher. However, he had no
such animus toward the harmonium or, later, the early electronic instrument,
the Solovox. They produced the sounds similar to the ones he pursued in
his quest for electronic music. He owned several harmoniums. While
practicing on one of them, he noticed that mechanics of one of the keys,
a high C, had gotten stuck, emitting a fixed drone. Rather than immediately
repair it, he composed music that took an ever-present high C into account
and called the resulting work The Immovable Do. That drone seems tailor-made
for Grainger's side-slipping harmonies. It only gradually dawns on you
that the C constantly, or nearly, whistles, throughout the main musical
business. The band version here comes from 1939.

A lot of wind players know the Hill Song II, originally written in the
1900s. Whatever happened to Hill Song I? It finally shows up here, over
twice as long as its successor. Some of the material is the same. In the
liner notes, Grainger maven Barry Peter Ould contends that the later
piece presents all the faster material, omitting the slower, "dreamier"
contrasts.  To me, the songs radically differ, although they share several
themes. Hill Song I experiments with scoring by omitting every single
reed from the ensemble. Grainger liked this version and considered it
one of his "most perfect" pieces. I think it ultimately lacks enough
contrast of timbre so that all that sharp sonority begins to sound
oppressive and thick. This no longer remains an issue in the second Hill
Song, which also benefits from rather energetic concision. It has less
than half its prototype's length.

Grainger loved a great melody, probably reasons behind his admiration
for Bach, Grieg, Ellington, and Gershwin, as well as for folk music. He
apparently went gaga over the "Londonderry Air" (a. k. a. "Danny Boy").
He arranged it every which way, including for voices, in which every
part can be sung on its own with perfect sense. This band setting comes
from 1920. It is independent of all the others, including the better-known
band version of 1918. Grainger scores for military band and, believe it
or not, pipe organ.  Makes marching a bit of trouble.

Rose Grainger, Percy's mother, exerted the greatest single influence on
him.  He got almost all of his attitudes from her. He was convinced of
his genius because she was. The extraordinary relationship between mother
and son (she procured his mistresses for him) was so strong, he didn't
marry until she died. He inherited his mother's anti-Semitism, although
he championed Jewish musicians. However, he also inherited her love of
democracy. Percy could have easily turned out a proto-Nazi, had it not
been for Rose. At any rate, he wrote the work in the early 1900s originally
for chorus and orchestra, a practical accommodation to his rather nutty
original conception - men, women, and children singing and whistling
outdoors to the rhythm of their marching feet. Grainger's strong distaste
for the normal techniques of development results in a work with enough
ideas for at least three more.  Fortunately, Grainger could write
wonderful, idiosyncratic melodies himself.  He didn't merely collect.
In 1948, he made the current version for wind ensemble and dedicated it,
appropriately enough, to his long-dead "darling mother, united with her
in loving adoration of Walt Whitman." Even without the marching feet,
this is in spirit open-air music. It takes big breaths and swings its
arms in step.  It just catches the listener up and sweeps him along -
an "unstoppable tide," Ould calls it and hits the nail on the head.

Before the Grainger series, I'd not heard of the wind orchestra of the
Royal Northern College of Music, nor of Reynish and Rundell. They play
at least as well as any other wind ensemble I've heard, including Fennell's
Eastman-Rochester. The two directors have the measure of Grainger's
musical quirks and manage to turn somewhat loose rambles into purposeful
journeys.

Chandos's entire series has been so far first-rate and has even raised
the bar on what I thought first-rate to be.

Steve Schwartz