Shortly before his death, Percy Grainger (1882-1961) lodged over twenty unpublished sketches in his Australian Museum. Self-Portrait of Percy Grainger draws exclusively from these sketches, revealing for the first time an illuminating portrait of the composer's life. With such titles as "The Aldridge-Grainger-Strom Saga," "Thunks," "Ere-I-Forget," "The Love-Life of Helen and Paris," and "Anecdotes," these manuscripts were intended as precursors to Grainger's autobiography, My Wretched Tone-Life, which he only commenced in his final years. Expertly shaping these sketches, the editors have created a "self-portrait" along the lines that Grainger himself had intended. The volume first introduces Grainger's forebears, parents, friends, wife, and himself before moving on to his views on composition, performance, and the musical world. In these sketches, Grainger addresses such topics as racial and national identity, the meaning of work, physical culture, language reform, sexual practice, and artistic patronage. Grainger also probes the nature of musical genius, discussing a broad range of composers including Igor Stravinsky, Thomas Beecham, Frederick Delius, Edvard Grieg, Charles Stanford, Cyril Scott, Fritz Kreisler, Donald Tovey, Ferruccio Busoni, and Balfour Gardiner. Among the works of his own that Grainger most featured are his The Warriors --Music for an Imaginary Ballet, Colonial Song, the Lincolnshire Posy series of band pieces, his greatest "hit" Country Gardens, and his many settings of English folk-music. Written in Grainger's own self-created "Nordic English" as well as translated from Danish, the language of his most intimate confessions, Self-Portrait of Percy Grainger sheds light on some of the most revealing details of the composer's life. The sketches trace Grainger's changing self-perception, from the romantically tinged, even lustful, views of his forties and fifties, through a period of wistfulness in his sixties, to the bitterness and self-loathing of his old age. The volume also includes several of Grainger's own drawings as well as both public and private photographs. A fascinating and revealing collection of vignettes, this extraordinary book will appeal to instructors, students, and enthusiasts in musicology, music history, cultural studies, and Australian, British, and American history.

Percy Grainger’s childhood imagining of a music capable of reproducing the sounds of nature was translated, in his later life, into the creation of wondrously inventive “Free Music” machines. Mostly made from found materials, these machines take their place in a proud tradition of sound art, at a point where the aural and the visual intersect. Two minds converged on the creation of the machines: the one self-taught and intuitive, the other scientifically trained and rigorous. The exchange of letters between the two men charts their journey of discovery and the friendship that grew from it: a grand passionate human adventure.

What goes into the making of a creative genius and how can their gifts be used to help uplift humankind? These were questions that led the Australian/American pianist, composer, and music educator Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882-1961) to exhaustively document his life, his thoughts, and his associations and establish in the country of his birth a museum dedicated to helping answer those questions. Grainger was a creative genius who thought more in terms of the future than of the present and was an advocate for the role that music can play in creating a more harmonious and loving future for humankind. This book is the first attempt to bring together in one volume the details of Grainger’s life as they relate to his music using his own words and those of the people who knew him. It makes use of many heretofore unpublished documents and musical examples and is written in such a way as to be accessible to all while also offering a detailed study of his musical works.

Presents the further adventures of Mowgli, a boy reared by a pack of wolves, and the wild animals of the jungle. Also includes other short stories set in India.