May 1st. Nothing says May Day like a good Morris dance!
It’s all-too-appropriate, then, to report on my day trip yesterday to the Percy Grainger Home & Studio in White Plains, New York.
Grainger (1882-1961) is best-known for his buoyant evocations of Morris dance melodies in works such as “Country Gardens,” “Shepherds Hey,” and “Mock Morris” – which became ubiquitous in arrangements for every conceivable ensemble and combination of instruments – I might add, often to Grainger’s chagrin, although the royalties brought him a steady, comfortable income.
He was also a world-renowned pianist, who played with individuality and panache. He toured with Australian soprano Nellie Melba and played for three American presidents. He packed houses and sold records. His wild, Bohemian hair and striking good looks only served to enhance audience adulation. He may have been born in Melbourne, but he had the energy of a Tasmanian devil à la Looney Tunes.
Grainger was ceaselessly active. He preferred to walk or run between engagements, rather than take a car (although he loved trains). At the start of a recital, the doors would open at the back of the auditorium and he’d run down the aisle to leap onto the stage. One of the best-known Grainger anecdotes is about how he’d throw a ball into the air, over the top of Frederick Delius’ house, run through the open front door, pass out a door at the back, and catch the ball in the yard before it landed.
I suspect he was also easily bored. He may have been a celebrated pianist and an accomplished composer, but he couldn’t practice or sit still for very long. He used to have his wife read to him, often from the Norse sagas, to distract him from the drudgery of working at the keyboard.
Downtown White Plains might not be much to look at these days (the hospital seems to dominate everything, recently even swallowing two properties adjacent the Grainger house), but stepping inside the Grainger home is like walking back in time. The rooms are gratifyingly framed with the rich wood characteristic of the period. There are bronze doorknobs on the closets, “centennial bulbs” in the ceiling fixtures, and stained glass in a leaded landing window. So much of it, in fact, put me in mind of my grandparents’ house, where I was lucky enough to live for five years as a child.
Grainger’s house still brims with evidence of his questing intellect and irrepressible physicality. Across the entrance to the parlor hangs a substantial bamboo pole, held in place by interlaced ropes, on which he did chin-ups. In the basement are the wheel barrows into which he used to toss his luggage or a preferred piano bench before a sprint to the train.
At a certain period of his life, he pushed all the furniture aside to make room for audacious “free music” machines, which he designed to liberate music from the strictures of traditional notation and performance. I don’t pretend to understand the finer points – I’m sure you can read more about them elsewhere – but these seem to me to operate on a similar principle to piano rolls, only homemade, oversized piano rolls, threaded through jerry-rigged contraptions fashioned out of whatever happened to be available and at hand, with the paper running around rolling pins, recorders, and pennywhistles. Cut contours in the paper determine the pitch, volume, and timbre of several oscillators. One machine on display has a scrap of paper taped around the bottom of one of its legs to kept the device stable in the manner of a shim slid under a rocking table. The sounds it produces are rather like those of a theremin. It’s as if the Swiss Family Robinson took a crack at inventing a synthesizer.
Grainger’s handwritten labels are all over everything. Every box and canister bear his signage. For as lively as his mind seems to have been, and for as full as the house is of souvenirs of a vigorous life, he was evidently very organized and, after his fashion, systematic. Among the items inside his gramophone is a piece of a card tailored to fit the curve of a record label, with numbered lines drawn onto it to be used as a guide to specific passages so that he could tell at a glance where to drop the needle.
More than once, I couldn’t help but think that Grainger would have been right at home with the eccentric cast of characters in the George S. Kaufman-Moss Hart comedy (and later, Frank Capra film) “You Can’t Take It with You.” On a tangentially-related note, my guide was impressed when my face brightened at the mention of actor Ernest Thesiger, a Grainger acquaintance from England. Thesiger played Dr. Pretorius in “The Bride of Frankenstein.” Come to think of it, his hair was rather like Percy’s in that movie!
It’s interesting that Grainger spent most of his life in the U.S. (he even served in the U.S. Army during World War I), yet he is best-remembered for his works infused with English folk music. He was a pioneer of the ethnomusicological impulse to traverse the English countryside to document authentic folksong before it was plowed under by industrialization. One of the ways he stood out from Vaughan Williams and Holst was that, rather than jot down the songs longhand onto music paper, he rode around with an Edison machine on his bicycle, the better to capture the personalities of the rustic singers. These he worked into some of his best-known compositions.
Grainger came to the United States with his mother, Rose, on whom he doted, in 1917. They settled in White Plains, where Percy lived until his death in 1961. Rumors that they were unnaturally close pushed Rose over the edge, almost literally. She had long been suffering from a chronic illness when she leaped from the 18th floor of New York’s Aeolian Hall in 1922.
Percy had his quirks, kinks, and contradictions, to be sure. The Grainger Museum in Melbourne has an extensive collection of his homemade whips and bloody shirts. I didn’t ask about them in White Plains. I seem to recall, he also offered to donate his skeleton, but Melbourne declined.
He held some fairly outrageous racial views, with a pronounced belief in the superiority of all things Nordic. By coincidence, his wife, the Swedish-born artist and poet Ella Viola Strom, whom he married at the Hollywood Bowl before a crowd of 20,000 (during a concert that included his work “To a Nordic Princess,” written specifically for the occasion and dedicated to her) was born on this date in 1889. To the extent possible, he cleansed his writings and speech of all Romance influences in favor of Anglo-Saxon neologisms (for instance, using made-up words like “louden” for “crescendo”). Yet he was also an enthusiastic champion of Black music and music of the South Seas. His ballet “The Warriors” is an idealized celebration of warring tribes of all cultures. “…[T]he ghosts of male and female warrior types of all times and places are spirited together for an orgy of warlike dances, processions, and merry-makings, broken or accompanied by amorous interludes; their frolics tinged with just that faint suspicion of wistfulness all holiday gladness wears.” So, as with so many aspects of his personality, go figure. Like Whitman, Grainger contained multitudes.
Although he did not live in Australia since he left for school at the Hoch Conservatory at the age of 13, he returned to visit a number of times. His love for his homeland is evident from a boomerang collection displayed on a window sill and a stuffed kookaburra.
At the conservatory, he became the youngest member of the “Frankfurt Gang,” which included Cyril Scott, Roger Quilter, Balfour Gardiner, and Norman O’Neill. One of the rooms at the Grainger Home is devoted to the lifelong influence of his schoolmates, including photos and the “Cyril Scott piano,” which Scott used to play on visits. In the same room is an inscribed photo of Edvard Grieg, whom Grainger got to know intimately and became one of his most renowned interpreters. Another composer whose influence and friendship is evident is Frederick Delius, whose significance is honored through photos and portraits. This is to say nothing of the Grainger Steinway, one of many brought into the house over the years, and a harmonium.
Of course, photos and portraits of Grainger himself are all over the place, including one painted by Ella of the subject in his “towel clothes,” festive-looking, faux traditional dress, designed by Grainger to be worn by him and his wife, with a sample of such towels displayed on a rack beneath. (The clothes themselves are in Melbourne.) Ella also created a sizeable visual counterpart to “The Warriors,” with scantily-clad, pleasingly-contoured men and women of all races, about as prepared for battle as the half-naked characters on the cover of a Conan paperback. Ella is not the only artist represented. Additional portraits and busts of Grainger abound.
The house is filled with treasures, and you really get to walk around the place. The thorough tour takes you into bedrooms and even down into the basement, which is like any other basement, except it was Percy Grainger’s basement, and so it is outfitted with a dark room and walk-in fireproof vaults, with scores, programs, and paintings stored all over the place. It really is like walking back in time into Percy Grainger’s house. Stunningly, it appears to be run on the good faith that visitors will have the good sense not to touch anything.
I can’t promise everyone will get as much out of a visit to the Percy Grainger Home and Studio as I did, but I personally found it fascinating and richly rewarding. There may not be much else in downtown White Plains, but perhaps you can piggyback a trip onto a tour of Washington Irving’s estate, Sunnyside, in nearby Tarrytown. Copland House in Mount Kisco is not all that far away, nor is Samuel Barber’s Capricorn, the house he shared with Gian Carlo Menotti (although, from what I understand, the latter is currently a private residence, so I’m not sure what is visible of the property from public land).
I hasten to add, a lot of these places are only open during very specific hours or by appointment. The Grainger House and Studio is available for touring on Wednesdays at noon and 1:00 and every third Sunday. I think I’ve got that right. Better check the website. In any case, definitely call or email ahead to set up an appointment. I was there for 70 or 75 minutes (my version of the hour tour) and feel like I took it all in. But of course I came prepared. The Percy Grainger Society’s website about the house (linked below) will keep you occupied for hours. The more you look, the more you’ll find. It really is quite impressive.
The Percy Grainger home was built in 1893 and was declared an historic landmark in 1993. You can’t really tell from the photographs, but as with any house of that vintage, Grainger’s can use some maintenance and restoration TLC. It’s evident the exterior, in particular, is in need of a good paint job. I am sure the Percy Grainger Society would be very grateful for any donations!
Warm thanks to Anne Ocone, the museum coordinator, who was my guide.
“Country Gardens”
Grainger plays “Molly on the Shore”
West Point Band plays “Lincolnshire Posy”
“The Warriors”
Documentary on “free music” machines
