1882. After receiving some piano instruction from his mother he was sent

to Germany in his twelfth year to continue his music study with James Kwast and Ferruccio Busoni. In 1900 he made his debut as concert pianist in London, following which he made an extended tour of Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. A meeting with Grieg, in 1906, was a significant influence in Grainger’s artistic development. Grieg infected the young man with some of his own enthusiasm for folk music. The result was that Grainger now began to devote himself to research in the English folk music of the past. His orchestral and piano arrangements of many of these folk tunes and dances, between 1908 and 1912, were responsible for bringing them to the attention of the music world. In 1915, Grainger made his debut as pianist in the United States. He has lived in America since that time, devoting himself to concert work, lecturing and teaching, besides composition. Grainger died in White Plains, New York, on February 20, 1961. In his own music, Grainger reveals the impact that his studies in English music made upon him: in his partiality to modal writing, to the contrapuntal technique, to placid lyricism. But it is in his fresh arrangements of old English songs and dances that Grainger is most famous. “Even when he keeps the folk songs within their original dimensions,” says Cyril Scott, “he has a way of dealing with them which is entirely new, yet at the same time never lacking in taste.” _Brigg Fair_ is a plaintive melody of pastoral character from the district of Lincolnshire. It was used by the contemporary British composer, Frederick Delius, as the basis for his orchestral rhapsody of the same name (dedicated to Grainger). The bucolic and ever popular _Country Gardens_ is a “Mock Morris,” the “Mock Morris” being an old English dance popular during the reign of Henry VII and since then associated with festivities attending May Day. Grainger’s original transcription was for piano solo, and only later did he adapt it for orchestra. _Handel in the Strand_ is a lively clog dance. _Irish Tune from County Derry_ is better known as the _Londonderry Air_, a poignant melody now known to us through numerous versions other than that originally made famous by Grainger. The piece, designated as a Mock Morris, is one of a series in a collection entitled _Room Music Tit Bits_. “No folk music tune-stuffs at all are used herein,” says the composer. “The rhythmic cast of the piece is Morris-like, but neither the build of the tunes nor the general layout of the form keeps to the Morris dance shape.” The lively _Molly on the Shore_ was first written for piano before being adapted by the composer for orchestra. _Shepherd’s Hey_ is a Mock Morris and consists of four tunes, two fiddle tunes and two folk songs. Of Grainger’s own compositions three are of general interest. The _Children’s March_ (1917) was written during World War I for the United States Army Band. “This march,” says the composer, “is structurally of a complicated build, on account of the large number of different themes and tunes employed and of the varied and irregular interplay of many contrasted sections. Tonally speaking, it is a study in the blend of piano, wind, and percussion instruments.” _Passacaglia on Green Bushes_ has two versions. One is for small orchestra, and the other for a large one. This composition is built around the folk melody “Green Bushes” which remains unchanged in key, line, and rhythm throughout the work (except for eight measures of free passage work near the beginning, and forty measures at the end). Against this melody move several folk-like melodies of Grainger’s own invention. _Youthful Suite_ for orchestra is made up of five sections. Part of this work was completed in 1902, and part in 1945. The first movement, “Northern March,” derives its character from the melodic and rhythmic traits of the folk music of North England and Scotland. The main melody here acquires its folk-song character through the use of the flat-seventh minor scale. “Rustic Dance” achieves an exotic quality through the employment of an unusual variant of the F major chord. “Norse Digger” is a somber lament in which is mourned the passing of a dead hero, possibly from an Icelandic saga. “Eastern Intermezzo” has an Oriental cast. The repeated use of drum beats and the virile rhythms were inspired by a reading of a description of the dance of the elephants in _Toomal of the Elephants_ from Kipling’s Jungle Book. This suite ends with a formal “English Waltz.” Enrique Granados Enrique Granados was born in Lérida, Spain, on July 27, 1867. After completing his music study at Conservatories in Barcelona and Madrid, and privately with Charles de Bériot in Paris, he earned his living playing the piano in Spanish restaurants. In 1898, his first opera was produced in Madrid, _Maria del Carmen_. The national identity of this music was to characterize all of Granados’ subsequent works and place him among the most significant of Spanish national composers. His most famous composition is _Goyescas_, a remarkable series of piano pieces inspired by the paintings of Goya; the composer later adapted this music for an opera, also called _Goyescas_, which received its world première in New York at the Metropolitan Opera on January 28, 1918. Granados came to the United States to attend this performance, after which he visited Washington, D.C. to play the piano for President Wilson at the White House. He was aboard the ship _Folkstone_, sailing from Folkstone to Dieppe, when it was torpedoed by a German U-Boat during World War I on March 24, 1916, bringing him to his death. In their rhythmic and harmonic vocabulary, Granados’ best music is unmistakably Spanish. Perhaps his most famous single piece of music is an orchestral “Intermezzo” from the opera _Goyescas_. He wrote it after he had fully completed his score to the opera because the directors of the Metropolitan Opera filled the need of an instrumental interlude. This sensual Spanish melody is as famous in various transcriptions (including one for cello and piano by Gaspar Cassadó) as it is in its original orchestral version. Twelve _Spanish Dances_, for piano, op. 37 (1893) are also popular. The most frequently performed of these is the fifth in E minor named _Andaluza_ (or _Playera_). Fritz Kreisler transcribed it for violin and piano, one of numerous adaptations. The sixth in D major is also familiar—_Rondalla Aragonesa_, a jota, transcribed for violin and piano by Jacques Thibaud. Edvard Grieg Edvard Hagerup Grieg, Norway’s greatest composer, was born in Bergen on June 15, 1843. Revealing unusual talent for music as a boy, he was sent to the Leipzig Conservatory in 1858. He remained there several years, a pupil of Plaidy, Moscheles, and Reinecke among others. In 1863 he returned to his native land where several of his early compositions were performed. He then lived for several years in Copenhagen. There he met and became a friend of two musicians who interested him in Scandinavian music and musical nationalism: Niels Gade and Rikard Nordraak. Under their guidance and stimulation Grieg began writing music in a national style, beginning with the _Humoresques_ for piano, op. 6, which he dedicated to Nordraak. Grieg also became a sponsor of Scandinavian music and composers by helping Nordraak organize a society for their benefit. In 1866, Grieg helped arrange in Oslo the first concert ever given over entirely to Norwegian music; a year later he helped found the Norwegian Academy of Music. He also served as a conductor of the Harmonic Society, an important influence in presenting Scandinavian music. After marrying Nina Hagerup in 1867, Grieg settled in Oslo to assume an imperial position in its musical life. He also achieved worldwide recognition as a composer through his violin Sonata in F major, the A major piano concerto, and the incidental music to Ibsen’s _Peer Gynt_. He was the recipient of many honors both from his native land and from foreign countries. His sixtieth birthday was honored as a national Norwegian holiday. From 1885 on Grieg lived in a beautiful villa, Troldhaugen, a few miles from Bergen. Music lovers made pilgrimages to meet him and pay him tribute. His remains were buried there following his sudden death in Bergen on September 4, 1907. Its national identity is the quality that sets Grieg’s music apart from that of most of the other Romanticists of his day. Though he rarely quoted folk melodies or dance tunes directly, he produced music that is Norwegian to its core. In his best music he speaks of Norway’s geography, culture, people, backgrounds, holidays, and legends in melodies and rhythms whose kinship with actual folk music is unmistakable. The _Holberg Suite_ for string orchestra, op. 40 (1885)—or to use its official title of _From Holberg’s Time_—was written to honor the bicentenary of Ludvig Holberg, often called the founder of Danish literature. The composer also adapted this music for solo piano. Bearing in mind that the man he was honoring belonged to a bygone era, Grieg wrote a suite in classical style and with strictly classical forms; but his own romantic and at times national identity is not sacrificed. The first movement is a “Prelude,” a vigorous movement almost in march time. This is followed by three classical dances—“Sarabande,” “Gavotte,” and “Musette.” The fourth movement temporarily deserts the 17th and 18th centuries to offer a graceful “Air” in the manner of a Norwegian folk song, but the classical era returns in all its stateliness and grace in the concluding “Rigaudon.” _In Autumn_, a concert overture for orchestra, op. 11 (1865, revised 1888) was Grieg’s first effort to write symphonic music. This composition is a fresh and spontaneous expression of joy in Nature’s beauties. The principal melody is a song written by Grieg in 1865, “Autumn Storm.” This material is preceded by an introduction and followed by a coda in which a happy dance by harvesters is introduced. The _Lyric Suite_ for orchestra, op. 54 (1903) is an adaptation by the composer of four numbers from his _Lyric Pieces_, for piano—a set of sixty-six short compositions gathered in ten volumes, each a delightful miniature of Norwegian life. The first of the four episodes in the _Lyric Suite_ is “Shepherd Lad,” scored entirely for strings, music in a dreamy mood whose main romantic melody has the character of a nocturne. “Rustic March” (or “Peasant March”), for full orchestra, has for its principal thought a ponderous, rhythmic theme first given by the clarinets. The third movement is a poetic “Nocturne” whose main melody is presented by the first violins. The suite ends with the popular “March of the Dwarfs” in the grotesque style of the composer’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” from _Peer Gynt_. This movement alternates a sprightly fantastic march tune (first heard in the violins) with an expressive melody for solo violin. The _Norwegian Dance No. 2_ is the second of a set of four folk dances originally for piano four hands and later transcribed by the composer for orchestra, op. 35 (1881). This second dance, in the key of A minor, is probably the composer’s most famous composition in a national idiom. It is in three parts, the flanking section consisting of a sprightly rustic dance tune, while the middle part is faster and more vigorous contrasting music. The other somewhat less familiar, but no less beguiling, _Norwegian Dances_ are the first in D minor, the third in G major, and the fourth in D major. The _Peer Gynt Suite No. 1_, for orchestra, op. 46 (1876) consists of four numbers from the incidental music for the Ibsen drama, _Peer Gynt_, produced in Oslo in 1876. Ibsen’s epic is a picaresque drama about a capricious and at times spirited Norwegian peasant named Peer, and his fabulous adventures, some of them amatory. He abducts the bride, Solveig, then deserts her; as an outlaw he roams the world; when he returns home he finds Solveig still believing in him and through that belief he comes upon salvation. The first movement of Suite No. 1 is a bucolic picture, “Morning,” in which a barcarolle-type melody is prominent. This is followed by a tender elegy for muted strings, “Ase’s Death,” Ase being Peer Gynt’s mother. A capricious, sensual dance follows, “Anitra’s Dance,” a mazurka-like melody with an Oriental identity. The final movement, “In the Hall of the Mountain King” is a grotesque march built from a four-measure phrase which grows in volume and intensity until it evolves into a thunderous fortissimo. Grieg prepared a second suite from his incidental music for _Peer Gynt_, op. 55. Only one movement from this set is popular, “Solveig’s Song,” a haunting Norwegian song for muted strings portraying Solveig, the abducted bride who thereafter remains forever faithful to Peer Gynt. This is the final movement of a suite whose preceding movements are “Ingrid’s Lament,” “Arabian Dance,” and “Peer Gynt’s Homecoming.” _Sigurd Jorsalfar_, a suite for orchestra, op. 56 (1872, revised 1892) also comes from the incidental music to a play, in this case a historical drama of the same name by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, produced in Oslo in 1872. The central character is the twelfth-century Norwegian king, Sigurd, who joins the Crusades to fight heroically against the Saracens. There are three movements to this suite. The first “Prelude” is subtitled “In the King’s Hall,” and has three distinct sections. In the first of these the main thought is a theme for clarinets and bassoons against plucked strings; in the second, a trio, the most prominent melody is that for flute imitated by the oboe; the third part repeats the first. The second movement is “Intermezzo” or “Borghild’s Dream.” This is serene music alternated by an agitated mood. The finale is “March of Homage” in which trumpet fanfares and a loud chord for full orchestra set the stage for the main theme, in four cellos. This same theme is later proclaimed triumphantly by the full orchestra. Midway there appears a trio in which the first violins offer the main melody. _Two Elegiac Melodies_, for string orchestra, op. 34 (1880) are adaptations of two of the composer’s most famous songs found in op. 33, “Heartwounds” and “The Last Spring,” lyrics by A. O. Vinje. Both melodies are for the most part in a somber mood. The first is in a comparatively fast time while the second is in slow tempo. _Two Northern Melodies_, for string orchestra, op. 63 (1895) is, as the title indicates, in two sections. The first, “In the Style of a Folksong,” offers its main melody in the cellos after a short