Klarinet Archive - Posting 000339.txt from 1994/11

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Orchestral music from band music
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 1994 10:08:26 -0500

Of those mentioned thus far, there was a reference to a number of the
works of Percy Grainger and the submitter suggested that some of his
works might have been transcribed from a band-version original. That
is almost certainly correct but difficult to establish.

One of my happiest memories was getting to know and be friends with
Percy and Ella Grainger for the last 3 or 4 years of Percy's life. To
a small degree, I came into his life as he came into Grieg's life; i.e.,
as a much younger man meeting a much older one. And I think I took
him to his last public concert. It was on the mall at Central Park
in NYC, the Goldman band was playing, and Percy was dying (though I
did not know it at the time). It was a whole evening of Grainger's
music but he was too weak to conduct or participate in any way.

The woman who is now my wife but who was then my fiance, and I met
Percy and Ella in 1958. We were friends with them until Percy died
in the early 60s. As a result of that I personally saw how he worked
and how his creations evolved.

When Percy did a composition (mostly because a market or a commission
had arisen), he created the composition for the medium that he had
in hand, but he then rearranged the work for a half-dozen to a dozen
other media. There are exceptions, to be sure, but in the main that
was his way of creation.

For example, there is a work of his called "Immovable Do" which exists
for band, orchestra, clarinet choir, sax choir, clarinet and sax choir,
clarinet and low brass, and probably another bunch of groups that I
know nothing about. Very often Percy did not remember which instrumentation
was the one for which he originally wrote the work, though a special
case such as Lincolnshire Posy he remembered very well. I happen to know
that all of his arrangements of Handel in the Strand descend from a
single original for string quintet and piano.

So when you play a work of Grainger in orchestral version, it might have
been written for that group, or it might have been written for band and
transcribed for that group, or it might have been written for 53 bassoons
and then transcribed to all other media. The Grainger museum in Australia
is trying to sort this all out.

I once tried to talk him into writing a work for solo clarinet and some
ensemble of his own choosing. He said that he considered the concerto
form to be undemocratic and would not do it.

====================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
====================================