Concert pianist, composer, folklorist and inventor, Percy Grainger was born in Australia but left at an early age to pursue what became a glittering international musical career. He was very interested in folk music and song and was a pioneer in the use of sound recording in the field using the Edison Phonograph in 1905 and after to make an important collection of English folksongs (including some outstanding bawdry).
Grainger used British and other countries’ folk music in many of his compositions, most famously the reworked Morris dance tune that became ‘Country Gardens’ (featured in the NFSA Sounds of Australia collection at https://aso.gov.au/titles/music/country-gardens/
Although he visited Australia several times during his long life and even humped a neat swag from Tailem Bend to Keith in 1924, he is not known to have collected or been much interested in Australian folksong. One of his very early compositions, now apparently lost, is titled ‘Bush Music’, suggesting the tantalising possibility that the very young Percy did have a go at Australian traditional music.
Hear some of Grainger’s field recordings at the British Library https://sounds.bl.uk/World-and-traditional-music/Percy-Grainger-Collection
The Percy Grainger Folk Song Collection and brief biography at the English Folk Dance and Song Society https://www.vwml.org/archives-catalogue/pg
Grainger moved to America in World War 1 and lived there for the rest of his life, so the Library of Congress has a good deal of related material, photographs, papers, etc, available by a search of the Catalog under his name.
