Percy Grainger

If you haven't heard any of the extraordinary symphonies, choral works or piano music of Percy Grainger I would urge you not to bother with the greatest possible haste.

Grainger was born in 1882 and managed to mooch around, generally annoying people, until his death (of natural causes) in 1961. He was born 6 years before Celtic Football Club were founded and died 6 years before I, myself, was founded (i.e. born).

Can anything be read into that?

Unlikely.

The notable thing about Grainger is that his primary interest in music was to promote his daft ideas about racial purity. He had very little interest in the music per se (per cy).

For example, he despised all musical instruments. He considered them an absolutely unnecessary affectation in the making of music. He preferred to develop and promote his daft musical ideas about racial purity via less conventional forms. He eschewed actual musical instruments and composed and played his pieces literally "upon and in the air we breath". 

Percy Grainger was a very odd man.

He had a particularly strong aversion to the piano. He believed that it "deliberately destroyed" his "melodiously conceived ideas" by trying to "shoehorn" them into the limitations of "two human hands" and a "box of hammers and strings". Strong words indeed.

He did, however, manage to "dish up", as he put it, several piano pieces in a variety of styles. All of them were, unfortunately, unplayable. This was much down to Grainger's unconventional musical notation which he attempted to free from Latin and Greek "impurities". So his sheet music contains such racially engendered terms as "louden hugely", "heavily but cloyingly", "harped all the way" and "make toppermost whiter" that nobody, but nobody, could make head nor tail of.

What else? Let me check my Wikipedia ... here we go,

1. Grainger's mother allocated time each day to stare at a statue of a Greek god in the belief it would pass some of its qualities to her child.
   
2. In London, he was known as "the jogging pianist" for his habit of racing through the streets to a concert, where he would bound on stage at the last minute because he preferred to be in a state of utter exhaustion when playing
   
3. In 1910 Grainger began designing and making his own clothing, ranging from jackets, to shorts, togas, muumuus and leggings, all made from towels and also intricate grass and beaded skirts.
   
4. He also designed a crude forerunner of the modern sports bra for his Danish sweetheart.

As mentioned, Percy Grainger was a very odd man.

Eventually, disaffected and embittered, Grainger gave up composing and playing entirely and spent his winter years making up jolly folk songs. About racial purity.