Inventing Percy Grainger

Investigates the dialogue and tensions between Percy Grainger's public biography and his self-conscious autobiographical construction via his own writings and autobiographical museum.

The Australian-American composer Percy Grainger (1882-1961) was a true polymath: composer, pianist, ethnographer, essayist, folk-song collector and more. This book considers the construction of Percy Grainger's biography on stage and screen, exploring the tensions and dialogue between these and Grainger's self-conscious autobiographical construction through his own writings and autobiographical museum.

The book explores biographies of Grainger published during his lifetime and considers the ways in which Grainger was depicted in the years following his death, from immediate laudatory tributes to the first academic biographical studies and the first appearance of Grainger as a character in Ken Russell's 1968 Song of Summer. It explores the significant shift in constructions of Grainger's biography that occurred in the 1970s with the expansion of access to the Grainger museum's archive (Grainger himself began documenting his everyday existence and creative practice), public awareness of Grainger's sadomasochism, and the publication of John Bird's import biography in 1976. Further case studies of plays, films and performance art pieces explore how Grainger and his music have been understood in the changing political and social climate of twentieth and twenty-first century Australia. In examining (semi)fictionalised representations of Grainger through the work of other artists the book considers questions of identity, meaning and representation in Australian society and culture.