Prefatory note by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. Appreciation by Leopold Stokowski. Oxford University Press. On the dust-jacket cover of this excellent book, the composer Percy Aldridge Grainger looks out like a child with a naughty secret he hopes you share, so intently that the air between you and the portrait seems to vibrate.
Few composers lead outward lives especially interesting.
Most don't go exploring in remote corners of the world, break up spy rings, or achieve worldly power. Whatever interest we have in them usually centers on their inner lives. I would say by almost any measure, Grainger was a genius, or at least a polymath. With only three months of formal schooling, he managed to master composition, the piano, electronics, and several languages. Yet, to his death, he remained intellectually a precocious adolescent.