Inventing Percy Grainger

The Construction of Biography on Page, Stage and Screen
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-1-83765-221-1
Verlag: Boydell Press

Buch, Englisch, 272 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 578 g

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) described himself as an 'all round man': composer, pianist, artist, inventor, linguist, ethnographer, essayist, and more. He also went to great lengths to shape his own biographical narrative, developing an eccentric public persona in the press, writing extensive autobiographical texts and establishing a vast autobiographical museum. But what happens when this self-fashioned narrative meets writers, scholars, and creatives in the decades since his death? This book traces the construction and negotiation of Grainger's biography on page, stage and screen through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, exploring the tensions and dialogue between these and Grainger's autobiographical self.

Through a series of case studies, with a focus on works created in Australia, the book explores how Grainger's public persona and received biographical narrative were developed then transformed by other writers, playwrights, filmmakers, and performance artists to suit the changing needs of their own time and place. Examining a variety of texts, from celebrity profiles, obituaries, and traditional academic studies, to film, theatre, opera and poetry, the book offers a biography of an afterlife: a study of how Grainger set up a series of mechanisms to control how his life would be remembered, then tests these against a succession of works that engage directly with those sources.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kirby, Sarah

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Theaterwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikwissenschaft Allgemein Einzelne Komponisten und Musiker
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Geschichte der Musik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction

PART 1
1. Biographical Narrative and the 'Celebrity' Profile
2. The 1960s - Tributes, Theses, and Grainger on Screen
3. John Bird's Percy Grainger (1976)

PART II
4. A Whip Round for Percy Grainger: (A Serious Comedy in Two Acts) (1982) by Thérèse Radic
5. Percy and Rose (1982) by Rob George
6. Passion: The Story of Percy Grainger (1999) and Other Grainger Biopics

PART III
7. Suite for Percy Grainger (2014) by Jessica L. Wilkinson
8. Percy (2014) by Michael McNeill, John Matthews, and Margery Smith
9. Grainger at Home (2019) by Karen Van Spall and Lucy Esdaile

Conclusion
Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Kirby, Sarah
SARAH KIRBY is a Research Fellow at the Grainger Museum, University of Melbourne. She is the author of Exhibitions, Music and the British Empire (The Boydell Press, 2022).