A Percy Grainger glossary

Grainger, drawn by John Singer Sargent

When addressing the subject of Percy Grainger, it’s easy to concentrate on the Australian composer’s tics and eccentricities.

…which is exactly why I’m doing it. Why make life difficult?

Percy Grainger was born in Melbourne in 1882 and for much of his life was noted primarily as a successful concert pianist and composer of small-scale keyboard works. He was also a tireless researcher and arranger of folk songs, particularly in Britain and Scandinavia, attracting praise from Britten and Grieg, among others. After moving to the US with his mother Rose, Grainger worked on unique instruments of his own devising, while also establishing a museum dedicated to his life and career in Melbourne in 1938. His legacy assured, Grainger died 50 years ago today.

From his self-designed clothing to the prodigious energy which compelled him to jog between towns on concert tours, Grainger was one of the stranger 20^th century composers. But if you know anything of Grainger’s idiosyncrasies it is most likely his weakness for flagellation. However the more you read about him, the more you realise this was one of the least strange things about him.

His wife Ella was, fortunately for Grainger, a willing participant. The composer donated his collection of whips and other paraphernalia to his museum and discussed his passion for flogging in a manner admirably free of shame or neurosis. “I am a sadist & a flagellant – my highest sexual delight is to whip a beloved woman’s body…To a lesser degree I enjoy being whipped myself (& before marriage used to whip myself every few weeks)…” These observations were contained in a letter entitled “Read This If Ella Grainger or Percy Grainger Are Found Dead Covered with Whip Marks” (eminently practical; after all, the older you get, the more likely you are to forget your safe word).

This letter is contained in Self-Portrait of Percy Grainger, a posthumous collection of the composer’s writings, some of which were dashed off as aides-memoires while others were notes for an autobiography which never eventuated. The personality which emerges is obsessive, irascible and – above all – mother-fixated. Pieces like “Arguments with Beloved Mother”, “Mother’s Worship of Bodily Beauty” and (my favourite) “Mother’s Wilfulness, Recklessness, Fearlessness, Bossiness, Violence if Opposed, Tendency to Burn Food When Cooking, Vehemence” speak of an obsession of Norman Bates proportions.

Mother and son

In 1922 Rose Grainger, beset by mental problems, threw herself from a New York skyscraper. This was the defining event in Grainger’s life, although a few years later he was positing the theory that it was in fact a “Nietzschean” act: “She saw (I think likely) me as the younger, superior, healthier, more gifted one, saw herself as the older, weaker, inferior one, thinking her mind was going.” In fact, his mother had been disturbed by rumours that she was involved in an incestuous relationship with her son. Though false, you could see how Percy’s habit of parading nude in his mother’s presence well into adulthood might have nudged others to that conclusion.

The early 20^th century was a golden age of pseudo-science, and Grainger was a keen reformer in his dietary and other lifestyle choices, and an admirer of early self-help guru Bernarr Macfadden. But as his callous, narcissistic theory about his mother’s death shows, this can lead to dark places. The idea of eugenic sacrifice recurs in another passage, in which Grainger appeals “Let us set our house in order – kill off the sick, the nasty, the ugly, the lazy.” Delve even further into Self-Portrait and you enter the kind of territory normally explored in late night talk-back radio. A fervent racist, Grainger regarded Scandinavia as the wellspring of all that was good and right, his scorn for other ethnic groups – “the hostile world of rough, harsh dark-eyed people” – increasing in reverse proportion to degrees of latitude. And the older he got the more cantankerous he became. A 1958 piece entitled “The Things I Dislike” began “Almost everything. First of all foreigners, which means: all Europeans except the British, the Scandinavians & the Dutch.”

Grainger was nothing if not thorough, and his distrust of anything originating south of Holland led to him to try and purge his writing of Greco-Latin elements, which were isolated in double brackets, introducing a kind of apartheid into his very sentences. He sought alternatives for these quarantined interlopers based on Nordic roots (much as the Nazis would later seek to purge French vocabulary from German). And so family became “breed-group”, literature became “book art” and attractive became “on-draw-some”; Grainger called the resulting mishmash “Blue-Eyed English”.

This approach does produce moments of poetic grace: “fury-feel-thy” for passionate, or “self-enoughness” for individualism. But no-one could argue for the elegance much less economy of a construct like “weal-helpsome tone-feast tone-bill-of-fare” (charity concert program). Blue-Eyed English in fact resembles the tortured verbiage of Westerwenglish, an ongoing Internet meme parodying the broken English of German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle. “Westerwave” imagines the minister’s thoughts by painstakingly translating idioms, names and everyday vocabulary syllable-by-syllable from German into ultra-literal and ultimately unintelligible English (it shouldn’t be funny, but it is).

Meanwhile, if you’re hurry-itchy to joy-feel word-chains in the tone-wright’s tongue, here is your cut-out-and-keep guide to Blue-Eyed English:

	English	Blue-Eyed English
	abstraction	thot-withdrawness
	address	whither-write
	admiration	worthprizement
	admittedly	owned-up-to-ly
	agony	rack-pain
	amateur	fun-job
	amazed	wonder-struck
	amuse	befunny
	application	put-to-use-ness
	argument	talk-wrestlement
	arithmetic	tally-lore
	arrive	at-come
	artist	art-man
	artistic	art-some
	attitude	mind-slant
	attractive	on-draw-some
	audience	listen-host
	author	book-wright
	balanced	evenweighted
	brilliant	bright-shining
	centre	ring-core
	certain	outsingled
	characteristic	type-true
	charity	weal-helpsome
	circumstances	roundringments
	civilisation	town-skill-th
	climatic	weather-kindsome
	combined	linked-together
	competition	vie-ment
	composer	tone-wright
	concert	tone-feast
	consoling	mind-balming
	content	enoughed
	contribution	in-pay-ment
	couple	two-some
	creation	begetting
	cruelty	cruel-hoods
	culture	soultith
	defendant	sued-man
	democracy	chance-for-all-dom
	desert	sand-waste
	desirability	wish-for-ableness
	desirable	wish-worthy
	different	othersome
	disagree	twi-lean
	divorce	wed-endment
	education	mind-tilth
	effort	try-deed
	endure	thole
	energetic	go-getsome
	enjoy	joy-feel
	especially	out-of-the-way
	exception	out-countedness
	excitement	up-het-ment
	experience	been-thru-someness
	expression	face-look
	failure	out-loss
	family	breed-group
	figuratively	speak-likementishly
	for instance	for sample
	furnishing	house-gearing
	genius	over-soul
	history	past-lore
	humanitarianism	mankindliness
	humanity	mankind-some
	ignorance	un-knowledge
	imagine	mind-fancy
	impatient	hurry-itchy
	impersonal	un-one-body-some
	impression	mind-print
	indispensable	un-do-withoutable
	individualism	self-enoughness
	instinct	nature-urge
	insurmountable	unclimb-over-able
	interested	mind-stirred
	interloper	tween-loper
	introspective	inward-turned
	legal	law-some
	literature	book-art
	manifestation	forth-showing
	metal	wrought-ore
	mischievousness	scaith-will
	moment	time-speck
	morality	ought-code
	music	tonery
	musical composition	tone-work
	musical instrument	tone-tool
	national	landfolkish
	nature	mantype
	negativity	nayfulness
	normal	mean-some
	occupy	bestand
	origin	whence-come-ness
	parent	birth-giver
	passage	tone-stretch
	passionate	fury-feel-thy
	patient	bide-willing
	personality	who-th
	popular	folk-pleasesome
	possibility	might-be-ness
	practise	work-out
	presence	at-ness
	program	tone-bill-of-fare
	pronounce	word-sound
	proportion	part-against-part-metement
	protégé	boon-taker
	protest	grumble-shout
	question	ask-ment
	quotation	quote-ment
	reaction	gainst-stir
	realise	real-know
	rebellious	uprisesome
	receive	fain-take
	recital	song-show
	regrettable	rue-worthy
	religious	god-worshipsome
	remembered	called-to-mind
	repetition	again-&-again-ness
	reveal	un-hide
	sadism	cruel-hood-worship
	sanctioned	law-hallowed
	satisfaction	mind-fulfilment
	second	twaid
	secretive	hide-fain
	sentence	word-chain
	society	pomp-world
	soldier	fight-for-pay-man
	special	out-singled
	statue	shape-art-piece
	success	out-winth
	successful	fightwinsome
	suicide	self-killing
	surface	top-layer
	surgery	cut-cure-craft
	systematic	plan-born
	telegram	wire-sendment
	theatre	play-house
	tolerant	mild-mooded
	tragedy	doom-play
	transparent	see-thru-able
	university	all-school

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