Jack and Percy
Yes, those of you who saw my previous post about the notices will probably have guessed that it was Jack in the Green who arrived yesterday, May Day, to mark the season with Morris dancing and other celebrations. There’s a photograph of Jack below, walking through Winchombe on his way to morning coffee. He appeared together with a group who make it their business around these parts to mark the stages of the year, an enterprise I admire greatly. This weekend of celebrations had an additional and unexpected pleasure, which provided a surprising link with another English building. During the afternoon of 1 May, Gwilym Davies gave a fascinating talk about some of the area’s traditional songs. The talk centred on the colourful figure of the Australian composer Percy Grainger, who was famous not only for writing his own music and for arranging (or ‘dishing up’, as he put it) the music of others in new, fresh forms, but also for travelling around collecting folk songs, which he might then ‘dish up’ in their turn. Grainger both wrote these songs down and recorded them on his wax-cylinder phonograph, still new technology in the early 1900s. Some of these songs would be quite lost today if Grainger (or colleagues such as Ralph Vaughan Williams) had not captured them on paper or wax.
In 1907, Grainger came to Gloucestershire and stayed at Stanway House, then the home of Lady Elcho, who threw interesting and rather arty house parties where one might come across the likes of J M Barrie or John Singer Sargent. Grainger travelled a few miles down the road to Winchcombe, where he visited the town’s workhouse and recorded several of the inmates singing their favourite songs. It was fascinating to hear some of Grainger’s recordings, crackly and indistinct but moving nonetheless, and to imagine him and his friends at Stanway, this golden house of the 16th and 17th centuries with its Cotswold stone gables and giant five-sided bay window. At Stanway there is also a terrific gatehouse of the 1630s, visible to the right of the photograph. And a medieval barn. And a cricket pavilion built for J M Barrie. And a water garden with the world's tallest gravity-fed fountain. I like to think of Percy Grainger performing one of his favourite tricks, hurling a tennis ball into the air over a house, and running round the back to catch it. But the tall gables of Stanway House would probably have defeated him.
Jack in the Green, Winchcombe
Marvelous post! I have been a fan of Percy Grainger's music for many years, as it is played regularly on my local public radio station here in the Hudson River Valley of New York. But I knew nothing of him. Thank you for the education (and an excellent blog, by the way). Reggie
ReplyDeleteThank you very much.
ReplyDeleteI like Grainger's music too – both the breezy orchestral stuff and some of the more wistful piano pieces and choral works.
Take a look at Ken Russell's Song of Summer, his simply superb television film on Frederick Delius, for a glimpse of Percy Grainger doing his ball trick by running through Delius's house in France. Fred's emmanuensis Eric Fenby watches amazed, and is told by Fred: "This is Percy Grainger. He composes music. Sometimes".
ReplyDeletePeter: Thank you. I must see this film. I've seen Russell's film about Elgar, but not his Delius. In fact I remember missing Delius when it was first shown on television, which shows (a) my age and (b) my curious capacity for remembering non-events...
ReplyDeleteMy daughter and I stayed in Winchcombe twice during our Cotswolds walking tour, and we loved it. Stanway and Stanton are also favorites, particularly the view from The Mount pub in Stanton. There's a copper beech tree in the field just beyond Stanway House that we quietly adopted as "our tree" during our walk. Thanks for summoning wonderful memories. DU
ReplyDeleteI'm very pleased that my post brought back good memories. It is indeed a beautiful part of the world.
ReplyDeleteYour piece on Stanway with its Percy Grainger connections was wonderful. Whilst we have the buildings in 'bricks and mortar' so to speak, what a fragile thing is the sadly neglected part of our English heritage, the folk song. Without the work of collectors like Grainger, Butterworth, Gardiner, Vaughan Williams, Lucy Broadwood et al, much of this rich cultural seam would have remained unmined and indeed died with previous generations. Thanks for the reminder of this fact alongside your usual intriguing architectural observations.
ReplyDeleteJon: Absolutely. We have so much to thank the folk-song collectors for. Their work must have inspired many to sing those traditional songs, reviving folk music in pubs and clubs and houses; you know all about that. Plus the incorporation of folk tunes into more formal pieces by the likes of Grainger and Vaughan Williams has brought those tunes to a still wider audience and greatly enriched classical music too.
ReplyDeleteI heartily recommend a visit to Cecil Sharp House, Regents Park Road in London. Here is housed the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library...indeed much of the amazing collection is now online, but some of the rarest of rare Grainger recordings are digitally preserved both there and at the National Sound Archive. But back to buildings....
ReplyDelete