Grainger: The Jungle Book

Day 132

Grainger the Jungle Book

Polyphony

Stephen Layton

I’ve got to know a lot of Grainger’s music over the years - there is certainly more to him than Country Gardens and Handel in the Strand, delightful as they are. He is an intriguing figure - like more of the Frankfurt gang he was certainly rather odd (I don’t recall any other composer’s biography which includes naked photographs of subject and his wife) and he spent a lot of his later life experimenting with what he called free music using machines that he invented. One suspects that had been born a generation or two later he would have been a leading figure in the development of electro-acoustic music.

This setting of extracts from Kipling’s Jungle Book occupied Grainger on and off for 50 years. Some of the pieces are for unaccompanied voices, others are accompanied by a typically eccentric combination of instruments, including Grainger’s beloved saxophones.  I found the whole thing fascinating. Some of it was in a fairly characteristic folk-music style but others were quite wild with some extraordinary vocal and instrumental sonorities. Sometimes Grainger’s music can be rather gluttonous, with thick orchestration and and highly chromatic harmonies. There is some of this here, but in other places there is real lightness of touch.

It is hard to imagine that the whole cycle could be performance very often - the choral writing is virtuosic and a large group of instruments is required , some of which play for only a few moments. But as a one-off is was certainly a fascinating piece.

I discovered quite recently that I have a family connection with Grainger - a distant great uncle knew Grainger well and there is correspondence between them in the published Grainger correspondence. Finding  out about that gave me real pleasure.