Grainger as Innovator

Free Music

Probably music of the future will be performed by machines ...Composer will make his own machine, (like an inventor) most likely his own sound-colors, (like painter his colors) will perfect composition and performance of same right by himself. Percy Grainger, 1901

Percy Grainger spent the last 20 years of his life focused on creating Free Music machines. Assisted by his wife, Ella, and Burnett Cross, a local physicist, he first worked to adapt traditional instruments and then created new devices, attempting to create the sounds he had been hearing in his mind throughout his life.

Starting with his childhood fascination of the undulating waves on Albert Park Lake in Melbourne, Grainger wondered how this motion could be translated into sound. He imagined a music with free rhythms, independent melodic lines and continuous variations in pitch. Many of his early compositions demonstrate this interest, incorporating irregular rhythms, varying time-signatures, and singular melodies.

Sources:

Colson, Susan and Jackson, Paul."Free Music". New York Archives, Summer 2020, Vol.20, No.1.

Experiments in Freedom: Grainger’s Free Music, Grainger Museum, The University of Melbourne