VI - America, 1939–1961
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 March 2023
Summary
The Graingers returned to America from a European vacation just weeks before the Second World War broke out. Although the United States was not immediately involved in that war, Grainger hurriedly copied his more valuable documents and recordings, and dispatched them to a variety of locations. Hitler's Blitzkrieg into northern Europe during the spring of 1940 terrified him, and he hired an apartment in Springfield, Missouri, in the hope of being far from any combat which might occur on either the east or the west American coast. From Springfield he ventured out on concert tours, often playing to the troops. He also continued his summer work at the National Music Camp, Interlochen, through most of the years of war. Back in White Plains after the war, the Graingers devoted much of their joint energy to arranging material for the Museum in Melbourne and to the home printing of his music. In collaboration with the physicist Burnett Cross, Grainger worked on various ‘Free Music’ machines, achieving considerable success in realizing his life-long dream of a music of flexible pitches, rhythms and dynamics. Although continuing to perform until 1960, he increasingly directed his attention to educational institutions which would programme his own compositions in return for his performances of well-known concertos. His final recordings were made in 1957. From around 1953 Grainger suffered from cancer, to which he eventually succumbed on 20 February 1961.
MAURICE LORIAUX
(1909–1998)
Maurice Loriaux first met Grainger in 1939, when he took over arrangements for a section of Grainger's concert tours in the American Midwest. He continued to manage Grainger's tours in the region until the late 1950s, becoming one of the pianist's closer friends in this final period. Loriaux's own artistic interests were very broad. As well as playing and teaching string instruments, he designed over three hundred church interiors and worked with stained glass. A bust of Grainger features among his sculptures.
In Bartlesville [Oklahoma] Percy began using our residence as a ‘homefrom- home’, and continued in Santa Fe from 1947 to 1960—usually once a year or so, staying several days at a time. He called these his ‘rest stops’. Ella was sometimes with him. They both often told us how they enjoyed the privacy of these visits.
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- Portrait of Percy Grainger , pp. 165 - 200Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2002