‘Deeply helpful training’: Percy Grainger’s First Piano Teachers in Late Nineteenth-century Melbourne

Abstract

Looking back in the mid-1930s at his early student years, Percy Grainger—with characteristic binary opposition—contrasts a remembered Frankfurt of early adolescence, where the teachers were ‘rude and unpleasant to me’, with the ‘deeply helpful training’ provided immediately beforehand in Melbourne. This article looks at the brief period between 1892 and 1895 when the young Grainger first received piano tuition outside the home from the Prussian-born Louis Pabst and then, immediately after Pabst left Melbourne, from his pupil, Adelaide Burkitt. It contextualizes these years broadly and allows the Melbourne depression of the 1890s, which reached its zenith in the middle of this period, to resonate throughout. The article reveals that the young Grainger belonged to a nexus of gifted ‘scholarship’ pupils and that when he decided to leave Melbourne Pabst tried to make provision for them all. It also observes, in passing, the irony that while Grainger, like all colonial musicians, was understood to require study abroad, he upheld his Melbourne tuition to be superior to all that followed in Frankfurt and Berlin. The best of Europe had, for the then impressionable young Grainger, come to him.

Notes

¹ Percy Grainger, letter to W.A. Laver, 2 January 1939. Reg. No. 03.4022, Grainger Museum (GM).

² See Percy Grainger, letter to W.A. Laver, 25 April 1934; and W.A. Laver, ‘Opening of the Grainger Museum, 10th December 1938: Professor W. A. Laver’s Introductory Address’ (typescript). Reg. No. 03.4022, GM. Laver’s ‘Address’ is based, word for word, on information Grainger sent him.

³ While John Bird certainly mentions the economic depression that ravaged the city in the early 1890s at the very opening of his biography, it is little apparent in his narrative of Grainger’s pre-Frankfurt life. John Bird, Percy Grainger, 2nd ed. (Sydney: Currency Press, 1999), 2.

⁴ See Simon Perry, ‘Grainger’s “Autobiographical Writings: New Light on Old Questions”’, Australasian Music Research 5 (2000), 125–34.

⁵ Percy Grainger, Diary Frankfurt, entries for 14 March (p. 12) and 20 March 1896 (p. 16). Reg. No. 03.2022, GM.

⁶ See, for example, Adelaide Burkitt, letters to Percy Grainger, 31 June 1896 (Reg. No. 10.0003) and 27 September 1924 (Reg. No. 03.4001), GM.

⁷ ‘Pabst Museum’ legend. Reg. No. 04.0332, GM. Also see Belinda Nemec, ‘The Grainger Museum in its Museological and Historical Contexts’ (PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, 2006), Appendix: The Museum Legends, 41.

⁸ Pabst was born in Konigsberg (later Kaliningrad) in 1846 and seems to have died in Nuremberg in 1921.

⁹ See, for example, Age (10 July 1894), 6; Table Talk (13 July 1894), 5; Argus (11 September 1894), 5; and Table Talk (15 September 1894), 6.

¹⁰ ‘Grand Concert given by Master Percy Grainger’. Concert programme, Dorum Collection, GM. These annotations number the tickets pre-booked and sold at the door in the various price categories (1–10s) by music sellers W.H. Glen & Co.

¹¹Table Talk (15 September 1894), 6.

¹² Held on 6, 23 and 30 October 1894. W.J. Turner was father of the well-known critic.

¹³ Unattributed anecdote in Bird, Percy Grainger, 26–7.

¹⁴ Louis Pabst, letter card to Percy Grainger, 8 November 1894. Reg. No. 10.0003, GM.

¹⁵ Concert in aid of St Patrick’s Cathedral Fair, Hibernian Hall, 30 October 1894 and ‘Grand Evening Concert’, Town Hall, Prahran (now East St Kilda), 13 February 1895.

¹⁶ For the extent of Marshall-Hall’s involvement in promoting Percy Grainger at this time, see Jennifer Hill, ‘G.W.L Marshall-Hall and Percy Grainger: the “good sort” and the “anarchist with definite principles”’, in Marshall-Hall’s Melbourne: Music, Art and Controversy 1891–1915, ed. Thérèse Radic and Suzanne Robinson (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2012), 181–9.

¹⁷ See John H. Grainger, letter to F.H. Tothill, 20 May 1895, ‘Percy is going to play a few things so that a few of my friends may hear him prior to his leaving for Germany next Wednesday week’. Reg. No. 02.0514, GM. For a detailed review, see ‘Master Percy Grainger’, South Australian Register (25 May 1895), 6.

¹⁸ Bird, Percy Grainger, 23.

¹⁹ Herman Schrader, handwritten ‘Notes found on an old letter’, attached to typescript, ‘Reminiscences of J.H. Grainger and the Adelaide String Quartet’. Reg. No. 02.0514, GM.

²⁰ ‘Percy Grainger’s Published Compositions, 1st Editions’ legend, 2 November 1938. Transcribed in Nemec, ‘The Grainger Museum’, Appendix: The Museum Legends, 16.

²¹ ‘Music as a Profession’, Table Talk (13 April 1894), 6.

²² Ann Larson, Growing Up in Melbourne: Family Life in the late Nineteenth-century (Canberra: Demography Program, Australian National University, 1994), 114.

²³ Bird, Percy Grainger, 24.

²⁴ He sent a not inconsiderable £2–3 per week from Hill River Cattle Station, near Clare in South Australia, for example, when he was working there in 1893. John Harry Grainger, letter to Amy Black, 31 May 1893, transcribed by Percy Grainger in ‘J.H.G to A.B: Letters from John H. Grainger to Miss Amy Black’, p. 10. Reg. No. 05.0518, GM.

²⁵Table Talk (15 September 1894), 6.

²⁶ ‘Does Mother think she will manage to come to London with you?’ Louis Pabst, letter card to Percy Grainger, 8 November 1894. Reg. No. 10.0003, GM. For an advertisement for the Risvegliato scholarship, see the Argus (24 and 26 February 1892), 8: ‘Risvegliato / Herr Louis Pabst / Begs to say that he is prepared to open the / Pianoforte class / to competitors / for the Risvegliato scholarship, &c. …’.

²⁷ Commenting, with little enthusiasm, on Percy’s enrolment at the Hoch Conservatorium, Pabst writes: ‘The other thing I knew was, that Mr Laver has been a pupil at Frankfurt, but—that was only a poor recommendation.’ Louis Pabst, letter to Percy Grainger, 18 August 1896. Reg. No. 10.0003, GM.

²⁸ Comettant arrived in Melbourne on 5 September 1888.

²⁹ Oscar Comettant, In the Land of Kangaroos and Gold Mines, trans. Judith Armstrong (Adelaide: Rigby, 1980), 139; or, in the original French, Au pays des kangourous, et, Des mines d’or: étude des moeurs et coutumes Australiennes: impressions de voyage (Paris: Fischbacher, 1890), 181.

³⁰ This was a list of the men only; the ‘ladies’ were Mme Tasca (wife of Alfred Plumpton) and the Misses Wilkinson and Burvett (probably Adelaide Burkitt).

³¹ ‘Mr Joseph Gillott’, Table Talk (25 March 1887), 3.

³² Jim Davidson, Lyrebird Rising: Louise Hanson-Dyer of Oiseau-Lyre, 1884–1962 (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1994), 27 and 32.

³³ Invitation concerts were so-named because they were not open to the public. The seats, however, usually attracted a booking fee from the relevant music warehouse handling their sales, which caused some disquiet.

³⁴ ‘Testimonial’, Table Talk (27 May 1887), 13.

³⁵ Vice-Regal Jubilee Ball’, Table Talk (24 June 1887), 9.

³⁶Ibid., 16.

³⁷ ‘The Philosophy of Fancy Dress Balls’, Table Talk (8 July 1887), 8.

³⁸ Remarkably similar biographical information is found in the Argus (23 July 1885, 6) shortly after he arrived, and Table Talk (22 September 1894, 9) heralding his departure.

³⁹ See Public Record Office Victoria, ‘Index to Unassisted Inward Passenger Lists to Victoria 1852–1923’ (Accessed 2 November 2014), http://prov.vic.gov.au/index. Pabst was then forty years of age, not thirty, as listed. The Lusitania was not the famous liner, sunk in 1915, but an earlier British ship.

⁴⁰ For reviews, both positive, see Table Talk (3 July 1885), 6; and The Australasian (4 July 1885), 26–7.

⁴¹ ‘The hundredth concert of the Metropolitan Liedertafel’, Australasian Sketcher with Pen and Pencil (27 July 1885), 121.

⁴² Reviewed in Argus (10 September 1885), 6.

⁴³The Australasian (17 October 1885), 27.

⁴⁴Argus (21 October 1885), 6.

⁴⁵Argus (22 October 1885), 8.

⁴⁶Argus (21 October 1885), 6.

⁴⁷Argus (9 June 1886), 6.

⁴⁸Argus (6 June 1887), 6.

⁴⁹ [Louis Pabst], Annotated programme of Herr Louis Pabst’s six historical concerts, which will be accompanied by illustrations by J. Smith (Melbourne: 1887). A copy is located in the Concert programme collection, Louise Hanson-Dyer Music Library, University of Melbourne.

⁵⁰Argus (6 December 1887), 6.

⁵¹ ‘Events of the Month’, Illustrated Australian News and Musical Times (1 August 1889), 14.

⁵²Argus (14 June 1889), 6; a similar assessment is found in Argus (18 July 1887), 7.

⁵³ This style of playing must have stood in stark contrast to Rose Grainger’s. In the section ‘Mother’s unwillingness to develop herself in the arts’ in his ‘Bird’s Eye View of the Together-Life of Rose Grainger and Percy Grainger’ (5–9 January 1947), Percy noted of her playing that ‘Least of all I liked a kind of spasmodic expressiveness—gusts of loudness & softness that seemed to have little bearing on the course of the musical phrases. Maybe it was a widespread habit of that generation.’ Reg. No. 03.2002, GM.

⁵⁴Age (9 June 1886), 6.

⁵⁵Illustrated Australian News and Musical Times (1 August 1889), 14.

⁵⁶ See a discreet press advertisement calling for new subscribers in Argus (19 May 1893), 20. Lady Clarke was wife of landowner and philanthropist, Sir William Clarke. A season was around five concerts.

⁵⁷Argus (10 September 1891), 11.

⁵⁸Table Talk (29 May 1891), 14. The concerts were described as a ‘thoroughly new style of entertainment, equal to the musical “At Homes” held in continental centres of art and social reform’.

⁵⁹Table Talk (15 September 1894), 6.

⁶⁰Table Talk (22 September 1894), 9; apart from Burkitt, he names only the Misses ‘Jacomb, Osborne, Dixon and Sutherland’ as ready to play in public.

⁶¹Table Talk (24 August 1894), 6.

⁶²Table Talk (31 August 1894), 6.

⁶³Ibid.

⁶⁴ Larson, Growing Up in Melbourne, 23.

⁶⁵Table Talk (22 September 1894), 9. Pabst’s extraordinary work ethic is not dissimilar to Grainger’s own in maturity; this may be something Grainger absorbed from his teacher. My thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

⁶⁶Table Talk (22 September 1894), 9.

⁶⁷ For a discussion around Australian-resident composers’ attitudes to publishing in Australia, and the choice to publish overseas, see Jennifer Hill, ‘Aspects of Australian Published Song, 1890–1914’ (PhD dissertation, University of Melbourne, 2002), vol. 1, 162–6 and 179–81.

⁶⁸Table Talk (15 September 1894), 6.

⁶⁹Musical Times (1 August 1895), 527.

⁷⁰ Annie Adelaide Burkitt (1857–1945) arrived in Australia around 1878. See Charles Conn, letter to Kay Dreyfus, 24 July 1986, housed with photographs of Burkitt. Reg. No. 99.5100, GM. From January 1895, when Grainger learnt from her, she taught from a St Kilda address and at Allan & Co.

⁷¹Table Talk (19 September 1894), 8; for advertisement, Table Talk (29 September 1894), 6.

⁷²Illustrated Australian Musical News and Musical Times (1 August 1889), 10.

⁷³Table Talk (22 September 1894), 9.

⁷⁴Ibid.

⁷⁵ There was a partial exception in 1890, when Pabst programmed an Academic Concert for four female pupils, an experiment he seems not to have repeated. Table Talk (9 May 1890), 17.

⁷⁶Table Talk (22 September 1894), 9.

⁷⁷ For details of the team of supporters behind the ‘Percy Grainger Fund’ from 11 December 1894, see Hill, ‘G.W.L Marshall-Hall and Percy Grainger’, 182–3.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennifer Hill

Jennifer Hill is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music whose research interests include music in late colonial and early twentieth-century Australia. She is also the University of Melbourne’s music curator with responsibility for the rare collections of the Louise Hanson-Dyer Music Library and has worked for over a decade with the Grainger Museum’s collections. Email: [email protected]