Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882-1961): Shepherd's Hey

[JackGibbonsHQ]

@d60944 You are spot on talking about that ever so slightly 'swung' rhythm of these early Grainger recordings. You can find a very similar type approach in some of Gershwin's electrical recordings made in 1926 and 1928. Glad someone else notices this as well as me! (I think some people here have misunderstood your comments, even though clearly you're talking about a natural rhythmic treatment of duplets and not suggesting that Shepherd's Hey is jazz!).

[brianCIM]

@JackGibbonsHQ and you are spot on Jack re: Gershwin's recordings and his treatment of duplets. ARGH! So frustrating! of course this is not jazz but Grainger was a fanatical fan of Jazz and Gershwin and perhaps that "swinging" style was incorporated naturally. I don't think Grainger, who was incredibly fastidious about the interpretation of and the origin of folk-songs(he was one of the first folk song collectors to record and collect on cylinders) said, "ok let's make this baby swing." lol

[keepinguptheday]

Being an English morris dance tune it naturally has rhythmic variations related to the steps of the eponymous morris dance, Shepherd's Hey, as written down by Cecil Sharp from morris musicians at Bampton, Stow-on-the-Wold, Cheltenham and Bidford. Also in the Ducklington repertoire . Grainger is playing it too fast to dance to in this recording. It is an inspired version nevertheless.

[webrarian]

Any chance of a credit - after all, you have used my transfer without asking...

[d60944]

@webrarian Some of my recordings have come to me via other people (often second- or third-hand). This is one of them, and I don't know the original source of this one. It's not I have an original or CD of. Are you sure it is your transfer? How would someone have obtained it? (I tried to send you a message, but you have them blocked on your account)

[dimsimlord]

I wonder if all the people in the comments talking about the jazz influences in this piece know it's actually an English folk song and thus has nothing to do with jazz whatsoever.

[alanslife1]

this is my favorite composer

i love all his work

irish tune from country derry is my favorite song from him

i remember being a sixth grader in my band class listening to this

after a couple of years we actually payed his music

the piece we played was called the lost lady found

it has inspired me to become a better musician

[mtg1953]

Visited the museum at the University of Melbourne in 2002--my first stop on a three day visit to that great city. He was quite a character!

[mtg1953]

You can't beat Percy Grainger. (At least, not in his professional life.) Am not a student of music, and cannot speak to his place among the modernists. But, he is hard to match as an innovator, pianist, composer and arranger. And, yet, when I visit his hometown of Melbourne, it is hard to find his works in even the classical music sections of record stores. Thank God for YouTube!

[laurielor]

mtg1953

Have you been to his museum?

[brianCIM]

thank you so much d6. i am grainger fanatic. amazing pianist and composer. he was the first pianist to record the chopin 3rd sonata on records. if you have it please post it. it's amazing in its athleticism and intensity. TY!

[dcrules1]

Awesome! He's a great piano player! ^^ I use to be a piano player though........

[nickus32000]

It's an interesting topic you bring up in your heading, about the "swing" in this performance. I'm curious to know if Grainger played this piece with the same amount of swing throughout his career or did his "swing" evolve like the early jazz pianists you speak of?

[nickus32000]

It's interesting to compare recordings by early jazz pianists like Jelly Roll Morton or James P. Johnson. I'm thinking of Johnson's Snowy Morning blues for example, his 1927 recording is rhythmically awkward, it sounds like he can't make up his mind between 4/4 and 12/8 and he goes back and forth between the two. His later recordings of the same piece from the mid 40's have the relaxed 12/8 feel.

[KawhackitaRag]

Nickus, how can you say this? I just listened to the 1927 recording of "Snowy Morning Blues" and it sounds as smooth as anything I've ever heard. The smoothness and continual forward motion is easily perceptible to me.

Is something wrong with your ear? Can you not handle rock music or "Latin" music, most of which is driven by the steady propulsion of 8/8 meter?

It is very hard for me to comprehend how the 1940's version is "more relaxed", just different. Both sound relaxed to me.

[KawhackitaRag]

...On their solo piano audio recordings from the 1920's, it was typically rarely used, and only for slower tempos, but still sounds natural on these.

It is not my fault if you do not understand the authentic piano styles of the 1920's.

Try playing like Lemuel Fowler, who easily shifts back and forth between straight-eights and swung eighths (on BOTH his recordings and rolls), or another pianist (I forgot his name), who plays "swing eighths" in one hand, and "triplet eighths" in the other!

[KawhackitaRag]

Listening to Johnson's 1944 Decca version, I hear the difference between the earlier version and the "wide-open" 1940's swing. Still, I don't hear how this style is qualitatively "better" or "more relaxed" than the earlier version.

Question: if James P. Johnson never had the opportunity to record in the 1940s and later, would he still have been as well-known today? How many people try to sound like the '40s Johnson versus the '20s Johnson?

[KawhackitaRag]

Having been weaned upon straight-eighths piano roll stylists of the late teens and early 20s such as Clarence M. Jones, Clarence A. Johnson, Pete Wendling, and J. Russel Robinson, I do believe I have a grasp upon how this style is supposed to sound, and what it is supposed to convey.

[XxTank435xX]

im in middle school band and our saxophone choir played this as our ensemble. it was arranged by our co director Mr.Riojas. this is a great piece and very complex

[paulostroff99]

Wonderful! Bravo! TY.

[paulostroff99]

The most talented of all the lesser known(to the public) great pianists.Bravo! TY.

[d60944]

No, the rubato itself is not something I was referring to as related to jazz (though for some classic 19th C rubato you can do worse than Fats Waller in "The Clothes Line Ballet"). I was talking about the deliberate uneven treatment of quavers (or are they semiquavers?) where the first of each pair is lengthened and the second shortened. I am also sort of reminded of Brahms's adoption of a sort of preemptive synocopation in his playing of his own Hungarian Dance, the syncope also sort of "swung"

[pianopera]

Well to me, this uneven treatment of notes IS related to rubato. It's just that the "swung" in the jazzy sense means something completely different for me! That's why I think that these definitions are not enough, because we all have a personal filling in.

It's like Debussy and Sibelius, or Debussy and Jazz: they were contemporaries and sometimes use the same harmonies (both D. and S. to create a "Nature" style) but they're really quite separate universes...

[pianopera]

As for Brahms, that's part of the typical rubato that belongs to the "Czardas" and Hungarian folkloric music...he adored it. You can also hear the influence in e.g. final movement of the Piano Quartet.

[d60944]

The influence of Eastern European folk musics on early jazz is not widely appreciated (it has tended to be viewed as a uniquely "black" thing). The migrations of Ashenazi jews to the USA brought a wealth of improvistional techniques and embellishment approaches: this idiom containing more than a soupcon of SE European gypsy content (originating in south-eastern central Europe after all). Consider the sheer number of Ashkenazi descent musicians active in the USA in the early 20th C.

[pianopera]

Interesting theorie...but we have to make a distinction between jewish and Roma (gypsy) influences on the one hand, and Roma and local folkloric music on the other hand.

A nomadic people like the Roma adapted their style to the music of the countries where they settled. Traditional Hungarian music e.g. sounds much different than the gypsy version of it, although it is partly conflated.

And I'm sure there must be a connection between Czardas and Tango!

[pianopera]

Will all respect, that sounds like the Academic, musicological approach!

Of course there are "classical" influences in Jazz and vice versa (Ravel, later Bernstein) but I don't think that the typical rubato of Grainger here can be compared with typical Jazz-"swing".

Maybe in some cases musical definitions are just not sufficient!

[d60944]

I respectfully disagree that early jazz piano and classical piano have nothing in common. People like James P Johnson and Fats Waller were classically trained, and their music owes a great deal to the styles of classical piano music from the turn of the century. Particularly with respect to keyboard sonority and embellishment approach. One of the things I will get round to doing is posting various early jazz recordings to illustrate 19th century classical piano approaches there as well. Soon...

[KawhackitaRag]

Certainly there is lots of classical piano music in jazz and pop piano of the 1920s. The latter has been quite neglected due to the bias a large number of morons (excuse me, critics) have against pop music, especially old pop music.

Great 20's and 30's pop pianists to listen to include Frank Banta, Pauline Alpert, Edythe Baker, Adam Carroll, Raie Da Costa, Willie Eckstein, George Gershwin, Billy Mayerl, Patricia Rossborough, and Lee Sims.

They are all on Youtube.

[pianopera]

Thanks for uploading, but I find your jazz-comparison a little far-fetched. It's like apples and pears, folk-songs and "swing" jazz are from completely different backgrounds and traditions, the only thing that they have in common is that they are played on piano.

Same as saying that Schumann's Toccata or Beethoven's sonata opus 111 (last movement) are "Jazzy" - makes no sense to me.

[psalms8510]

sir, you are right!

[tHEnOOSEsWINGS]

This is a great piece, and a beautiful photograph of Percy Grainger. Thank you for your video.