<![CDATA[Grainger Museum Online]]> https://omeka.cloud.unimelb.edu.au/grainger/items/browse?output=rss2 Fri, 29 Mar 2024 07:44:36 +1100 blackj@unimelb.edu.au (Grainger Museum Online) Zend_Feed http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss <![CDATA[Chinese stool belonging to Rose Grainger]]> https://omeka.cloud.unimelb.edu.au/grainger/items/show/559

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Title

Chinese stool belonging to Rose Grainger

Description

Stool used by Rose Grainger in her home with her son Percy Grainger. Rose probably purchased this stool in New York, in the period 1915-1920s.
Carved Rosewood Chinese stool with inlaid marble top, Approx 40 x 40 x 40cm

Source

Grainger Museum Collection

Publisher

Grainger Museum

Date

n.d. (late 19th to early 20th century)

Identifier

01.0351
01.0351.jpg
01.0351 top.jpg
01.0351 top detail.jpg
01.0351 side.jpg
01.0351 side detail.jpg
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Mon, 05 Jul 2021 09:43:13 +1000
<![CDATA[The Harmonic Metallophone, 2009 aluminium]]> https://omeka.cloud.unimelb.edu.au/grainger/items/show/558

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Title

The Harmonic Metallophone, 2009
aluminium

Description

These are a suit of innovative instruments designed and created by Neil McLachlan. Neil McLachlan is an Associate Professor with the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Like Anton Hasell, his research and practice has continued to evolve since the Federation Bells project, across a great many areas of expertise including neuro-acoustics and gong design.

The suite of instruments in this photograph include, from left to right:
Harmonic Gongs, 2009, 2014 (steel).
Left gong: The World’s first gong to produce multiple harmonically tuned frequencies. It was hand formed and tuned in 1.6mm mild steel by Dr Neil McLachlan in the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences workshop at the University of Melbourne in 2009. The harmonic tuning was achieved by tensioning the surface of the gong with four dimples that affect the frequencies of variously shaped standing waves in the gong surface. The gong was then ‘pacified’ by electroplating to prevent rust.

Right gong: A production prototype gong made in 1.6mm stainless steel in 2014. The gong was tuned by Dr McLachlan using a purpose-built computer controlled 2-tonne press that is capable of creating dimples at 50 micrometre accuracy to allow mass production.
Gongs are revered in South East Asia just as bells are revered in Europe. The traditional Indonesian ensembles called Gamelan feature tuned gongs spanning many octaves. Since Indonesian gongs don’t have harmonic tuning, Europeans need to learn how to hear the pitch of Indonesian gongs by playing in a Gamelan ensemble. But you can hear the clear pitches and harmony of these harmonic gongs by gently striking each gong near its centre.

The Harmonic Metallophone, 2009 (aluminium): Flat bars of wood and metal naturally produce widely spaced frequencies. Traditional xylophone and metallophone keys have carved arches to tune their 2nd frequency by changing the stiffness of the key. This design tunes the first 4 frequencies of the key to ratios of 1: 2: 4: 6 by changing the key width (and hence it’s mass) at the maximum amplitude of each standing wave without changing the key thickness. The shapes of the first four standing waves of a flat bar are shown below. This is a prototype key exactly as it was laser cut from a 10mm thick aluminium plate. It is suspended on stainless steel leaf springs instead of the traditional method of suspending keys by chords.

For more information see:
N. McLachlan (2011). The design of a harmonic percussion ensemble, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 129, 3441-3444.
N. McLachlan et al. (2013). The musical environment and auditory plasticity: Hearing the pitch of percussion. Frontiers in Psychology
N. McLachlan et al. (2012). Tuning natural modes of vibration by prestress in the design of a harmonic gong, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 131, 926-934.

Source

Photograph by the Grainger Museum

Date

Photographed in the Grainger Museum 2019

Identifier

Created by Neil McLachlan, and lent to the Grainger Museum in 2019 for the exhibition How it Plays: Innovations in Percussion. The suite of instruments was donated to the Grainger Museum in 2020 by Neil McLachlan.
MLachlan harmonic gongs display.jpg
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Fri, 21 May 2021 14:56:45 +1000
<![CDATA[Views of the Grainger Museum under construction at the University of Melbourne, early November 1938]]> https://omeka.cloud.unimelb.edu.au/grainger/items/show/557

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Title

Views of the Grainger Museum under construction at the University of Melbourne, early November 1938

Source

Grainger Museum Collection

Publisher

Grainger Museum, University of Melbourne

Date

1938

Contributor

Grainger Museum
PG on Museum scaffolding W76-26.jpg
Museum under construction W76-15.jpg
Museum under construction W76-5.jpg
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Wed, 17 Feb 2021 16:28:31 +1100
<![CDATA[Cardboard box (originally containing Ella Grainger's hair); Ella Grainger's hair]]> https://omeka.cloud.unimelb.edu.au/grainger/items/show/550

Dublin Core

Title

Cardboard box (originally containing Ella Grainger's hair); Ella Grainger's hair

Description

Box which contained Ella Grainger's hair;
Ella Grainger's hair from shoulder to waist length, cut off by RIche LTD. 14 Hay Hill Berkely Square, London W.1. in order to give to Grainger Museum, The University of melbourne ( cut off Sept. 20 1948)

Date

1948

Identifier

01.3529
01.3528
IMG_0357.JPG
01.3529.png
01.3528.300x400.jpg
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Mon, 09 Nov 2020 12:08:06 +1100
<![CDATA[Cardboard box containing Percy and Rose Grainger's hair; Lock of Percy Grainger's hair (aged 7)]]> https://omeka.cloud.unimelb.edu.au/grainger/items/show/549

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Title

Cardboard box containing Percy and Rose Grainger's hair; Lock of Percy Grainger's hair (aged 7)

Description

1. Box containing PG and RG hair
2.A lock of Percy Grainger's hair, yellow blonde in colour and tied with a red ribbon. Sent to the museum in an elaborate handmade cardboard envelope. Other Information: Stored with original cardboard packaging.

Date

c.1889

Identifier

01.3533
01.0824
IMG_0352.JPG
IMG_0353.JPG
IMG_0354.JPG
IMG_0355.JPG
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Mon, 09 Nov 2020 12:05:48 +1100
<![CDATA[Photo wallet containing 2 photographs of Percy Grainger and Rose Grainger]]> https://omeka.cloud.unimelb.edu.au/grainger/items/show/519

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Title

Photo wallet containing 2 photographs of Percy Grainger and Rose Grainger

Description

2 silver gelatin prints enclosed in a photo wallet. "P.G. initials are embossed in gold on the front of the wallet. 'Cross' is also embossed along the internal fold line of the wallet, perhaps indicating the manufacturer or photographer. Photo 1 on proper right panel: Portrait of Percy Grainger and Rose Grainger dressed in coats and finery. Photo 2 on proper left panel: Portrait of Rose Grainger dressed in finery with Percy Grainger on her right and another gentleman to her left."

Identifier

17.0054
17-0054-00002.600x800.jpg
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Fri, 06 Nov 2020 14:57:32 +1100
<![CDATA[The Aims of the Grainger Museum]]> https://omeka.cloud.unimelb.edu.au/grainger/items/show/507

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Title

The Aims of the Grainger Museum

Description

An essay written by Percy Grainger on his goals and intentions for the museum. Grainger created a display "Legend" of this content, typed out and framed, for exhibition in the Grainger Museum, University of Melbourne.

Wooden frame, gold-painted decorative wooden moulding. Size: 106.5 x 33cm

Text reads:
"The contents of the Grainger Museum have been assembled with the main intention of throwing light upon the processes of musical composition (as distinct from performances of music) during the period in which Australia has been prominent in music—say from about 1880 on.

Through the generosity of friends and music-lovers in Melbourne my mother was enabled to take me, at the age of 12, to Frankfort-on-the-Maine, to continue there the musical studies begun in Melbourne about 6 years earlier. While studying music at the Hoch Conservatorium in Frankfurt from 1895 to 1899 I was struck by the fact that the most gifted composition students were all from the English-speaking and Scandinavian countries. I foresaw that a period of English-speaking and Scandinavian leadership in musical originality and experimentation lay just ahead—a florescence comparable to the iconoclastic innovations of the Worcester composers of the 13th century, of Dunstable in the 15th century, of the pre-Bach English string fancies of the 17th century.

So I began to collect manuscripts, musical sketches, letters, articles, mementos, portraits, photographs, etc., by and of those English-speaking and Scandinavian composers that seemed to me the most gifted and progressive—always with the intention of some day putting this collection on permanent display in Melbourne.

The contents of this Museum are thus the product of one man’s taste and criticism—my own—and are limited accordingly; my taste in music having been moulded by early familiarity with the conventionally known German and Austrian “masters” of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The composers represented in the Museum appear for the most part in the chronological order of my contact with them, or in the order of their artistic importance in my eyes, and not in accordance with their year of birth.
My collection cannot pretend to present all important progressive English-speaking and Scandinavian composers of the last 70 years, nor all significant works by such composers as are represented. As a rule, extremely well-known works (such as Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations) are omitted altogether, my preference being to concentrate on unknown or less-known works of
genius.

I have tried to limit all statements about composers and their works to things and happenings personally witnessed by me or communicated by the composers in letters and conversations.

Believing that great achievements in musical composition are seldom the result of a purely individualistic effort on the part of a composer, but are oftener the outcome of a coming-together of several propitious circumstances orfructifying personalities, I have tried in this Museum to trace as best I can the aesthetic indebtedness of composers to each other (the borrowing of musical themes or novel compositional techniques) and to the culturizing influence of parents, relatives, wives, husbands and friends (for instance, Cyril Scott’s inspiring encouragement of several British composers of his generation; Jelka Delius’s contributions to her husband’s artistic life; Balfour Gardiner’s championship of 20th century British music).

I feel very strongly that the musical culture in all parts of the world suffers from the lack of a cosmopolitan and universalist outlook on music. In the last 50 years a vast mass of significant and beautiful folk music, primitive music, and Asian and African art-musics has been collected by means of the phonograph and gramophone. But very little of this vast treasure trove has been transcribed into musical notation. And such transcriptions as exist suffer for the most part from misleading simplification, so that the transcriptions sound un-life like and ineffective in performance.

Perhaps the most world-changing musical discoveries of the last half-century have been those musicologists, notably in the domain of early English music—say 1200 to 1700. It has been said, and I think truly, that the now-available pre-Bach music of Europe exceeds in quantity, and certainly rivals in quality, all post-Bach music. But the reclamations of the musicologists still go for the most part unexamined and unperformed, as do likewise the larger and more
exacting masterpieces of the 20th century “Nordic” composers (British, Irish, American, Canadian, Australasian, Dutch and Scandinavian).

I have tried to equip this Museum with publications, manuscripts, gramophone records and other material conducive to the study of the abovementioned neglected musics. This material includes journals of the various folk-song and musicological societies: English, American, Scandinavian, Dutch, and Frisian languages and dialect dictionaries useful in dealing with folk-song texts; Bibles in native languages and dictionaries in native languages, useful in dealing with texts of primitive musics.

It would seem only natural for Australia to become a centre for the study of musics of the islands adjacent to Australia—Indonesia no less than the South Seas. Some of the world’s most exquisite music is found in this area.

Yet none of these exotic musics, however charmful, should draw Australian musicians away from intense participation in the all-important developments of experimental music in the white man’s world. The vistas opened up by the innovations of Beethoven, Wagner, Grieg, Alois Haba, Cyril Scott, Scriabin, Arnold Schoenberg, Arthur Fickenscher and others, should be explored. It would be a wonderful thing if Australia should be the first country to live to the axiom: “Music is a universal language”.

Percy Aldridge Grainger, October, 1955."


https://grainger.unimelb.edu.au/discover/aims-of-the-grainger-museum

Creator

Source

Grainger Museum Collection

Date

October 1955

Contributor

Grainger Museum

Identifier

04.0351
04.0351 Aims of the Grainger Museum.jpg
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Tue, 13 Oct 2020 12:48:01 +1100
<![CDATA[Sketch design for slanting desk case for the Grainger Museum, Melbourne]]> https://omeka.cloud.unimelb.edu.au/grainger/items/show/491

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Title

Sketch design for slanting desk case for the Grainger Museum, Melbourne

Description

Percy Grainger had a number of unique cases designed for the Grainger Museum, in preparation for the official opening in December 1938. The slanting desk case was created to showcase Percy Grainger's music manuscripts and his drawings of Free Music machine designs. Designers Pengelley & Co. also created cases specifically for the Marshall-Hall Archive, a rich collection of music scores, photographs and documents. These cases can be seen in situ in the Grainger Museum in the film made in 1967 (see https://vimeo.com/455388143).

Source

Grainger Museum Collection

Date

October 1938

Contributor

Grainger Museum
Slanting desk case design.jpg
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Wed, 07 Oct 2020 14:24:33 +1100
<![CDATA[Cardboard box belonging to Percy Grainger, containing various personal items]]> https://omeka.cloud.unimelb.edu.au/grainger/items/show/488

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Title

Cardboard box belonging to Percy Grainger, containing various personal items

Creator

IMG_0155.JPG
IMG_0149.JPG
IMG_0150.JPG
IMG_0156.JPG
IMG_0153.JPG
IMG_0157.JPG
IMG_0154.JPG
IMG_0151.JPG
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Wed, 07 Oct 2020 14:02:07 +1100
<![CDATA[Letter from Ormond Professor Bernard Heinze to Percy Grainger, 25 September 1936, and accompanying photograph of the Grainger Museum, University of Melbourne.]]> https://omeka.cloud.unimelb.edu.au/grainger/items/show/482

Dublin Core

Title

Letter from Ormond Professor Bernard Heinze to Percy Grainger, 25 September 1936, and accompanying photograph of the Grainger Museum, University of Melbourne.

Description

In this letter, Heinze shares an image of the Grainger Museum at the completion of its first phase, with Percy Grainger. Grainger had participated in early design of the Museum, but was obliged to leave the project with the local team of architects, when he returned to his American home base. Interestingly, Heinze called the museum the "Rose Grainger Museum" in this letter, referring to Grainger's original intentions for the museum to be a memorial to his mother.

Source

Grainger Museum Collection

Date

1936

Contributor

Grainger Museum
Heinze letter to PG 1936 and photo of Museum web.tif
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Wed, 07 Oct 2020 12:20:45 +1100