Browse Items (337 total)

Grainger took his role as educator about music in the general community very seriously, and exploited the opportunities afforded by radio broadcasting. While in Australia and New Zealand in the 1930s, he delivered a series of lectures for the ABC,…

Metal, electronics In 1932 Percy Grainger attended a concert of musical pieces performed on a new instrument called the theremin. This instrument, invented in 1920 by Russian physicist Lev Sergeyevich Termen (known in the USA as Léon Theremin) was a…

This metallophone has bronze keys, each fitted below with a hollow bronze resonator. The beautiful embossing on each resonator, in Japonisme style, is a remarkable feature. The instrument is created from elements constructed by multiple makers,…

Deagan gave the name ‘Marimbaphone’ to a series of models equipped with rotating or tilting frames, and bars with concave ends. They came in various sizes and were made with both rosewood and steel bars. The purpose of this feature was to play the…

Platinum print

Photo: 20.5 x 15.3 cm
Photo and frame: 34.2 x 26.2 cm

In 1913 Grainger's then fiancée Margot Harrison ordered a very expensive present for her lover: a portrait of herself by H Walter Barnett. Despite his humble beginnings in…

Grainger was a compositional radical, a fact that
was not well known to a public accustomed to
compositions like ‘Country Gardens’. ‘Train Music’
shows Grainger’s experimentation with irregular
metres. His note at the top indicates that…

Samples of magnetic tape used in the Grainger Centre, c. 1970s.

The Lynch Family were renowned for using many unusual instruments, including handbells, organ chimes, glasses, and a metallophone (‘the Marimba Resonators’). This latter instrument, described as ‘the only instrument of its kind in the world’, is an…