In the period 1922–27, between the death of his mother and engagement to Ella Ström, Grainger lived the life of a fugitive. He wanted to escape from the treadmill of concert life to seek solace in the company of friends, relatives and favourite places. He visited Australia twice and made his first post-war visits to Europe. There, he spent much time with his ‘Frankfurt Group’ friends and Delius, and undertook the Danish folk-music collecting tours with Evald Tang Kristensen which the outbreak of war had precluded. These tours provided the tunes for some of Grainger's loveliest arrangements. Even after his marriage and settling more happily back into American life Grainger did not return to the hectic concert schedules of the 1910s and early 1920s. He realized the need to indulge more his compositional and broader artistic passions, before age sapped his inspiration. He developed his ‘Nordic’ (‘Blueeyed’) English, writing his first long essay in this awkward language in the final months of 1927; he thought and wrote about his ‘Free Music’, leading to the first experimental piece in 1934–35; in collaboration with Anselm Hughes and Arnold Dolmetsch he helped propagate the music and instruments of the earlier periods of Western music. From 1935 to 1938 he also oversaw the implementation of long-nurtured plans for a music museum in Melbourne. Through this period of his life he maintained links with educational organizations: Chicago Musical College to 1931, New York University in 1932–33, and the National Music Camp at Interlochen, Michigan, between 1937 and 1944.

EVALD TANG KRISTENSEN

(1843–1929)