Percy and Rose Grainger quickly settled into British life. Through ‘society’ connections Grainger gained access to the lucrative world of London's private concerts and thereby gradually built up a more public following. The colonial affiliation was also useful in forging performing links, in particular with the Australian singer Ada Crossley. With Crossley's party he undertook extensive tours of provincial Britain and Australasia in these pre-War years. From 1905 to 1908 his interest in collecting British folk music was at its height, and it was then that he collected many of the songs through the arrangements of which he would later become so well known. It was only in 1910–11, however, that Grainger's following reached a level that allowed him to promote himself successfully across Europe as a solo recital pianist and orchestral soloist. During these years, too, he gained the confidence to place his compositions before the public. He contracted with Schott (London) in 1911 to publish his works and in the following year organized in London the first public concert devoted solely to his own compositions. By 1913 the popularity of his works was spreading quickly across Europe and the United States, with Shepherd's Hey being particularly successful with orchestras. Personally, however, Grainger was suffering an inner turmoil, between his feelings for his girlfriends and his sense of devotion to his ill mother. With the advent of war in 1914 Grainger postponed his concert bookings and advanced plans for a short visit to America. There, however, he decided to stay.

CYRIL SCOTT

(1879–1970)

I found the Graingers living in rooms somewhere in Kensington, but for the first twenty minutes of my visit Percy was so delightsomely preoccupied with the spectacle of three perspiring men trying to get his piano up a poky little staircase, that conversation with him was out of the question.