The Graingers returned to America from a European vacation just weeks before the Second World War broke out. Although the United States was not immediately involved in that war, Grainger hurriedly copied his more valuable documents and recordings, and dispatched them to a variety of locations. Hitler's Blitzkrieg into northern Europe during the spring of 1940 terrified him, and he hired an apartment in Springfield, Missouri, in the hope of being far from any combat which might occur on either the east or the west American coast. From Springfield he ventured out on concert tours, often playing to the troops. He also continued his summer work at the National Music Camp, Interlochen, through most of the years of war. Back in White Plains after the war, the Graingers devoted much of their joint energy to arranging material for the Museum in Melbourne and to the home printing of his music. In collaboration with the physicist Burnett Cross, Grainger worked on various ‘Free Music’ machines, achieving considerable success in realizing his life-long dream of a music of flexible pitches, rhythms and dynamics. Although continuing to perform until 1960, he increasingly directed his attention to educational institutions which would programme his own compositions in return for his performances of well-known concertos. His final recordings were made in 1957. From around 1953 Grainger suffered from cancer, to which he eventually succumbed on 20 February 1961.

MAURICE LORIAUX

(1909–1998)

In Bartlesville [Oklahoma] Percy began using our residence as a ‘homefrom- home’, and continued in Santa Fe from 1947 to 1960—usually once a year or so, staying several days at a time. He called these his ‘rest stops’. Ella was sometimes with him. They both often told us how they enjoyed the privacy of these visits.