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Unknown photographer
Percy Grainger c.1886
two silver gelatin prints in wooden frame
Grainger Collection, the University of Melbourne


Frederick Morse
Rose and Percy Grainger, aged 60 and 39, on the Porch of their White Plains Home 17 July 1921
photogravure print
Pictures Collection, nla.pic-an10571976-2
National Library of Australia


Frederick Morse
Percy Grainger and Ella Viola Ström on their wedding day 9 August 1928
silver gelatin print
Grainger Collection, the University of Melbourne

Grainger: A Life

Percy Grainger was born on 8 July 1882, at Brighton, Victoria, the son of an architect, John Grainger (1855–1917) and his wife, Rose (1861–1922). The Graingers often moved and Percy had few childhood friends. He was home schooled by Rose and his talents as an artist were encouraged by his father. However, his parents separated in 1890 and Rose began focusing on her son's skill as a pianist.

Grainger began learning the piano from his mother in about 1888, before more formal instruction began with Louis Pabst in 1892. With Pabst, Grainger later wrote, he felt ‘the full art of music for the first time’, particularly in the works of J.S. Bach. Grainger’s debut was in Melbourne at a Masonic Hall, designed by his father, in 1894.

To further his studies, in 1895 Grainger and Rose travelled to Frankfurt, Germany where he enrolled at the Hoch Conservatorium. Grainger was 13 years old. Both mother and son were unimpressed with the tuition, but it was through the conservatorium that Grainger met a diversity of students who were to be of influence throughout his life. Most notable was what is now known as the Frankfurt Group, of Balfour Gardiner, Cyril Scott and Roger Quilter.

In 1901, Grainger and his mother moved to London. They began to move in fashionable circles and Mrs Frank Lowrey, at whose home in Chelsea Grainger gave recitals, was an early patron. Grainger also befriended the famous composers Edvard Grieg and Frederick Delius, and met the painters John Singer Sargent, Jacques-Emile Blanche and the Australian Rupert Bunny, all of whom painted his portrait. The photographer Baron de Meyer was also much taken with Grainger and helped promote him. During this period Grainger made two triumphant tours of Australia with the contralto Ada Crossley in 1903–04 and 1908–1909.

With the outbreak of World War I the Graingers made a controversial move to the United States where Grainger became an American citizen. It was in the United States that he achieved his greatest success as both a performer and composer. However, on 30 April 1922 Rose threw herself from the 18th floor of a New York office block. Grainger published a moving testament, Photos of Rose Grainger, in 1923. He never fully recovered from her death.

On 9 August 1928, Grainger married Ella Viola Ström at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, before a crowd estimated at between 15000 and 23000. They set up house in White Plains, New York, but had no children. Grainger died of cancer on 20 February 1961 at White Plains. While he had wanted his skeleton installed in the museum he built in Melbourne, he was buried in West Terrace Cemetery, Adelaide, where years before he is believed to have secretly interred Rose’s ashes. Ella died in 1979.