This meeting considers Grainger’s lecture series, “A General Study of the Manifold Nature of Music,” delivered at New York University in 1932, and “Music: A Commonsense View of all Types”, delivered for the Australian Broadcasting Commission between 1934 and 1935.
The notes for these lectures, a version of which was published in full in for the first time in The Grainger Journal, 21/1 (July 2025), reveal much about Grainger’s conception of the development of the world’s music as cultural phenomena that share correspondences both of technical means, and of aesthetic and emotional values. Grainger’s analyses of a wide range of music in the lecture notes are, by turns, precise and scientific, and meandering and misguided, but are centered around the notion that “the highest flights of music are a spiritualizing influence inducing contemplation and rapture and leading mankind toward a more peaceful, harmonious and angelic life”, sentiments that remain pertinent today.
This meeting concludes the Percy Grainger Society’s 2025–26 members’ meeting series, Grainger the Educator, a celebration of Percy Grainger’s often overlooked yet enduring influence as a teacher and educator. This three-part series addressed Grainger’s innovative educational approach and spirit in a variety of settings, including his work at the National Music Camp, Interlochen, and his lecture series for New York University, and for the Australian Broadcasting Commission.
Paul Jackson is a pianist, conductor, musicologist, lecturer, examiner, and education consultant based in Cambridge, UK. He was Head of Music and Performing Arts and Director of Music and Performance at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge from 1998 to 2018, before returning to a freelance career. A Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, with a PhD in Musicology, he has taught widely across performance, composition, technology, and musicology. Active as both pianist and conductor, he performs as a soloist, and as a chamber musician, and as musical director for a number of orchestras and choirs. An authority on Percy Grainger, he is Editor of The Grainger Journal, President of the Percy Grainger Society, and, since 2023, has been co-lead on the GLOSS project.