Percy Aldridge Grainger

Hill Song No. 1 (1921 Version) Percy Aldridge Grainger

Hill Song No. 1 is one of the most audacious and forward-looking of all the works by Percy Grainger. Begun in March 1901 while he was still a student at the Höch Conservatoire in Frankfurt, it is one of Grainger's earliest surviving compositions, though Grainger recalled it was a distillation of a number of techniques he tried out experimentally in the late 1890s; wide-tone scales," "irregular rhythms," "democratic polyphony," and "semi-discordant triads" among them. A passage toward the end that bears a misty resemblance to impressionist harmony was inspired, as Grainger admits, by seeing part of the score of Debussy's Pelleas et Mélisande in 1902. The first version of Hill Song No. 1 was completed in London in September 1902. The most radical thing about Hill Song No. 1 was its scoring, and indeed, this is what kept it out of the ears of the public for decades. It is scored for 24 winds -- two piccolos, six oboes, six English horns, six bassoons, and contra-bassoon. Due to his relative inexperience as a composer and German training -- after all, he was only 19 years old when he wrote the work -- Grainger spelled out compound rhythms in archaic ways, such as identifying a bar of 5/8 as "two and a half over four." Such rhythmic divisions are scattered throughout all of the 24 parts, with some differing divisions laid on top of one another; the best wind players in the world in 1902 could not read or play the Hill Song No. 1, which is what Grainger realized once he tried to mount a performance of the work. In 1907, he created the short, pithy Hill Song No. 2, which places some of the elements of the earlier piece in a more conventional context and is less than a third as long as the original. In 1921, he completely rebarred and rescored the Hill Song No. 1 for an ensemble of piccolo, flute, six double reeds, two saxophones, three brass, harmonium, percussion, piano, and six string parts. The added instruments were des"
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