Children's March by Percy Grainger
Percy Grainger (1882 -1961) was a picturesque nationalist who tried to retain something of the original flavor of British folk songs and their singers by strict observance of peculiarities of performance, such as varying beat lengths and the use of ``primitive'' techniques such as parallelism. Born the son of an architect in Brighton, Victoria, Australia, Percy Grainger was a precocious pianist; the proceeds of a series of concerts, given at the age of twelve, enabled him to go to Frankfurt to study for six years, after which he began his European career as a concert pianist, settling in London in 1901. He came to the U. S. in 1915 and enlisted as an Army bandsman at the outbreak of World War I. He became a United States citizen in 1919. It was during his stay in England that he became passionately involved in collecting and arranging folk songs and country dances. It has been related that "Percy never had the slightest hesitation in pumping anybody he came across. He would go up to a man ploughing and ask him if he knew any songs and as often as not the man would stand for a minute or two and sing him a song in the most natural way in the world.
Subtitled Over the Hills and Far Away, this work is cast in a sunny, care-free mood; many of the tunes sound like folksongs, but they are original compositions. Grainger believed that the greatest expressivity was in the lower octaves of the band and from the larger members of the reed families. Consequently, we find in this Children's March a more liberal and more highly specialized use of such instruments as the bassoon, English horn, bass clarinet, contra-bassoon, and the lower saxophones than is usual in writing for military band. Research by Frederick Fennell supports Grainger's claim that this is the first composition for band utilizing the piano.
