ABSTRACT
How do we discern ‘modernism’ in relation to a genre such as folk song settings? In this context, does Grainger qualify as a modernist in Daniel Albright’s definition of modernism as ‘a testing of the limits of aesthetic construction’? 2 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as Grainger made his earliest arrangements, folk song settings were part of a domestic rather than concert repertoire, still very much the province of amateur musicians or middle-rank composers, often from the organ loft, and associated with genteel Victorian music-making. Tricked out in tasteful chromatic harmonies and figurations reminiscent of an earlier era and easily played by the drawing-room pianist, they were hardly an obvious locus for musical experimentation. As the twentieth century progressed, however, Grainger moved to the extremes of this genre, as can be seen by comparing his early and later settings of ‘Barbara Allen’ (1899 and, as ‘Hard-Hearted Barb’ra (H)Ellen’, 1946) and ‘Early One Morning’ (1899 and, as dated by Grainger, 16 October 1901–4 August 1940). Both ‘Barbara Allen’ and ‘Early One Morning’ are included in Grainger’s 1899 unpublished manuscript collection of songs, ‘Early Settings of Folksongs & Popular Tunes’, discussed below.
