ABSTRACT
During the first decade of the twentieth century – the years in which Percy Grainger was forging both a successful performing career and a unique compositional voice – the most significant musical innovation and experimentation in Western art music was centred on Paris. Yet Grainger visited that city just once: in 1900 he and his engineer father briefly joined the crowds thronging the Exposition Universelle. He recorded few of his impressions of the city, and appears (as we will see) to have heard little of the music of the Exposition – a missed opportunity, it would seem, for a composer to whom ethnomusicology would be a lifelong source of fascination and inspiration.
