With the exception of military marches almost all the music we hear played on wind bands (military bands) was originally composed for other mediums (for orchestra, for piano, for chorus, as songs for voice and piano) and afterwards arranged for wind band—and as good as never by the composer. (Notable exceptions are: Wagner’s “Huldigungs-marsch,; Henry Cowell’s “Celtic Set,” R. Vaughan Williams’s “Folksong Suite” and “Toccata Marziale” (Boosey & Hawkes), Gustav Holst’s two “Suites for Band” and “Hammersmith,” Hindemith’s “Concert Music for Wind Band” (Schott, Mayence), Ernst Toch’s “Spiel,” Florent Schmitt’s “Dionysiaques,” Respighi’s “Hunting-Tower Ballad,” several compositions by Leo Sowerby.)

Why this cold-shouldering of the wind band by most composers? Is the wind band—with its varied assortments of reeds (so much richer than the reeds of the symphony orchestra), its complete saxophone family that is found nowhere else (to my ears the saxophone is the most expressive of all wind instruments—the one closest to the human voice. And surely all musical instruments should be rated according to their tonal closeness to man’s own voice!), its army of brass (both wide-bore and narrow-bore)—not the equal of any medium ever conceived? As a vehicle of deeply emotional expression it seems to me unrivalled.

“Lincolnshire Posy,” as a whole work, was conceived and scored by me direct for wind band early in 1937. Five, out of the six, movements of which it is made up, existed in no other finished form, though most of these movements (as is the case with almost all my compositions and settings, for whatever medium) were indebted, more or less, to unfinished sketches for a variety of mediums covering many years (in this case the sketches date from 1905–1937). These indebtednesses are stated in the scores. The version for two pianos was begun a half-year later after the completion of the work for wind band. 

This bunch of “musical wildflowers” (hence the title “Lincolnshire Posy”) is based on folksongs collected in Lincolnshire, England (one noted by Miss Lucy E. Broadwood; the other five noted by me, mainly in the years 1905–1906, and with the help of the phonograph), and the work is dedicated to the old folksingers who sang so sweetly to me. Indeed, each number is intended to be a kind of musical portrait of the singer who sang its underlying melody—a musical portrait of the singer’s personality no less than of his habits of song—his regular or irregular wonts of rhythm, his preference for gaunt or ornately arabesqued delivery, his contrasts of legato and staccato, his tendency towards breadth or delicacy of tone.

For these folksingers were kings and queens of song! No concert singer I have ever heard approached these rural warblers in variety of tone-quality, range of dynamics, rhythmic resourcefulness and individuality of style. For while our concert singers (dull dogs that they are—with their monotonous mooing and bellowing between mf and f, and with never a pp to their name!) can show nothing better (and often nothing as good) as slavish obedience to the tyrannical behests of composers, our folksingers were lords in their own domain—were at once performers and creators. For they bent all songs to suit their personal artistic taste and personal vocal resources: singers with wide vocal ranges spreading their intervals over two octaves, singers with small vocal range telescoping their tunes by transposing awkward high notes an octave down.

But even more important than these art-skills and personality-impresses (at least to Australia—a land that must upbuild itself in the next few hundred years, a land that cannot forever be content to imitate clockwork running down) is the heritage of the old high moods of our race (tangible proofs that “Merry England”—that is, agricultural England—once existed) that our yeoman singers have preserved for the scrutiny of mournful, mechanised modern man.

Up to the time of the Norman Conquest—in spite of the roaming of Danish armies over the English land—English art showed the characteristics we might expect of a proud Nordic people: in its heathen and half-heathen poems the glorification of race-redeeming, mankind-rescuing, blind- to-gain saviour-heroes such as Beowulf; in its Christian literature the veneration of true Christian meekness, studiousness, culture. It was only after the Norman adventurousness, opportunism and luck-chasing, and that the “inferiority complex” of a defeated people revealed itself in the mock-heroics, flighty pessimism, self-belittlement, South-worship and Continent-apery so distressing (from an Australian standpoint) in Spencer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Keats, Tennyson, Swinburne, and much other English art. (It is upheartening to note that this defeatist self-effacement, this indiscriminate groveling before things foreign is blessedly absent from American poetry such as Walt Whitman’s and Edgar Lee Master’s and from such Australian art as Barbara Bainton’s prose and the drawings, paintings, and novels of Norman Lindsay. Here we meet again the affirmative life-worship and robust selfhood so characteristic of Scandinavian art (of all periods) and of pre-Norman Engish Art. Perhaps it is not too much to hope that American and Australia are in process of de-Normanising, re-Anglo-saxonizing and re-Scandinavianising themselves!)

Yet in spite of the defeatist pessimism so rampant in the more courtly, townified and university-bred branches of English art during the last 900 years, our yeoman artists have been able to hand down to us a large body of proud English moods, qualities and feelings: grandeur, sturdiness, socialness, unmatched sweetness (what folktunes are so meltingly sweet as the English?), wistfulness, island-minded mildness (for a nation without land-frontiers is, naturally, a stranger to continent-bred harshness and intolerance). And it is this yeomanship (this ability to stubbornly remain immune to all sorts of upstart un-English influences) that I wished to celebrate in my “Posy.”

These musical portraits of my folksingers were tone-painted in a mood of considerable bitterness—bitterness at memories of the cruel treatment meted out to folksingers as human beings (most of them died in poor-houses or in other down-heartening surroundings) and at the thought of how their high gifts oftenest were allowed to perish unheard, unrecorded, and unhonoured.

It is obvious that all music lovers (except a few “cranks”) loathe genuine folksong and shun it like the plague. No genuine folksong ever becomes popular—in any civilized land. Yet these same music-lovers entertain a maudlin affection for the word “folksong” (coined by my dear friend Mrs. Edmund Woodhouse to translate German “volkslied”) and the ideas it conjures up. Sothey are delighted when they chance upon half-breed tunes like “Country Gardens” and “Shepherd’s Hey” (on the borderline between folksong and unfolkish “popular song”) that they can sentimentalise over (asm being folksongs), yet can listen to without suffering the intense boredom aroused in them by genuine folksongs. Had rural England not hated its folksong this form of music would not have been in process of dying out and would not have needed to be “rescued from oblivion” by townified highbrows such as myself and my fellow-collectors. As a general rule the younger kin of the old folksingers not only hated folksong in the usual way, described above, but, furthermore, fiercely despised the folksinging habits of their old uncles and grandfathers as revealing social backwardness and illiteracy in their families. And it is true! The measure of a countryside’s richness in living folksong is the measure of its illiteracy; which explains why the United States is, to-day, the richest of all English- speaking lands in living folksong. There are, however, some exceptions to this prevailing connection between folksong and illiteracy. Mr. Joseph Taylor, singer of “Rufford Park Poachers”—who knew more folksongs than any of my other folksingers, and sang his songs with “purer” folksong traditions—was neither illiterate nor socially backward. And it must also be admitted that he was a member of the choir of his village  (Saxby-All-Saints, Lincolnshire) for over 45 years—a thing unusual in a folksinger. Furthermore his relatives—keen musicians themselves—were extremely proud of his prowess as a folksinger. Mr. Taylor was a bailiff on a big estate, where he formerly had been estate woodman and carpenter. He was the perfect type of an English yeoman: sturdy and robust, yet the soul of sweetness, gentleness, courteousness, and geniality. At the age of 75 (in 1908) his looks were those of middle age and his ringing voice—one of the loveliest I ever heard—was as fresh as a young man’s. He was a past master of graceful, birdlike ornament and relied more on purely vocal effects than any folksinger known to me. His versions of tunes were generally distinguished by the beauty of their melodic curves and the symmetry of their construction. His effortless high notes, sturdy rhythms and clean unmistakable intervals were a sheer delight to hear. From a collector’s standpoint he was a marvel of helpfulness and understanding and nothing could be more refreshing than his hale countrified looks and the happy lilt of his cheery voice.

Mr. George Gouldthorpe, the singer of “Harkstow (sic) Grange” (born at Barrow-on-the-Humber, North Lincolnshire, and aged 66 when he first sang to me, in 1905) was a very different personality. Though his face and figure were gaunt and sharp-cornered (closely akin to those seen on certain types of Norwegian upland peasants) and his singing voice somewhat grating, he yet contrived to breathe a spirit of almost caressing tenderness into all he sang, said and did—though a hint of the tragic was ever-present also. A life of drudgery, ending, in old age, in want and hardship, had not shorn his manners of a degree of humble nobility and dignity exceptional even amongst English peasants; nor could any situation rob him of his refreshing, but quite conscious, Lincolnshire independence. In spite of his poverty and his feebleness in old age it seemed to be his instinct to shower benefits around him. Once, at Brigg, when I had been noting down tunes until late in the evening, I asked Mr. Gouldthorpe to come back early the next morning. At about 4:30 I looked out the window and saw him playing with a colt, on the lawn. He must have taken a train from Goxhill or Barrow, at about 4 am. I apologised, saying “I didn’t mean that early, Mr. Gouldthorpe.” Smiling his sweet kingly smile he answered: “Yuh said: Coome eearly. So I coom’d.”

Toward the end of his life he was continually being pitch-forked out of the workhouse to work on the roads, and pitchforked back into the workhouse as it was seen he was too weak to work. (“When Ah gets on to the roäds I feel thaht weeäk!”) But he was very anxious to insist that no injustice was done to him. In the midst of reciting his troubles he would add quickly, impulsively: “Aw, boot Ah’m nawt complaainin’! They’re verra kahn tummuh (kind to me) at the workkus; they’re verra kahn tummuh!”

His child-like mind and unworldly nature, seemingly void of all bitterness, singularly fitted him to voice the purity and sweetness of folk-art. He gave out his tunes in all possible gauntness, for the most part in broad, even notes; but they were adorned by a richness of dialect hard to match. In recalling Mr. Gouldthorpe I think most of the mild yet lordly grandeur of this nature, and this is what I have tried to mirror in my setting of “Harkstow (sic) Grange.” Mr. George Wray (the singer of “Lord Melbourne”) had a worldlier, tougher, and more prosperously-coloured personality. He too was born at Barrow-on-Humber, and was eighty years old when he sang to me in 1906. From the age of eight to seventeen he worked in a brick yard, after which he went to sea as cook and steward, learning some of his songs aboard the ship. After that he again worked at a brick yard, for forty years; and, later on again, he sold coals, taking them to Barton, Barrow, Goxhill, etc., in his own ship, and also carrying them round on his back (in “scootles”), as much as twenty tons a day. This he did to the age of seventy-three, and then he “give over.” In his old age he enjoyed independence, and said: “and thaay saay (they say) a poor mahn ‘ahsn’t a chahnce!” He used to be a great dancer. (Yet in spite of this association with strict rhythm, his singing was more irregular in rhythm than any I ever heard.) He took a prize—a fine silver pencil— for dancing, at Barton, at the age of fifty-four, performing to the accompaniment of a fiddle, which he considered “better than anything to dance to.” His brother was a “left-handed” fiddler (bowing with his left hand, fingering with his right). Mr. Wray held that folksinging had been destroyed by the habit of singing in church and chapel choirs, and used to wax hot on this subject, and on the evils resultant upon singing to the accompaniment of the piano. He was convinced that most folks could keep their vigour as late in life as he had, if they did not overfeed.

He lived alone, surrounded by evil-smelling cats. I asked him if he often went to town, and he answered: It’s too temptatious for a mahn of my age!” A consciousness of snug, self-earned success underlay the jaunty contentment and skittishness of his render- ings. His art shared the restless energy of his life. Some of his versions of tunes were fairly commonplace (not “Lord Melbourne,” however!), yet he never failed to invest them with a unique quaintness—by means of swift touches of swagger, heaps of added “non- sense syllables,” queer hollow vowel-sounds (doubtless due to his lack of teeth) and a jovial, jogging stick-to-it-iveness in performance. He had an amazing memory for the texts of songs. “Lord Melbourne” (actually about the Duke of Marlborough) is a genuine war-song—a rare thing in English folksong.

Mrs. Thompson (the singer of “The Brisk Young Sailor”), though living in Barrow-on-Humber, North Lincolnshire, came originally from Liverpool.

The first number in my set, “Dublin Bay,” was collected under characteristic circumstances. In 1905, when I first met its singer—Mr. Deane, of Hibbaldstowe—he was in the workhouse at Brigg, N.E. Lincolnshire. I started to note down his “Dublin Bay,” but the workhouse matron asked me to stop, as Mr. Deane’s heart was very weak and the singing of the old song—which he had not sung for forty years—brought back poignant memories to him and made him burst into tears. I reluctantly desisted. But a year or so later, when I had acquired a phonograph, I returned to get Mr. Deane’s tune “alive or dead.” I thought he might as well die singing it as die without singing it.

I found him in the hospital ward of the workhouse, with a great gash in his head—he having fallen down stairs. He was very proud of his wound, and insisted that he was far too weak to sing. “All right, Mr. Deane,” I said to him, “you needn’t sing yourself; but I would like you to hear some records made by other singers in these parts.” He had not heard half a record through before he said, impulsively: “I’ll sing for you yoong mahn.” So the phonograph was propped up on his bed, and in between the second and third verse he spoke these words into the record: “It’s pleasein’ muh.” Which shows how very much folksinging is part of the folksinger’s natural life.

The last number of my set (“The Lost Lady Found”) is a real dance-song—come down to us from the days when voices, rather than instruments, held village dancers together. Miss Lucy E. Broadwood, who collected the tune, writes of its origin as follows, in her “English Traditional Songs and Carols” (Boosey & Co.):

Mrs. Hill, an old family nurse, and a native of Stamford (Lincolnshire), learned her delightful song when a child, from an old cook who danced as she sang it beating time on the stone kitchen floor with her iron pattens. The cook was thus unconsciously carrying out the original intention of the “ballad,” which is the English equivalent of the Italian “baletta,” (from ballare, “to dance”), signifying a song to dance measure, accompanied by dancing.

PERCY ALDRIDGE GRAINGER, AUGUST 1939