(Note: This bio derives from a concert program held at the Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne, Australia. The program note writer is anonymous, but Grainger had penciled in the margin, “Good write-up as Composer”; thus, it could be said to carry Grainger’s endorsement. The notes have been lightly edited for content, length, tense, etc. The last two paragraphs were added).

Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882-1961) was born at Brighton, Melbourne, Australia, July 8th, 1882. He was taught at first by his mother, until he was ten years of age, when, for a year and a half, he was a pupil of Professor Louis Pabst, who was then at Melbourne. On the proceeds of several recitals he travelled to Germany with his mother and studied successively under Professor James Kwast and Singor Busoni. In 1900 he went to London and from the following years onward he gave recitals and played at many of the most important concerts, including the Philharmonic, the Halle concerts at Manchester, the Leeds Festival, where, in October 1907, he played the solo part in Grieg’s piano concerto, the composer having been under contract to conduct his work but having died a month before the festival. It was by Grieg’s own choice that Grainger was engaged to play, the young pianist having enjoyed the special esteem and affection of the Norwegian composer for some few years. The latter’s love of national music inspired Mr. Grainger to throw himself heartily into the movement for recovering English folk-songs.

As an arranger of folk-song themes, Granger won special success; his set of four “Irish Dances” on the themes by Stanford, his arrangements of English, Welsh and Irish tunes for unaccompanied chorus, are all marked by strong individuality and brilliant treatment. His “paraphrase” on the Flower-Waltz from Tschaikowsky’s “Nutcracker” is one of the most effective of modern pianoforte solos.

His American debut in recital was at New York on February 11, 1915. In June 1917, he enlisted and became a bandsman in the Army, playing oboe and saxophone; a year later he became instructor at the Army Music School and became a naturalized citizen.

As a composer Grainger was chiefly self-taught. He did not approve of the conventional theoretical training available in the 1890s, so turned, instead, to a study of primitive music, Asiatic music, folk song and the older music of Europe – as far as it was available to him. From the beginning, he divided his compositional activities into two categories: original music (in which no folk-songs or traditional tunes were used), and folk song settings (in which the original form of the folk tunes was preserved – not adapted to conventional classical forms, as in the case of many composers).

His original music is of an unusually progressive and experimental nature, all bearing on the ultimate goal of “Free Music.” Grainger was the first to introduce extremely irregular barrings (as in Hill-song II), large chamber music for wind instruments, scale-less intervals (Free Music), wordless syllables for voices, and other innovations.

Grainger’s polyphonic writing was influenced by his Australian democratic outlook on life. He tended to make all parts (or voices) in his harmonic or polyphonic weft equally important, and was never willing to write a piano concerto (although often requested to do so) because he considered it “un-Australian to have one instrument accompanied by one hundred musical underlings.”

His last years (after WWII) were spent in experiments with his “free music”, and in giving concerts at greatly-reduced fees in exchange for having his original works performed. He died in White Plains, New York on February 20, 1961.

Grainger’s Wikipedia article is an excellent source for information on his life and work; the entry carries a “featured content” designation, meaning it represents the “best of Wikipedia” in terms of accuracy and depth of research.