In a Nutshell

In a Nutshell is a musical composition by Percy Aldridge Grainger for orchestra, piano, and Deagan percussion instruments. The suite, published in 1916, is made up of four movements: "Arrival Platform Humlet", "Gay But Wistful", "Pastoral", and "The Gum-Suckers March". Grainger later made versions for both solo piano and piano duo. It is described as one of the early modernist works of Grainger.[1]

For the German YouTube channel sometimes called "In a Nutshell", see Kurzgesagt.
The title page of the suite.

It premiered on 8 June 1916 at the summer Norfolk Festival, with Grainger on piano, under conductor Arthur Mees.[2] Other early performances were made by the San Francisco Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra in the following winter.[3]

Composition

The first movement, "Arrival Platform Humlet", was originally written in 1908 for solo viola as one of Grainger's earliest works.[4] In his words, the humlet (which he defined as a "little ditty to hum") came from: "awaiting the arrival of a belated train bringing one’s sweetheart from foreign parts [...] The sort of thing one hums to oneself as an accompaniment to one’s tramping feet as one happily, excitedly, paces up and down the arrival platform." Anthony Bateman of The Guardian ranked it as one of the top ten best pieces inspired by trains.[5]

The second movement, "Gay But Wistful", is subtitled as "a tune in a popular London style" referring to music hall, a popular genre of entertainment in Victorian England.[6] In the staff description for its AllMusic entry, Dave Lewis notes that the piece, while clearly English in style, had a "jazz-inflected harmonic practice" similar to the future approach of jazz composer Duke Ellington.[7]

Unlike the other three movements, Grainger did not provide program notes for "Pastoral", which is the longest movement of the work lasting approximately 10 minutes. It is noted as the standout piece in the work, being an early representative of his interest in atonal and free music, in which he shied away from traditional melody, harmony, and form.[8] Musicologist Paul Fleet cites the movement it as an early example of metatonality as a piece which "sits between the boundaries of tonality and atonality".[9]

The fourth and last movement is "The Gum-Suckers March". According to the composer, the title makes reference to Australians from the state of Victoria, where Grainger was from; residents would often suck the leaves of gum trees to stay cool in the summer. This movement was later arranged for band by the composer in 1942 and has become standard repertoire for the medium.[10]

Percussion

For this composition, Grainger employed a large number of keyboard percussion instruments made by J. C. Deagan. Grainger thought highly of Deagan, describing their instruments as "marvelously perfected examples of American inventive ingenuity" in the program notes of the piece.[11] Alongside the xylophone and glockenspiel (which by then had cemented their place in the orchestra), Grainger added four novel instruments: a wooden marimba,[lower-alpha 1] a steel marimba,[lower-alpha 2] a nabimba,[lower-alpha 3] and Swiss staff bells.[lower-alpha 4][17]

Reception

At the American premiere, many critics commended the suite. Several reviewers, such as The New York Times and a correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, praised the unique effects provided by the novel percussion instruments.[18][19] Other American reviews, after a following December concert in California, had both the San Francisco Examiner and Oakland Tribune similarly complimenting the piece, highlighting the unique third movement, and likening it to a showcase of nature.[20][21]

However, at the later British and Australian premieres, reactions to the piece were more mixed. The British paper, The Guardian, criticized the piece as a bad attempt to be funny, while the Melbourne-based paper, The Age, criticized the "free harmonic habits" of "Pastoral" calling it "noisy", "wholly American", and far from "the healthy gumsucker".[22][23] The Daily Telegraph was one paper critical towards the new percussion instruments, determining that the marimbas and like were inferior to the more common xylophone and bells, later defending that viewpoint after a response article in the Musical Courier that commended Grainger's experimentation.[24][25]

Instrumentation

The original version is scored for the following large orchestra:[11]


See also

References

Notes
  1. The wooden marimba, while now common in modern orchestral music, was a rarity in the early twentieth century. The instrument used for early performances would have actually been a xylo-marimba.[12] It is cited as one of the earliest uses of the marimba in classical music.[13]
  2. The steel marimba was similar to the modern vibraphone, having approximately the same range, but with bars made of steel rather than aluminum and no motor to produce a vibrato effect.[14] The resonaphone made by Hawkes & Son is offered as an alternative in the score.
  3. A nabimba was a sort of marimba with vibrating membranes placed in the resonators to give it a buzzing effect.[15]
  4. Swiss staff bells were similar to mounted hand bells. Grainger was one of the only composers to ever call for them, using them again in his piece The Warriors.[16]

Citations
  1. Robinson, Suzanne (1 December 2012). "'Mr. Percy Grainger: A Prophet of Modernism'—How Grainger Brought Ultra-modernism to Australia, 1934–1935". Musicology Australia. 34 (2): 207–231. doi:10.1080/08145857.2012.681777.
  2. "Grainger's New Orchestral Suite". Musical Courier. Vol. 72, no. 24. 16 June 1916. p. 23.
  3. "Three Orchestras to Play Grainger 'In a Nutshell' Suite". Musical America. Vol. 24, no. 25. 21 October 1916. p. 37.
  4. Hall, David (January 1998). "Grainger: In a Nutshell; "Train Music"; "Country Gardens"; Lincolnshire Posy; The Warriors; arrangements of Ravel and Debussy". Stereo Review. Vol. 63, no. 1. pp. 102–103.
  5. Bateman, Anthony (1 January 2016). "The 10 best: pieces inspired by trains". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 March 2023.
  6. "Percy Grainger, Lion of the Music Zoo". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 22 October 1916. p. 13.
  7. Lewis, Uncle Dave. "In a Nutshell, suite for orchestra, piano & Deagan percussion instruments". AllMusic. Retrieved 6 March 2023.
  8. Gilles, Malcom (2006). "Grainger the Composer". In Pear, David (ed.). Facing Percy Grainger. National Library of Australia. pp. 9–10. ISBN 978-0-64227-639-1. OCLC 75391892.
  9. Fleet, Paul (2022). "Space and structure in metatonal musics". Musics With and After Tonality: Mining the Gap (First ed.). Taylor & Francis. pp. 62–68. ISBN 978-0-42983-753-1. OCLC 1289920225.
  10. Rapp, Willis M. (2005). The Wind Band Masterworks of Holst, Vaughan Williams, and Grainger. Meredith Music. p. 59. ISBN 978-1-4584-2067-1. OCLC 1024271849.
  11. Grainger, Percy Aldridge (1916). In a Nutshell [score]. G. Schirmer, Inc. OCLC 1298768673.
  12. Beck 2007, p. 415.
  13. Libin, Laurence (2015). "Marimba". The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments (Second ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acref/9780199743391.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-974339-1.
  14. Beck 2007, p. 55.
  15. Beck 2007, p. 61.
  16. Saoud, Erick (February 2001). "Percy Grainger's Innovative Writing for Mallet-Keyboard Percussion: John Roscigno Discusses Grainger's The Warriors". Percussive Notes. 39 (1): 42–46.
  17. Robinson 2016, p. 170.
  18. "Suite Full of New Effects". The New York Times. 11 June 1916. p. 4.
  19. "New Instruments And A Suite". The Daily Telegraph. 19 August 1916. p. 4.
  20. Mason, Redfern (9 December 1916). "Novelties At Symphony; Percy Grainger Makes Hit". San Francisco Examiner. p. 8. [The Pastorale] shows us nature in its throes—the cosmic strife—as well as her more placid moods.
  21. Brown, Ray C. B. (9 December 1916). "Grainger's Art Lures Audience; Genius Shown in Daring Work". Oakland Tribune. p. 5. The Pastorale is not a picture of shepherds and Grecian hills [...] it quivers with the violence of sand storms and howling winds in writhing trees;
  22. "Mr. Grainger's New Suite". The Guardian. 31 January 1921. p. 9.
  23. "Celebrity Concert: Some Soulless Novelties". The Age. 24 June 1935. p. 17.
  24. "Queen's Hall". The Daily Telegraph. 31 January 1921. p. 4.
  25. Musicus (2 April 1921). "World of Music". The Daily Telegraph. p. 4. Our protest [...] was made against the introduction of "new" instruments of inferior calibre [...]

Bibliography
  • Beck, John H., ed. (2007). Encyclopedia of Percussion (Second ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-97123-2. OCLC 0415971233.
  • Robinson, Suzanne (2016). "When Grainger Was Ultra-Modernist: A Study of the American Reception of In a Nutshell (1916)". In Robinson, Suzanne; Dreyfus, Kay (eds.). Grainger the Modernist. Taylor & Francis. pp. 163–179. doi:10.4324/9781315585772. ISBN 978-1-31712-502-0.
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