by Tim Rayborn
He was known for his boundless energy, sometimes walking from one concert venue to another while on tour (the tour bus hadn’t yet been invented; trains were the norm). He even helped shovel coal in the boiler rooms of ships he traveled on. Can you imagine a modern pop band offering to do that?
Moving to America in 1914 at the onset of World War I, he eventually became a US citizen but continued to travel widely. He became a keen supporter of jazz and Duke Ellington, whom he considered to be one of the great composers of all time, along with Bach and Frederick Delius. In later years he even experimented with early forms of electronic and mechanical music and was known to enjoy the new rock-and-roll movies that were becoming popular. One suspects that he would have loved the explosion of new ideas in rock music in the ’60s and ’70s.
So what’s the dark side of this tale? Well, Mr. Grainger had a bit of a fetish. He was heavily into S&M, especially flagellation. His practices also had a voyeuristic aspect to them, as he documented and photographed his activities with his wife; she seems to have tolerated it as a “wife’s duty.” He liked to be very thorough and specific, noting the date, time, and even the whip used in any given session. When he toured, he took whips with him for self-flagellation.
He was the son of odd parents. His mother suffered from syphilis and had a morbid fear of contaminating him with it; she withheld physical affection as a result. She whipped him regularly until he was sixteen and tried to limit and control his contact with others his own age, especially women; this latter behavior continued until he was nearly forty years old. She kept a disturbingly tight rein on Percy, bordering on obsession. As so often happened, her syphilis drove her insane, and she eventually committed suicide in 1922 by jumping out of a window from the eighteenth floor of an office building in New York City. The effect of her death on Grainger was devastating; his love of the whip was strongly connected to his love for her.
In the mid-1930s, he donated a sum of money to the University of Melbourne so that it could establish a museum dedicated to him. Humility clearly wasn’t one of his strong points. In addition to the usual donations of music, instruments, letters, and manuscripts, he included various items from his unconventional hobby, including photographs of sessions, whips (more than eighty of them), and even a pair of bloodstained shorts (!) worn in one such session. Exactly what the university made of all this is unknown.
Among his other eccentricities:
• He wore wrinkled clothing; he considered ironing pointless for performances, since no one in the audience could see him up close anyway. Amusingly, he was arrested more than once for vagrancy due to his disheveled look.
• He liked to sleep under his piano.
• He was a vegetarian who disliked vegetables and preferred bread, milk, and fruit. He didn’t like coffee, tea, or alcohol.
• He lived in the same house in New York for many years but apparently only mowed the lawn once during that time.
• He would hang items such as pens and pencils from his coat on pieces of string, rather than carry them in a briefcase.
He was an odd man who once declared, “I live for my lusts and I don’t care if they kill me.” It was abdominal cancer that eventually did kill him in early 1961 in New York. He was buried in a religious ceremony in Adelaide, Australia, against his wishes; he had been a lifelong atheist. Whether any whips went to the grave with him is not known, but he would no doubt have wanted them.
Anton Webern (1883–1945)
A shot in the dark II
The Austrian composer Webern is best known for working in the atonal style developed by Arnold Schoenberg; he was also a major proponent of the twelve-tone technique, a compositional form wherein all twelve notes of the western chromatic scale (i.e., all of the black and white keys of the piano in a single octave) are given equal treatment, so that a key or “center” to the music is not established. The result is not always pleasant to listen to, but the technique has intrigued musicians and composers for a century; it’s quite a challenge to write a piece within these guidelines. General audiences mostly never really warmed to the idea, so you’re not likely to ever see a twelve-tone song topping the Billboard charts. Many consider it to be nothing more than a mathematical exercise without much in the way of a pleasing aesthetic; others think it’s just noise. English composer Ernest Moeran referred to it as “wrong note music.” His fellow Englishman Vaughan Williams flatly stated in 1956 that it seemed to him “the most astonishing bit of mechanical pedantry which has ever been dignified by the name of art … apparently one must not use any succession of notes which sounds agreeable to the cultivated ear.”
Webern ran afoul of the Nazis during World War II but managed to keep his wits and his head, and seemed at one point even to endorse Hitler; any Nazi sympathies that he had were probably more out of German patriotism than sympathy with their positions, and he certainly did not adopt anti-Semitic attitudes. In that time and place, one had to play the game of life very carefully. At the end of the war, when Germany and Austria were occupied by the Allied forces, he was at his daughter’s home near Salzburg. On the night of September 15, he stepped outside to smoke a cigar, so as not to disturb his sleeping grandchildren; an Allies-imposed curfew was about to go into effect. US army soldier Pfc. Raymond Norwood Bell shot and killed him, believing him to be up to no good, possibly due to Webern’s son-in-law having been arrested for black market activity. Bell was said to be so distraught with remorse over the shooting that he became an alcoholic and died in 1955.
Alban Berg (1885–1935)
Sheer foolishness
Berg was a member of the Second Viennese School that also included Schoenberg and Webern. He explored the new concepts of atonal music, and many now consider his output (difficult though it may be for first-time listeners to appreciate) to be among the richest and most important in contemporary music. Arguably the most popular of the School, he also incorporated tonal music into his works. One of these pieces, the oddly named Five Songs on Picture Postcard Texts by Peter Altenberg, caused quite a stir. Two of the songs were performed in Vienna in March 1913, conducted by Schoenberg. The music was so unsettling that it apparently induced a riot in the audience and the performance had to be stopped; the concert organizer was arrested. Of course, this reaction was a huge blow to the composer’s ego. He was mortified and withdrew the pieces. They were not performed again until after his death.
He studied with Schoenberg for seven years, but unlike his teacher, who had a fear of the number thirteen, he had a fascination with the number twenty-three. He had apparently suffered his first asthma attack on July 23 (the year is uncertain) and saw this as significant. He may also have been interested in the work of Wilhelm Fliess, an otolaryngologist. That’s quite a word! It refers to the study and treatment of disorders of the head and neck. We know them as ear, nose, and throat doctors, but their expertise extends much wider than that—well, only as wide as a given person’s head. In any case, Fliess developed a theory that men and women went through regular sexual cycles, twenty-three days for men and twenty-eight for women, a precursor to the modern concept of biorhythms. Of course, Fliess also developed an extensive theory about the connection between the nose and the genitals, so maybe we can take his ideas with a grain of salt.
Regardless of the source of his musical symbolism, Berg was a fairly prolific composer, but as usual, had mixed financial success. Again, this lack of money was to contribute to his untimely end. He was the victim of an insect sting on his back. The sting developed an abscess, and his wife, in an effort to save money, offered to remove it with a pair of scissors. Of course, this led to blood poisoning, and by the time he was admitted to a hospital it was too late. He died at the age of fifty on Christmas Eve. Do-it-yourself surgery is never recommended.
Wallingford Riegger (1885–1961)
Doggone it
Riegger was one of the first American composers to make use of the twelve-tone system, which is either good or bad depending on
your point of view. He lived and studied in Germany on two separate occasions in the early part of the twentieth century, returning home when the United States entered World War I in 1917. After this, he spent much of his time composing and teaching at various institutions in New York State. His atonal works were admired by some, but one critic described a piece as sounding like “a dying cow emitting mournful groans.”
In the 1950s, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. They were investigating the infiltration of communist ideas into the musical world, and they may well have seen the twelve-tone system as a commie plot to undermine good old-fashioned tonal American music. Or they at least expected him to rat on those who were hiding their nefarious plans under the guise of some of the more suspicious types of “new music.” Riegger had communist sympathies but surprisingly does not seem to have suffered much from the witch hunt.
In the annals of ridiculous and unnecessary deaths, his certainly takes an honored place. In 1961 he found himself entangled, literally, in the leashes of two dogs that were fighting. He tripped and fell to the hard ground. Though he received treatment, he died a short time later of complications from his injuries.
Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953)
A good day to die?
Prokofiev led an interesting international life, having left the Soviet Union for America at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution (1918), feeling that his new music would not find favor under the strict Soviet policies being developed. Initially he went to San Francisco, then visited New York, and finally returned to Europe in the early 1920s. Touring through Europe extensively, he began to long for his homeland in the early 1930s. He returned by choice to the Soviet Union only to discover over time that its attitudes toward what kinds of art were acceptable were becoming much more rigid. He frequently found himself under suspicion, and his music was on occasion denounced as elitist and dangerous to the people. The Soviet government seemed to change its definition of what was acceptable and what wasn’t as often as some change their underwear, so he probably never knew quite where he stood.
He also wasn’t all that popular with his neighbors; once he was evicted from his apartment. The reason? A downstairs neighbor complained that he had played the same piano chord 218 times. Apparently, this person had nothing better to do than listen through the ceiling and keep a running count.
Prokofiev’s estranged wife was convicted of espionage (most likely on trumped-up charges, as she was Spanish and there was a xenophobic attitude among the authorities) and sentenced to twenty years in Siberia, but Prokofiev himself managed to avoid a similar fate. However, he suffered several heart attacks and a bad fall, which led to declining health in his last years.
He died, probably of a cerebral hemorrhage, on March 5, 1953, coincidentally the same day as Josef Stalin, the man whose regime had caused him great amounts of hardship. Given that he lived near Red Square, the masses of “official” (i.e., obligatory) mourners that filled the place prevented the removal of his body for three days and dwarfed the tiny procession that carried his coffin to Novodevichy Cemetery. During the service, the organizers had to use paper flowers and potted plants, and a recording of funeral music from his ballet, Romeo and Juliet. This was because all the real flowers and actual musicians were reserved for Stalin’s lavish state funeral, though some accounts say that many of the musicians secretly dedicated their performances to Prokofiev, while outwardly pretending to play for Stalin. Further, in a typical gesture of Soviet priorities, the leading music journal included notice of Prokofiev’s death briefly on page 116. The first 115 pages were devoted to coverage of Stalin’s death.
Still, he had the last laugh. He is regarded as one of the great twentieth-century Russian composers, and his music, including such wonderful works as Peter and the Wolf, is still loved.
Stalin? Well, he’s not so popular anymore.
Peter Warlock (1894–1930)
It’s a gas
Peter Warlock was the rather creative pen name of composer Philip Heseltine. He would alternate between his given name and his nom de plume depending on the circumstances; a fake name was a great way to pretend to be someone else and hide from the backlash of his often-harsh music criticisms. Warlock (as we’ll call him here) was a part of the new movement of composers in early twentieth-century England. He was actively involved in writing about music and promoting the fellow composers of his day.
He was also deeply interested in music from Tudor times, which was then undergoing a revival in England, a “Renaissance” if you will—hey, it had to be said! He rediscovered the works of an obscure sixteenth-century English composer named Thomas Whythorne. This little-known fellow wrote what may be the earliest surviving autobiography in English, offering sage advice such as “He that wooeth a widow must not carry quick eels in his codpiece.” There’s something you’ll never see in a fortune cookie! Warlock is now credited with being crucially important in bringing higher standards to musicology and to the way that early music was edited and prepared for modern editions.
He was also quite the limerick writer. No one was spared from his jests, as in this limerick, told of his friends, the singer John Goss and pianist/composer Hubert Foss:
That scandalous pair Goss and Foss
Once attempted to put it across
A girl on a train
But their efforts proved vain,
So Foss tossed off Goss at King’s Cross
And this was by no means the most scandalous one he wrote! He once typed out a series of them on a roll of toilet paper and then rolled it back up, as a joke.
As his pseudonym implies, Warlock had a keen interest in the occult and rubbed shoulders with various folks who shared his interest, including author Mary Butts, who had once spent time with the notorious Aleister Crowley at his home in Italy. There have been debates about how serious Warlock was in his devotion. We know that he spent a year in Dublin beginning in 1917 to avoid conscription into military service. While there, he may have suffered some psychological damage from too much dabbling in black magic and related things, but not everyone accepts this idea. His letters to a former teacher, Colin Taylor, dating from this time show that he was actively pursuing such interests. He writes:
Since my voyages of discovery during the last six months have opened up for me such amazing and far-reaching vistas of hitherto undreamed-of possibilities, I thought you might find a new interest in life by following a similar track.
Later on, he warns:
Please do not mention the books I have told you of to anyone else. This is important. When you have read them you will see that this kind of book must not on any account fall into unfit hands…. There are far more dangerous books than obscene novels in existence.
In another letter, from 1918, he writes:
Please keep strictly to yourself anything I may have said in former letters about certain communications and predictions. These have developed into a very serious and important matter, of which I will tell you fully one day.
We don’t know exactly what happened during that year, but his insistence on keeping silent about many details was in accordance with what practitioners of ritual magic believed. He once attended a séance in Dublin with his young wife but was met with resistance when an assistant to the ritual saw him and declared that he was “dogged by evil influences. Send him away.” In 1918, Warlock claimed that he had received long messages of great importance from an unknown spiritual source, including some about music. At the same time he grew a goatee beard, saying that it made him more confident and was one of his “little magical energy-saving devices.”
Some have speculated that his song “The bayly berith the bell away” may have been a reference to a black mass. The words are from a poem dating to the early sixteenth century at least, and may well simply describe bridal preparations:
The maydens came
When I was in my mother’s bower,
I had all that I wolde.
The ba
yly berith the bell away,
The lily, the rose the rose I lay.
The silver is whit, red is the golde,
The robes they ley in fold.
The bayly berith the bell away,
The lily, the rose the rose I lay.
And through the glasse wyndow shines the sone.
How shuld I love, and I so young?
The bayly berith the bell away,
The lily, the lilly the rose I lay.
For the black mass interpretation, the ringing of the bell signifies the start of the black mass, the lily and rose are laid on the altar in blasphemous parody of a Christian ceremony, the colors red and white symbolize male and female, or perhaps purity and blood, the laying down of robes describes the removing of clothing for the ritual, and “how should I love” may describe the taking of a virgin on the altar. Admittedly this reading is a stretch, and many reject it, but it is the kind of work that Warlock would have been interested in, if he chose to read it this way.
Whatever his magical interests, he was also very fond of alcohol and spent some years in the mid-1920s sharing a home in the village of Eynsford, south of London, with his friend and fellow composer Ernest Moeran, living a life of excess and reported college fraternity levels of drinking. In addition, he suffered from depression (probably actually bipolar disorder) as he grew into adulthood. In the times when he was down he could do little for months, but in an up cycle he could compose a new song every day for a week.
He made many enemies in his life with his sharp wit and acidic tone. He once told prominent music critic and author Percy Scholes to do something creative to himself with a “well-greased pair of bellows.” Scholes threatened a lawsuit in response.