Fain of his Faithful?

Abstract

Percy Grainger’s assistance to composers he deemed worthy is well-known but irregularly documented. Grainger and Sparre Olsen undertook several projects together, the most ambitious being a translation and international publication of the Olav Aukrust song Fjell-Norig (“Mountain-Norway”) for choir and orchestra, which was to be published through a major international publisher. The project began in 1929, and the years up to 1934 were focused on getting the translation and music ready. After Grainger’s tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1935, where the work was performed frequently, work to find a publisher began. Schott decided to take on the project in 1936, but owing to a number of setbacks the paperwork necessary for publication was not in order when the Second World War began; afterwards the project faded into oblivion. Olsen did not fully disclose these events in his monograph Percy Grainger (1969). Instead, he presented a narrative where a smaller choral publication appeared to have been the goal, which fitted with a translated arrangement he had published a decade prior. In both sources he omitted any mention of Grainger having made his own arrangement, as well as the last verse Grainger translated, the latter possibly because it was never fully sanctioned by Aukrust’s widow Gudrun Aukrust.