Between 1905 and 1908 Percy Grainger made a major contribution to the corpus of British folk-song, collecting melodies and words of ballads, shanties and work songs, and devoting himself not just to the faithful capture of pitch and rhythm, but also the nuances of performance, with his pioneering use of the phonograph. These folk-songs became for Grainger a wellspring of compositional inspiration to which he returned time and time again. Yet while he was still a student in Frankfurt, Grainger had been making settings of British traditional tunes sourced from published collections. This article contends that these early arrangements hold the key to a deeper understanding of his later persistence in folk-song arranging and collecting, and that they prefigure the recurrent textual themes in the songs he later chose to arrange. It is argued that Grainger’s attraction to folk-song was textual and musical, tied to notions of purity, freedom and an unorthodox spirituality inspired by nature and shaped by the writings of Whitman, whereby Grainger perceived folk-song as a universal utterance. For Grainger, British folk-song was not simply a source of profound melody for appropriation; the window into a nation’s soul became a door into the souls of all humanity.

中文翻译：

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Percy Grainger 早期英国民歌背景中的普遍和精神概念

1905 年至 1908 年间，珀西·格兰杰对英国民歌的语料库做出了重大贡献，他收集民谣、棚屋和工作歌曲的旋律和歌词，不仅致力于忠实地捕捉音高和节奏，而且致力于表演，他开创性地使用了留声机。这些民歌成为格兰杰创作灵感的源泉，他一次又一次地回归。然而，当他还是法兰克福的学生时，Grainger 一直在制作来自已出版收藏的英国传统曲调。本文认为，这些早期的编曲是深入了解他后来坚持民歌编曲和收藏的关键，它们预示着他后来选择编曲的歌曲中反复出现的文本主题。有人认为，格兰杰对民歌的吸引力在于文本和音乐，与纯洁、自由和受惠特曼著作塑造并受自然启发和塑造的非正统灵性的概念相关联，格兰杰将民歌视为一种普遍的表达方式。对于 Grainger 来说，英国民歌不仅仅是一种用于挪用的深刻旋律的来源；通向一个国家灵魂的窗户变成了通向全人类灵魂的大门。