The years from 1938 to 1949 represented, for Ron Grainer, the culmination of an intensive period learning the craft of music. From December 1940 to September 1945 any further music studies were interrupted by war time service during which he sustained a serious physical injury leading, in turn, to a change of career focus from that of a civil engineer to that of a composer.
In the early 1950s a negative newspaper review brought Ron's attention to the fact that an audience needs to be emotionally involved in a performance as well as being impressed by technical ability. This public reminder seems to have gradually altered his approach to music creation and steered him towards developing his greatest talent a gift for writing impossible to forget morale boosting melodies.
In the early 1950s a negative newspaper review brought Ron's attention to the fact that an audience needs to be emotionally involved in a performance as well as being impressed by technical ability. This public reminder seems to have gradually altered his approach to music creation and steered him towards developing his greatest talent a gift for writing impossible to forget morale boosting melodies.
1938
The Grainer families relocation to Brisbane meant Ron had a new environment - a capital city and a new school St Josephs College Nudgee to adjust to. [1] As he later exclaimed "I didn't see Brisbane until I was 14. Imagine that 14!' [2]
The Grainer families relocation to Brisbane meant Ron had a new environment - a capital city and a new school St Josephs College Nudgee to adjust to. [1] As he later exclaimed "I didn't see Brisbane until I was 14. Imagine that 14!' [2]
There does not appear to have been much time available for performing in public as Ron's name is not mentioned once in Queensland newspapers that year.
1939
Towards the end of the 1939 [12th December] the Jewish Women’s Guild held a florin afternoon in aid of the Queensland division of the Australian Red Cross Society in the Synagogue Hall Brisbane. Ron contributed to the evenings music program [presumably with some suitably klezmar violin rifts]. [3]
A newspaper review of an ensemble recital played by the violin students of Miss Edith Ahen at the Albert Hall commended Ron and Ian Harrington for their impressive rending of "Dance Espainole". [Granados-Kreisier] [4]
1940
"While an engineering student in Brisbane University [Ron] studied violin and piano." [5] "I was always playing in chamber groups either piano or violin and listening to everything I could from symphonies to jazz groups. I loved it all". [6]
Interestingly Ron appears to have permanently dropped his public performances on violin after 1940.
At a December concert featuring the work of students of Mr Percy Brier at the School of Arts Hall Brisbane Ron played his own [piano] composition "In the Evening Glow" described by a Courier Mail entertainment reporter as "An atmospheric work of considerable beauty conceived in the sophisticated idiom of post war music. It sparkled with dissonances against a slow descending motif in the base". [7]
On the 30th December 1940 Ron entered the Australian Military Service at Brisbane. [8]
Almost 80 pages of Grainer's war time military service records are available from the Australian National Archives however the quality varies considerably. Some pages are typed with worn typewriter ribbon, some are scrawled with a scratchy pen or faded pencil, others look as if they were written in crayon with sweaty palms while still others are inscribed in internal office code without the key to the meaning of the various abbreviations. [9]
1940 - 1945
"During the war as a radio operator on radar stations in North Queensland and the Gulf of Carpentaria [Ron's] prowess on the piano catapulted him into organizing and scoring countless service entertainment shows. "I suppose that’s where I decided to drop engineering and have a go at a musical career" [10]
Grainer's records show that contrary to later magazine articles he auditioned for the RAAF entertainment unit late in his WW2 service - 21st February 1944. His auditioning officers report noted he played "Bolero" and his own composition 'both very good with the latter tuneful and original' and his "Boogie Woogie" technique was described as "excellent". Obviously Grainer had realised that displaying his considerable technical abilities for performing "serious" music would not "get him the gig" so he chose a catchy piece of light classical music with a sensual undertone and it worked. He was transferred on 22nd March 1944 only to find himself four months later in hospital and out of the entertainment unit permanently.
"His career in music was interrupted by the outbreak of World War Two. During the five years Grainer spent with the RAAF he was attached to the 19th Bombardment group of the Australian Air Force serving the Pacific Campaign. During this time he was assigned to the American Red Cross, as pianist to the band, where he met and played with some top musicians from the American Entertainment World.
It is said that Grainer boarded every troop ship he travelled on with his duffel bag containing records and musical scores. His desire to keep music with him throughout the war led to one incident when he was heading with a radar unit for a destination on lonely Mornington Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Wikipedia article Morning Island
On route it seemed imperative to the company that Grainer should have a piano with him. So a piano was 'borrowed' from the Officers Mess concealed in a crate marked 'Radar Equipment' and shipped abroad. It was thus that "fingers" Grainer was able to get down to some serious practice among the snakes and lizards of Mornington Island" . [11]
The 1960 record label press release quoted above may be legend creating. The piano incident does not appear to be mentioned in Grainer's military files and his General Conduct report seems free of complaints.
The only North Queensland newspaper recorded event showing Ron in war time entertainer mode was the fund raising "Win The War" Rally held at the Atherton Shire Hall" on 8th September 1942.
This function a combined churches affair with Church of England, Presbyterian, Methodist and Salvation Army representatives plus the Chairman of the Atherton Shire Council Mr Whiting was divided into two sections. The first an interdenominational service where various prayers including a prayer of invocation [possibly written down by 20th Century Theosophist Alice A Bailey] were offered, hymns sung and inspiring speeches were given. The second section consisted of a rally where lighter, but still relevant to the central theme, songs and sketches were presented.
The Atherton State School Choir opened with "Advance Australia Fair" followed by "Whispering Hope", then after short speeches by two political representatives - "The audience was delighted by a vocal solo by a visiting American serviceman Sergeant, Jack Larsen "I Heard A Forest Praying". As an encore he gave a fine rendition of "Trees". L. A. C. Grainer was the accompanist". [12] The program continued with community singing and a dozen or so other vocal items.
Ron was discharged on 3rd September 1945. He had managed to get through his war time service without any combat injuries however he was not so lucky on one particular military base.
"Probably if it hadn't been for a 44 gallon drum falling on my leg during the war years I would have gone back to studying engineering. But that made a real mess of me and I was stuck on my back in a military hospital never expecting to be able to use the leg again. it was pretty depressing to face the future incapacitated. Realizing this the hospital prescribed music as therapy and gave me facilities to study. Later, when I could get in a wheelchair, they let me practice piano".
"As soon as I was discharged I went to the Sydney Conservatoire to study under Eugene Gossens for four years with some other repatriation students and of course all the young new pupils. I did aesthetics, counterpoint, harmony and composition. In 1949 I took my teachers and performers diploma"
"Gossens had always been my mentor. In Sydney when I composed my first works I had always received the most helpful and constructive criticism from him. There was a violin sonata, some song settings and an orchestral work that he had seen". [14]
Gossens was the first conductor of the post World War Two 82 piece Sydney Symphony Orchestra from 1947 - 1956 as well as Director of the NSW State Conservatorium of Music from 1948 - 1955 [15]
In Ron’s final year class only one other student received a teaching and performing diploma for pianoforte, Richard Bonynge, the future husband of Australian opera star Joan Sutherland [16]
1950
At the Brisbane Albert Hall Maria De Bohm of the Convert Garden and Sadler's Well Opera company performed an evening of grand opera and musical comedy favourites accompanied by Ronald Grainer who "displayed assured musicianship and admirable style" [17]
On the 18.9.1950 Ron appeared on National Radio Station 5CL Adelaide, 7.30 - 8.00 pm, in a program titled "Music Hath Charms" Brisbane Concert Orchestra and Ron Grainer Pianist. [18]
Although not listed on the Queensland National Radio schedule for that night this concert may have been broadcast a half hour later in a 40 minute version under the nondescript heading "Music".
Although not listed on the Queensland National Radio schedule for that night this concert may have been broadcast a half hour later in a 40 minute version under the nondescript heading "Music".
On the 6/12/1950 at the final Brisbane music club musicale of the year at Scottish Union House Associate artist pianist Ron Grainer "played De Fallas 'Fantasia Baetica' with appropriate verve adequately sustaining the almost unrelieved insistence of the fundamental rhythms".
"Mr Grainer's suite of five pieces written for children played by the composer revealed freshness of treatment particularly in the cameos 'Ghost of a Ghost of a Waltz' and 'Pablo the Puppet' which gave promise for more serious work in larger forms". [19]
"Mr Grainer's suite of five pieces written for children played by the composer revealed freshness of treatment particularly in the cameos 'Ghost of a Ghost of a Waltz' and 'Pablo the Puppet' which gave promise for more serious work in larger forms". [19]
1951
Three ABC National radio shows with "Ron Grainer pianist" are listed in Queensland newspapers on 5th April 1951 [9.45 - 10.00 pm], 4 May 1951 [10.00 - 10.30 pm] and 4 September 1951 [9.45 - 10.00 pm] but Ron may have had a regular monthly show throughout the year hidden by regional radios caption of "Music" for the relevant time slots.
A Sydney conservatorium concert on the 15th August 1951 featuring Ron on piano and Don Scott on violin with a program of sonatas by Milhaud, Grainer, Delius and Faure attracted a review that was most likely a turning point for Ron's attitudes towards composition and performance .
"The players earned respect for their uncompromising disregard of mob appeal in their choice of four little known sonatas. At the same time they showed a lack of practical concert-sense in choosing works of almost unrelievedly pastel coloring."
"By the time the program ended - even with such finely wrought works as the Sonata number 2 of Delius and the Faure Sonata - the playing was in keeping with the style of the music: sensitive and well tailored and in careful good taste but sometimes in need of a more impulsive and heartfelt spirit even at the cost of a blemish or two on the well tendered surface of the performance..."
" Grainer's ideas [as shown in his own composition] are, at least, as memorable as the rather lifeless Milhaud Sonata which opened the evening but these ideas tend to sidetrack into facile pleasantries in their development". [20]
It must have been quite a shock to be publicly ridiculed for hard won qualities Ron would have been taught to believe were essential for a serious music artist but the humiliating experience may explain his later almost total dropping of "intellectual" and "ponderous" 20th century classical music in favor of clear cut melodies with broad popular appeal. It may also explain his revisionist statement in the 1960s that he "always loathed performing". [21]
In May 1951 the Queensland Arts Council sent violinist Gloria Foley and Ron Grainer on a well received mini Queensland tour to Maryborough on Sept 24 and Bundaberg on Sept 25. The tour was financed by profits from the Australian ballet "Corroboree". [22]
A tribute concert of compositions by composer Percy Brier was performed by ten Brisbane musicians at the Brisbane Lord Mayors reception room on the 5th November 1951. Ron Grainer was one of the artists appearing. [23]
On the 24.11.1951 the Queensland Branch of the Guild of Australian Composers presented in the new church hall the 20th program of members original material. The works of eleven relatively well known Brisbane composers were performed including an unnamed piece by Ron Grainer [24].
This concert appears to have been the last public performance by Ron Grainer in Australia.
1952
On 17 September 1952 Ron married Margorie Boyce Adolphus. [25] Feeling frustrated with the lack of opportunities available to him locally especially as regards his ambition to become internationally recognised as a composer Ron made the decision to relocate to England with his wife Margot and step daughter Rel via the "Oronsby" arriving in London on 24th November 1952. [26]
Once resettled in England Ron and Margot's modest financial resources didn't sustain them for very long and any cautious optimism they had when they left Australia was severely tested in the lean years that preceded Ron's professional breakthrough with the score for the TV series "Maigret" in 1960.
Once resettled in England Ron and Margot's modest financial resources didn't sustain them for very long and any cautious optimism they had when they left Australia was severely tested in the lean years that preceded Ron's professional breakthrough with the score for the TV series "Maigret" in 1960.
REFERENCES
01 Australian Dictionary of Biography Volume 17
02 Australian Women’s Weekly 5 August 1964 p9
03 Courier Mail 13 December 1939 p18
04 Courier Mail 13.12.1939 p6
05 Move Over Rodgers / A. W. W. 5 August 1964 p9
06 Courier Mail 13.12.1939 p6
07 Courier Mail 13.12.39 p18
08 Official Department of Veterans Affairs document
09 Australian National Archives: Ron Grainer
10 ABC on the Trail of Inspector Maigret / Australian Women's Weekly / 12 June 1962 p42
11 Warner Brothers publicity sheet Maigret soundtrack album 1960.
12 Cairns Post 9.9.42 p6 .
13 Official Department of Veterans Affairs document
14 Move Over Rodgers / Australian Women's Weekly 5 August 1984 p9 .
15 Wikipedia Sydney Symphony Orchestra /NSW State Conserv. Music
16 Sydney Morning Herald 23.12. 1949 p8
17 Courier Mail 13.2.1950 p5
18 Adelaide Advertiser 18.9.1950 p16
19 Courier Mail 7.6.1950 p5
20 Sydney Morning Herald 16 August 1951 p4
21 Move Over Rodgers / Australian Woman's Weekly 5 August 1964 p9
22 Courier Mail 1.9.51 p3 / l 2 October 1951 p3
23 Courier Mail 6 November 1951 p5
24 Courier Mail 26.11. 1951 p5
25 Melbourne University Press, Volume 17 pp 451- 452.
26 Ancestry com / UK incoming passenger lists
The Ron Grainer Story
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