Australian Up-Country Tune

Listen to the work here!
 
Australian Up-Country Tune is a choral piece by the British composer Percy Aldridge Grainger, adapted here for solo piano. Grainger initially composed the melody of this song in 1905, and created a more formal choral setting of the work in 1928. This choral setting was premiered at Grainger’s wedding in 1928 at the Hollywood Bowl. Grainger has stated that his goal in creating the tune and the subsequent choral setting was to evoke the pastoral melodies and moods of the rural outback of Australia, much in the same way as other music of his and his contemporaries evokes the moods of rural America and England. In this way, the work can also be seen as part of a larger tradition emphasizing traditional melodies in classical music, such as the composer’s own wind band work Lincolnshire Posy but also the music of other European composers such as Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók. Grainger would later use the “up-country” tune of the song in multiple of his other works, including his Colonial Song and the Gum Suckers March from the orchestral suite In a Nutshell. In adapting Grainger’s choral tune for solo piano, I have attempted to maintain his harmonicrichness, especially in the middle to low register of the keyboard, creating a sound not unlike Grainger’s own piano writing. Although the work is short, the forte ending arrives with dramatic flair and allows for a degree of showmanship before immediately fading back into the work’s pastoral ending.