We are delighted to announce the Percy Grainger Society’s 2025–26 members’ meeting series, Grainger the Educator, a celebration of Percy Grainger’s often overlooked yet enduring influence as a teacher and educator. This three-part series seeks to illuminate Grainger’s innovative educational approach and spirit in a variety of settings, including his work at the National Music Camp, Interlochen, and his lecture series for New York University, and for the Australian Broadcasting Commission.
Grainger embraced a universalist conception of music, seeking correspondences and similarities in cultural practices from art music to folk music, and from jazz music to early music. He regularly included lecture-recitals in his concert tours, and held teaching posts at the Chicago Musical College, and later at the National Music Camp at Interlochen. In his prime, he was one of the most highly-sought after, and highly-paid, piano teachers, with individual classes sometimes comprising thirty or more students. He strove to nurture not only the technical skill of his students but also their curiosity and individuality. His commitment to guiding young musicians toward self-discovery, combined with his belief in music’s power as a communal experience, has left a legacy that feels remarkably contemporary in today’s quest to inspire new generations of performers, educators, and listeners alike.
Session One: Grainger at the National Music Camp, Interlochen
Prof. Phyllis Weliver will lead the first presentation/discussion entitled ' “to familiarize American youth with the better type of new American music”: Percy Grainger’s five summers at Interlochen’s National Music Camp.'
We know that Percy Grainger guest conducted at Interlochen’s National Music Camp in 1930, and was on summer faculty in 1937 and 1942–1944. However, the extent of his contributions to Interlochen are surprising and forgotten. To be sure, Grainger taught, arranged and composed specifically for Interlochen students as part of his larger goal to help shape the curriculum at the institution that was driving the American high school orchestra and band movement, but he also made additional and varied large donations.
To tell a fuller narrative of Grainger’s time at Interlochen than has yet been published, this talk makes use of a large collection of correspondence and other items held by Interlochen alongside scrapbooks, diaries and letters at the Grainger Museum. Along the way, it also corrects perceptions of Grainger as a loner through showing his contributions to and sense of community at the camp, both with students and other faculty.
Phyllis Weliver is Professor of English at Saint Louis University, specializing in the connections among music, literature, and a range of other discourses in Victorian Britain. Twice-funded by the National Endowment of the Humanities, she has given the Annual Gladstone Lecture at Gladstone’s Library, spoken by invitation at the British Academy and Royal Academy of Music, and written and presented for BBC Radio 3’s “The Essay.” She has also published several academic books, including the monograph Mary Gladstone and the Victorian Salon (Cambridge University Press), along with numerous articles and book chapters. Recently, as 2024 Macgeorge Fellow at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, she spoke by invitation at the Grainger Museum about Grainger's role at Interlochen Center for the Arts, where Professor Weliver grew up.