- New!
- Band
- Percussion
- Orchestra
- Brass Band
- Jazz
- Chamber
- Voice
Genre: Band
# of Players: Standard
Level: 3 | Duration: 2:40
Publisher: Aux Arcs Music | Copyright:
Download mp3 | View Video Below for Score Sample
Extracted from Grainger's "Jungle Book Cycle, The Inuit tells the brief tale of Eskimos in frozen wastes with music that is equal parts haunting and forceful.
Genre: Band | # of Players: Standard
Level: 3 | Duration: 2:40
Instrumentation
Piccolo
Flute 1/2 (4)
Oboe 1/2 (2)
English Horn (1)
Bassoon 1/2 (2)
B-flat Clarinet 1/2/3 (3 each)
B-flat Bass Clarinet (2)
B-flat Contrabass Clarinet (1)
B-flat Soprano Saxophone (1)
E-flat Alto Saxophone 1/2 (2)
B-flat Tenor Saxophone (1)
E-flat Baritone Saxophone (1)
B-flat Trumpet 1/2/3 (2 each)
F Horn 1/2 (2)
F Horn 3/4 (2)
Trombone 1/2/3 (1 each)
Euphonium (2)
T.C. Baritone (1)
Tuba (3)
Double Bass (1)
Percussion (up to 7 players)
Orchestra Bells & Suspended Cymbal
Crotales
Vibraphone
Chimes
3 Players on 2 Marimbas
Program Notes
"My Kipling 'Jungle Book' Cycle, begun in 1898 and finished in 1947, was composed as a protest against civilization." (Grainger's program note, 1947)
Percy Grainger (1882-1961) studied at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, Germany from 1895-1901 (aged 13-19). Grainger's mother Rose wrote her husband John of her fears that young Percy was becoming "more Germanized every day." In response to Rose's concern, and to "tickle up the British Lion in him," John (who was estranged from Rose) sent Percy, among other things, several books by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936).
Kipling's writings captivated Percy immediately, and he soon started writing choral settings of the poetry, especially those of Kipling's Jungle Books. Grainger's settings of the poetry of Kipling are as extensive as his settings of British folk music; Kay Freyfus's catalog of Grainger's manuscript scores lists 36 settings, though Grainger in a 1926 letter to Kipling mentions "some 40 or 50" settings.
Grainger felt a strong kinship for Kiplin's writing, and Kiplins appreciated and approved of Grainger's work at setting his poetry. Grainger played several of his choral settings for Kipling during a meeting at Kipling's home in 1905; of Grainger's settings of his poetry, Kipling said, "Till now I've had to reply on black and white, but you do the thing for me in color."
Grainger draws the text for The Inuit from an eight-line poem about Eskimos in the frozen wastes that opens "Quiquern" in The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. Wilfred Mellers in hi book "Percy Grainger" tells us,
"The theme – the corruption and spoliation of the noble savage by white traders – unsurprisingly provokes Grainger to music of peculiar force...The haunting, mostly stepwise-moving tune is treated homophonically in six parts that may swell to seven or eight."