SKELETON IN THE MUSEUM
ABC 2003
Radio inside a Violin: A gift to Jon Rose by the marketing department of WDR Cologne
  • His production was produced privately after ABC management's destruction of The Listening Room in 2003. The composition won the Karl Sczuka Prize at the Donaueschingen Festival 2004.
  • Performed by The Blisters Ensemble - an Australian group that has pioneered the use of interactive, do-it-yourself electronics in live performance, in many respects taking Grainger's imaginative ideas and developing them further. They are Jon Rose, Rainer Linz, Tom Fryer, Joanne and Stuart Favilla. Together they spent several days at the Grainger Museum exploring the archives, unpublished recordings, and instruments.
  • Robert Menzies acted out the voice and thoughts of Grainger
  • Production by Jon Rose

The title refers to composer Percy Grainger's desire to have his skeleton exhibited in his own museum which lies in the grounds of Melbourne University. After his death in 1961, the authorities turned the request down citing reasons of public health and decency.

Percy Grainger was one of the great mavericks of 20th century music, coming up with notions of free music, beatless music and, with the help of Burnett Cross in his home at White Plains New York, inventing machines out of industrial waste that were capable of realising this music -utilising a set of musical aesthetics, such as gliding tones, which have become part of the language of contemporary music. Those budding DJs amongst you might like to know that Grainger was also a pioneer in the use of recording machines as musical instruments - documenting and transcribing (if not transforming) the folk music of Oceania, Scandinavia and Britain onto disc only shortly after the invention of the medium.

Some of the following broadcast contains themes of an adult nature which some listeners may find offensive. There is also the first broadcast of a song by Ella Grainger, Percy's long suffering wife and S&M partner.

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