In the early years of the twentieth century composer Percy Grainger travelled around Britain with a phonograph recording rural folksingers. As a musical anthropologist Grainger was looking for authentically rustic, timeless melodic source material. Writer and Cheltenham Music Festival director, Meurig Bowen explores Grainger's passion for folksong, how he used it, how it influenced his music and how it compared with other composers' incorporation of folksongs. Might there have been something inherently condescending and exploitative about folksong collecting or was it a fear that, at a time of increasing industrialisation and migration off the land that if these tunes were not captured they could be lost forever?

The programme includes a fascinating recording, made by Grainger himself in 1906, of a folksong sung by a farm bailiff followed by what the song subsequently became in one of Graingers most poignant arrangements.

Produced by Jeremy Hayes for Potton Hall Productions

First broadcast in September 2011. Show less