This is the first of three pieces on the program from Percy Aldridge Grainger, the Australian-turned-American virtuoso pianist, folksong

collector, and composer who spent his life traveling through Britain, collecting songs from the "hill folk."

The Fanfare, written in 1939, was based on the English folk song The Duke of Marlborough as collected by Miss Lucy E. Broadwood, whom Grainger credits with "first revealing to me the charm of living English folk song." Grainger uses the tune first to recall memories of long past wars, far-off and poetic. Then he uses it to typify wars in the present – fast-moving, close at hand, and drastic. --James Huff 05:54, 23 November 2008 (UTC) (from the program notes of The Claremont Winds, submitted with permission)