Lincolnshire Posy
Lincolnshire Posy is a musical composition by Percy Grainger for concert band commissioned in 1937 by the American Bandmasters Association. Considered by John Bird, the author of Grainger's biography, to be his masterpiece, the work has six movements, each adapted from folk songs that Grainger had collected on a 1905–1906 trip to Lincolnshire, England. In a similar fashion to these folk songs, many of the movements are in strophic form. The work debuted with three movements on March 7, 1937 performed by the Milwaukee Symphonic Band, a group composed of members from bands including the Blatz Brewery and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer factory worker bands in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Unlike other composers who attempted to alter and modernize folk music, such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Grainger wished to maintain the exact stylizing that he experienced from the originals. In the piece's program notes, Grainger wrote: "...Each number is intended to be a kind of musical portrait of the singer who sang its underlying melody—a musical portrait of the singer’s personality no less than of his habits of song—his regular or irregular interpretation of the rhythm, his preference for gaunt or ornately arabesqued delivery, his contrasts of legato and staccato, his tendency towards breadth or delicacy of tone."

Grainger dedicated his "bunch of Wildflowers" to "the old folksingers who sang so sweetly to me".
Q318354
Percy Grainger
PER
Q762048
concert band
Concept
Q4743124
American Bandmasters Association
ORG
Q1771297
folk songs
Concept
Q23090
Lincolnshire
LOC
Q2707253
strophic form
Concept
Q7910733
Blatz Brewery
ORG
Q3360013
Pabst Blue Ribbon beer factory
Concept
Q37836
Milwaukee
LOC
Q1537
Wisconsin
LOC
Q207947
Ralph Vaughan Williams
PER
Q6551267
Lincolnshire Posy
MEDIA
1937-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1937
DATE
1905-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1905
DATE
1937-03-07T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
March 7, 1937
DATE
+1906^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
1906
NUMBER
composer
instrumentation
publication date