 Except for three months ' formal schooling as a 12 @-@ year @-@ old , during which he was bullied and ridiculed by his classmates , Percy was educated at home . Rose , an autodidact with a dominating presence , supervised his music and literature studies and engaged other tutors for languages , art and drama . From his earliest lessons Percy developed a lifelong fascination with Nordic culture ; writing late in life he maintained that the Icelandic " Saga of Grettir the Strong " was " the strongest single artistic influence on my life " . As well as showing precocious musical talents , he displayed considerable early gifts as an artist , to the extent that his tutors thought his future might lie in art rather than music . At the age of 10 he began studying piano under Louis Pabst , a German <unk> then considered to be Melbourne 's leading piano teacher . Grainger 's first known composition , " A Birthday Gift to Mother " , is dated 1893 . Pabst arranged Grainger 's first public concert appearances , at Melbourne 's Masonic Hall in July and September 1894 . The boy played works by Bach , Beethoven , Schumann and Scarlatti , and was warmly complimented in the Melbourne press . 
