Before his death the following assessment was made of him: "He is regarded by many as Africa's greatest living composer, possesses one of the most distinctive compositional voices of our time".
[2] In Bethlehem, Orange Free State, where Grové was born, his mother worked as a music teacher and his father as a school principal.
Compositions from this time include a ballet suite for orchestra (1944), the String quartet in D major (1945), and a czardas for violin and piano (1946?).
As the first South African recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, Grové had the opportunity of going to Harvard University where he completed his master's degree.
[4] While working at the Bard College, Grové also took up a post as choirmaster for the Franklin Street Presbyterian Church, where he pursued an interest in the performance of early music—most notably the cantatas of J.S.
[4] Remembering the African element in Grové's mature style, one can trace his development "from Debussy and Ravel through to Bartok and the neo-classicism of Hindemith, with passing passions for Messiaen and a more lasting fascination for Bach and early counterpoint".
Apart from his work as a composer, Grové was also a fine writer whose essays and short fiction has received praise from no less a figure than André P. Brink.
[3]: 142 He forms part of a triumvirate of white Afrikaans composers who are considered as "founding fathers of South African art music".
Beyond that, and arguably more significantly, Grové has managed to shape a "hybrid style"[5]: 2 for himself, beginning a new creative phase in a time when it must have amounted to a radical move on his part: he was a white composer—working in a country that was still functioning at the height of P.W.
Unlike van Wyk and du Plessis, he was "prepared to consider and eventually to develop consistently a rapprochement between his Western art and his physical, African space".