The Warriors: Music to an Imaginary Ballet is an orchestral piece written in the United States by the Australian-born composer and pianist Percy Grainger between 1913 and 1916.
In addition to the usual orchestral forces, it calls for a very large percussion section, including off-stage brass, led by an assistant conductor, and three pianos.
Often scenes of a ballet have flitted before the eyes of my imagination in which the ghosts of male and female warrior types of all times and places are spirited together for an orgy of warlike dances, processions, and merry-makings, broken or accompanied by amorous interludes; their frolics tinged with just that faint suspicion of wistfulness all holiday gladness wears.Grainger notes that there are 15 distinct themes occurring through the 8 sections of the work, played continuously: The percussion group sometimes plays to different rhythms and tempi from the remainder of the orchestra, which has caused some commentators to describe Grainger as "the Charles Ives of Australia", although others insist a more apt characterisation is that Charles Ives was America's Percy Grainger.
[2][3][4][5] Some sources[6] state that the world premiere was on 26 December 1919 in a performance by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Frederick Stock with Grainger on piano.
The United States West Coast premiere occurred on 9 August 1928, as part of the same concert after which Grainger married the Swedish poet Ella Viola Ström on the stage of the Hollywood Bowl.