Cecil James Sharp (22 November 1859 – 23 June 1924)[1] was an English collector of folk songs, folk dances and instrumental music, as well as a lecturer, teacher, composer and musician.[2] He was a key figure in the folk-song revival in England during the Edwardian period.[3] According to Roud's Folk Song in England, Sharp was the country's "single most important figure in the study of folk song and music."[4]
Sharp collected over four thousand folk songs, both in South-West England and the Southern Appalachian region of the United States.[5][6][7] He published an extensive series of songbooks based on his fieldwork, often with piano arrangements, and wrote an influential theoretical work, English Folk Song: Some Conclusions.[8] He notated examples of English Morris dancing, and played an important role in the revival both of the Morris and English country dance. In 1911, he co-founded the English Folk Dance Society, which was later merged with the Folk-Song Society to form the English Folk Dance and Song Society.
Cecil Sharp's musical legacy extends into English orchestral music, and the classroom singing experienced by generations of schoolchildren. Many of the most popular musicians of the British Folk Revival from the 1960s to the present day have used songs collected by Sharp in their work. Scores of Morris dance teams throughout England, and also abroad, demonstrate the resilience of the revival he played a large part in sustaining. In the US, the Country Dance and Song Society was founded with Sharp's support, and dancers there continue to participate in styles he developed.
Over the last four decades, Sharp's work has attracted heated debate, with claims and counter-claims regarding selectivity, nationalism, appropriation, bowdlerisation and racism.[3][7][9][10][11][12][13]
^Colin Larkin, ed. (1992). The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music (First ed.). Guinness Publishing. pp. 2238/9. ISBN 0-85112-939-0.
^Fox Strangways, A. H.; Karpeles, Maud (1933). Cecil Sharp. London: Oxford University Press.
^ abGammon, Vic (2003). "Cecil Sharp and English Folk Music". In Roud, Steve; Upton, Eddie; Taylor, Malcolm (eds.). Still Growing: Traditional Songs and Singers from the Cecil Sharp Collection. London: English Folk Dance & Song Society. pp. 2–22. ISBN 0-85418-187-3.
^Roud, Steve (2017). Folk Song in England. London: Faber. p. 126. ISBN 978-0-571-30971-9.
^Roud, Steve; Upton, Eddie; Taylor, Malcolm, eds. (2003). Still Growing: Traditional Songs and Singers from the Cecil Sharp Collection. London: English Folk Dance & Song Society. pp. 1–121. ISBN 0-85418-187-3.
^Yates, Mike; Bradtke, Elaine; Taylor, Malcolm, eds. (2017). Dear Companion: Appalachian Traditional Songs and Singers from the Cecil Sharp Collection. London: English Folk Dance & Song Society. pp. 1–121. ISBN 978-0-85418-190-2.
^ abPeters, Brian (2018). "Myths of 'Merrie Olde England'? Cecil Sharp's Collecting Practice in the Southern Appalachians". Folk Music Journal. 11 (3): 6–46. JSTOR 44987648.
^Sharp, Cecil (1907). English Folk Song: Some Conclusions. London: Simpkin; Novello.
^Harker, Dave (1985). Fakesong: The Manufacture of British Folk Song, 1700 to the Present Day. Milton Keynes, Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0-335-15066-7.
^Boyes, Georgina (1993). The Imagined Village: Culture, Ideology and the English Folk Revival. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 0719045711.
^Bearman, Christopher (2000). "Who Were the Folk? The Demography of Cecil Sharp's Somerset Singers". Historical Journal. 43: 751–775. doi:10.1017/S0018246X99001338. S2CID 162191258.
^Bearman, Christopher (2002). "Cecil Sharp in Somerset: Some Reflections on the Work of David Harker". Folklore. 113: 11–34. doi:10.1080/00155870220125426. S2CID 162196897.
^Gregory, David (2009). "Fakesong in an imagined village? A Critique of the Harker-Boyes thesis". Canadian Folk Music. 43: 18–26.
Cecil James Sharp (22 November 1859 – 23 June 1924) was an English collector of folk songs, folk dances and instrumental music, as well as a lecturer...
Elliot Hobbs, CecilSharp, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Mary Augusta Wakefield. The English Folk Dance Society was founded in 1911 by CecilSharp. Maud Karpeles...
The CecilSharp Project was a multi-artist, residential commission to create new material based on the life and collections of CecilSharp, founding father...
Constance Sharp, suffered a life-changing illness. CecilSharp referred to Karpeles as "the faithful Maud". On their many travels together, Sharp would introduce...
simply "Folk music is what the people sing." For Scholes, as well as for CecilSharp and Béla Bartók, there was a sense of the music of the country as distinct...
The word Morris apparently derived from "morisco", meaning "Moorish". CecilSharp, whose collecting of Morris dances preserved many from extinction, suggested...
wrote of her woes in the symbolism of flowers; however, the folklorist CecilSharp doubted this claim. The versions allegedly written by Habergram would...
Birds: CecilSharp, Mary Sands, and the Madison County Song Tradition. Musical Traditions, 15 March 2002. Retrieved: 13 March 2009. CecilSharp, Maud Karpeles...
passed down through previous generations. In 1916, English folklorist CecilSharp visited Madison County to collect and record traditional folk songs being...
Bellowhead, Show of Hands, Cara Dillon, 17 Hippies, Kepa Junkera Band and the CecilSharp Project. 2012: Richard Thompson, Kate Rusby, Show of Hands, Dervish and...
dancing. It was introduced by traditional folk musician William Kimber to CecilSharp near the beginning of the twentieth century, then popularised by a diverse...
Scottish ballad "Bonnie George Campbell". According to the musicologist CecilSharp the ballads of Appalachia, including their melodies, were generally most...
had not fallen out. A number of Cecil's most notable horses had been owned by Sheikh Mohammed, including Oh So Sharp, Diminuendo, Indian Skimmer and Belmez...
Williams catalogue is 1904, as collected in Somerset and arranged by CecilSharp. A later entry for 1908 gives the source as Jane Gulliford from Somerset...
Song Society (EFDSS), located in the society's London headquarters, CecilSharp House. It is a multi-media library comprising books, periodicals, audio-visual...
Brasstown, North Carolina, and that of the English folk song collector CecilSharp, portrayed at the end of the film as professor Cyrus Whittle. The film...
drawn from the collection made by Vaughan Williams’ friend and colleague CecilSharp. The suite consists of three movements: March, Intermezzo and another...
CecilSharp in the market town of Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, England, from a woman named Mary Clayton. The following are taken from Sharp's...
during his childhood in Liverpool. A similar version was included in CecilSharp and Sabine Baring-Gould's English Folk-Songs for Schools, published in...
Somerset. She was an early source of songs for the folk song collector CecilSharp and she is said to have shaped his interests. Her half-sister was another...
head along with his dulcimer playing. In 1917, the folk music collector CecilSharp collected songs from Jean's older sisters May (1896–1982) and Una (1900–1989)...
Williams, Folk songs of the Upper Thames (London, 1923) and C. Sharp, CecilSharp's Collection of English Folk Song, ed., Maud Karpeles, 2 vols (London:...
a one-man show about folk song collector CecilSharp, which resulted in the album An Hour with CecilSharp and Ashley Hutchings, (1986). From this point...
lessons with "Beginners Ballroom" in March 2015 with a music hall feel at CecilSharp House in London and same sex ballroom lessons in a music hall setting...
ballad. The song first appeared in print in Olive Dame Campbell and CecilSharp's 1917 compilation English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians,...
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