Cecil Sharp: Collector and Restorer of English Folk MusicAuthor(s): Maud KarpelesSource: Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Dec., 1959), pp. 179-181Published by: English Folk Dance + Song SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4521581 .

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CECIL SHARP: COLLECTOR AND RESTORER OF ENGLISH FOLK MUSIC

BY MAUD KARPELES

A FOLK music collector needs many qualifications, but first and foremost he must have a love and understanding of his fellow-creatures as well as of the material he is collecting. These Cecil Sharp had in full measure.

He came to folk song as a well equipped musician and one who as a teacher of many years' standing was alive to the social significance of music. In fact, it was his teaching work and his desire to increase the facilities for amateur music-making that led him to folk song.

He was endowed by nature with all the qualities that make for sociability. He had the simplicity and humility which caused him to wear his learning lightly and although intensely serious of purpose he was imbued with a fund of infectious gaiety, which occasional fits of black depression could never for long obscure. These qualities together with his selflessness, his warm-hearted generosity and his integrity made his friendship a prized possession and there were few who came into contact with him who did not feel a quickening of mind and spirit.

Although a Londoner born and bred, he found no difficulty in establishing an immediate and intimate relationship with the country people whose songs and dances he sought. His natural sociable qualities stood him in good stead, but it was above all his recognition of the singers and dancers as fellow artists that gave him the key to their hearts and minds. He believed, as did his friend and fellow-collector, Charles Marson, 'that the graceful, manly and finely-wrought melodies are not separable accidents; they belong to lives and characters at least as interesting, as full of fine and exquisite melodiousness as are the songs."

The conditions of folk-music collecting in England fifty or sixty years ago were different in many ways from what they are to-day. Folk song to-day is heard on the radio: it is in the fashion. But in the early decades of the century what were once precious heirlooms had been relegated to the lumber-room, in order to make way for the more cityfied products which the younger generation demanded, and there they lay neglected and covered with the dust of oblivion. In bringing the songs and dances to light Cecil Sharp gave to the whole nation a priceless treasure that might easily have been irretrievably lost; but not the last part of his service lay in restoring to the singers and dancers themselves confidence in the value of their inherited traditions.

The task of extracting the songs was not always an easy one. Deeply ingrained suspicion and fear of ridicule had usually to be overcome, and the singer would need I Charles L. Marson, Village Silhouettes, London (1914).

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some persuasion before he was prepared to search in the recesses of his memory for songs that had long been put aside. But in folk song collecting, patience is a rewarding virtue and Cecil Sharp, though naturally of a quick, active disposition, had the knack of adjusting his tempo to the slower movement of the countryman's mind. When the occasion demanded he would sit quietly in a cottage, smoking his pipe in silence, or carrying on a desultory conversation while the singer, warming to the occasion, slowly pieced together snatches of the song that had once been so familiar.

Then, as now, the folk singer's repertory was not confined to genuine folk songs and he did not distinguish them from other songs that he had learned in his youth, More often than not he would have to unload a selection of Victorian ballads before the eagerly awaited folk song rose to the surface. During these preliminaries, Cecil Sharp exercised great tact and patience and to please the singer, and perhaps as a sort of self-discipline, he would occasionally write down songs which he knew well to be outside the folk song category. These remained in his note-books, as did the inferior versions of genuine folk songs, for he was never led into thinking that every folk song that comes from the lips of a traditional singer is necessarily worth promulgating. With folk singers as with other musicians there are bunglers as well as supremely fine artists.

Cecil Sharp threw his net wide and interviewed any man or woman from whom he thought he could get a song, even though it might not be a particularly good one, but whenever possible he concentrated his efforts on the singers with a fine musical sense, such as Robert Parish of Exford, Henry Larcombe of Haselbury Plucknett and Shepherd Hayden of Bampton: singers who have enriched the folk song tradition through their creative artistry.

Besides being a collector Cecil Sharp was a restorer; and in his restoration of folk music we probably owe more than we are aware to his fine sense of discrimination. Had he in the early days of the revival flooded the country with mediocre material, folk song would never have taken the place it has in the musical life of the nation. It was not only in the choice of material that he exercised artistic discrimination but also in the equally important matter of its presentation.

It is well known that he published the tunes as he noted them without the alteration of a single note, but no notation can be altogether free of subjective interpretation and the collector must always face the problem of distinguishing between what is essential and what is fortuitous. Of Cecil Sharp, Professor Bronson writes: 'There has never been a collector with such quickness and tact in seizing and accurately reporting essential characteristics from individual singing. His copy strikes a mean between the typical and the idiosyncratic that is almost ideal'.2 Believing the tune as sung by the individual to be an integral whole, he never sought to establish the norm by collating different versions, but he selected for publication the one he considered to be the most beautiful.

The same principle could not always be followed in the publication of the texts when they were presented for general use. Apart from occasional grammatical errors and obscurities, the words as given by the individual singer were often incomplete, and it was therefore frequently necessary to collate two or more versions. 2 Bertrand Harris Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads. Princeton University Press

(1959).

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In this connection mention should be made of the much discussed question of words 'not fit for publication'. The actual situation has been much exaggerated. An examination of Cecil Sharp's manuscript collection shows that 90 per cent of the English songs could be sung exactly as noted without bringing a blush to the cheek of the most decorous of Victorian maiden aunts. In the Appalachian collection, which is freer from the influence of broadside songs, the percentage would be very much higher. However, bowing to the convention of his age, he omitted from the Journal of the Folk Song Society words and expressions which might give offence; and in publications intended for general use he either modified these expressions or, where possible, chose those versions of the song in which they did not occur. Incidentally, a comparison between the texts in the two-volume Eniglish Folk Songs, Selected Edition3 (1920) with those in Folk Songs from Somerset (1904-9), in which he was only partly responsible for the editing of the words, shows that in many instances he reverted to the original texts in the later publication.

In noting the dances, interpretation necessarily played a bigger part than with the songs. The dance, unlike the song, is a concerted activity and also it is an activity which is far more dependent on the physical capacity of the performer. Cecil Sharp had often to reconstruct a dance from the performance of one or two individual exponents and even when he was fortunate enough to see a complete team there was usually considerable variance among its members owing to their unequal proficiency. In spite of these difficulties Cecil Sharp was quick to recognize the essential character- istics of the dance and to reveal its true intention even when it was obscured by faulty technique.

In the early days of the revival some of Cecil Sharp's critics thought that his inter- pretation of the dances was too 'artistic', and the same idea is sometimes to be found to-day in the demand for a more 'earthy' presentation, which in practice usually means clumsiness in the performance of the dances and the adoption of an imitation 'folk' or hillbilly style in the singing of the songs. It is indeed sometimes suggested that the crude vamping accompaniments of the skiffle group are more in keeping with the real thing than Cecil Sharp's musicianly pianoforte accompaniments. This, surely, shows a misconception of the nature of folk music, which in its agelessness has far more affinity with classical than with popular music.

It was this classical quality that Cecil Sharp endeavoured to disclose in his presentation of folk music. This does not mean that he held dogmatic views on the subject. He was prepared to make use of any medium that offered itself and to accept many different styles of arrangement provided only that the beauty, delicacy, grace and vitality of the melodies were not obscured. He believed that the best of our English folk music was worthy to take its place side by side with the music of the great masters and that it should be treated with the same reverence. To have done less would have been in his eyes a betrayal of the trust which the country folk had placed in him when they gave him their songs and dances to hand on to posterity.

3 This edition which has been out of print for many years has just been re-issued by Messrs. Novello & Co. in commemoration of Cecil Sharp's centenary.

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