Cecil Sharp 1859

On Wayfaring Further Afield

Cecil Sharp 1859 - 1924

Cecil James Sharp (1859–1924) was the founding father of the folklore revival in England in the early twentieth century, and many of England's traditional dances and music owe their continuing existence to his work in recording and publishing them. Cecil Sharp was a music teacher and composer interested in folk songs and music, who became interested in traditional English dance when he saw a group of Morris dancers at the village of Headington Quarry, just outside Oxford, in 1899. At this time, Morris dancing was almost extinct, and the interest generated by Sharp's notations kept the tradition alive. The revival of the Morris dances started when Mary Neal, the organiser of the Esperance Girls' Club in London, used Sharp's (then unpublished) notations to teach the traditional dances to the club's members in 1905. Their enthusiasm for the dances persuaded Sharp to publish his notations in the form of his Morris Books, starting in 1907.

Between 1911 and 1913 he published a three-volume work, The Sword Dances of Northern England, which described the obscure and near-extinct Rapper sword dance of Northumbria and Long Sword dance of Yorkshire. This led to the revival of both traditions in their home areas, and later elsewhere.

Sharp often published versions of the songs he collected, which included a part for piano that Sharp composed himself. It appears that the traditional singers (who always sang a cappella) found Sharp's piano parts to be just distracting noise. However, the piano versions did help Sharp in his goal of teaching English folk music to children in schools, thus "reacquainting" them, as he felt, with their national musical heritage.

The schools project perhaps also accounts for Sharp's practice of heavily bowdlerizing the lyrics, which, at least among the English songs, often emphasize sex and violence. Thus, there are often great differences between the songs as recorded in Sharp's field notes and what he published. An extreme case is the song The Keeper, whose original lyrics evidently celebrate rape. Sharp's revised lyrics turn it into a comic hunting song.

Sharp also helped instigate a period of nationalism in English classical music, the idea being to reinvigorate English composition by grounding it in its national folk music. Among the composers who took up this goal was Ralph Vaughan Williams, who carried out his own field work on folk song.

In 1911 Sharp founded the English Folk Dance Society which promoted the traditional dances through workshops held nationwide, and which later merged with the Folk Song Society in 1932 to form the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). The current London headquarters of the EFDSS is named Cecil Sharp House in his honour.

The Morris Book by

Cecil J. Sharp and

Herbert C. Macilwaine

(Part 1) 2nd Edition, published

by Novello and Company, London, 1912

The Morris Book

The revival of the Morris dances started

when Mary Neal, the organiser of the

Esperance Girls' Club in London, used

Sharp's (then unpublished) notations to

teach the traditional dances to the

club's members in 1905. Their

enthusiasm for the dances persuaded

Sharp to publish his notations in the

form of his Morris Books, starting in 1907.

A Chance Encounter

Cecil Sharp's momentous first meeting

with William Kimber and the

Headington Morris

English Folk Dance and Song Society

to let you know about the Society, what

it does, and what it can do for you. If you

are interested in traditional

folk dance, song or traditions, then this

is the place to learn more

headquartered at Cecil Sharp House

Cecil Sharp Centenary Festival 2003

On August 22 1903 Cecil Sharp noted his

first folk song, The Seeds of Love, from

John England in Hambridge village

in Somerset.

The Headington Quarry Morris Dancers

still dancing after all these years