Folk-Song Society

From an article entitled "05.The Folk-Song Society and Folksong Collecting in the Early 20th Century"[1] on this Lincolnshire County Council website. No author credited.

"The Folk-Song Society was founded in 1898. The first committee of the society included some names one wouldn't immediately associate with English folk song, Sir Edward Elgar, Edvard Grieg, Sir Hubert Parry, Sir Charles Stanford and the celebrated Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim. There were also some stalwart song collectors like Frank Kidson (who judged the first Brigg folk song competition in 1905) and Lucy Broadwood (who accompanied Grainger to Lincolnshire in 1906).

Cecil Sharp joined in 1901. He became the Society's leading figure and ushered in a new breed of collector. Sharp invited new composer/collectors like Ralph Vaughan Williams and George Butterworth into the Society. The Journal of the society published songs and articles from this 'golden age' of folksong collecting including a number contributed by Percy Grainger.

This wave of folksong collecting in England was an eleventh hour operation. The age of industrialisation had brought with it the notion of entertainment as a product, something to be bought readymade rather than something you created yourself. The younger generation had turned their back on folk song in favour of the commercial product of the Music Hall. Soon the radio, gramophone and cinema would follow. The generation who remembered the songs was dying out.

"In those days folk song collecting was an arduous task. You see, folk song had gone out of fashion. A good many of the older people still remembered the songs, but their memories were failing and they were very sensitive to the ridicule of the younger generation... There was the question of making friends with them (the singers) and getting their confidence and tactfully persuading them to sing you their songs." Maud Karpeles, Cecil Sharp's assistant.

One old woman refused to sing to Percy Grainger, but Grainger was not the type to take no for an answer. With the collusion of the woman's daughter, Grainger hid under her bed and noted down the songs whilst the old woman sang to her daughter unaware of Grainger's presence.

The English Folk Dance and Song Society was created in 1932 by the merger of the Folk Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society which had been formed by Cecil Sharp in 1911. The EFDSS is based in London at Cecil Sharp House. The Vaughan Williams Memorial library there is a treasure trove of folk material and has been a mecca for folk artists, particularly those of the folk revival in the 1950s and 1960s."

To read more go to [2]