Cecil Sharp

Cecil James Sharp, collector of English folk-songs and dances.

Publications

• English folk song, some conclusions, London: Simpkin; Novello, 1907. First edition available online in various formats at http://www.archive.org/details/englishfolksongs00shar

Cecil J. Sharp (1916) ''One Hundred English Folk Songs''

• Cecil J. Sharp, ed. (1908) 'Folk-songs from Dorset'

A Lecture Delivered by Cecil Sharp

A lecture delivered Cecil Sharp to the Hampstead Conservatoire, probably in the mid 1890s, has been transcribed and annotated by C. J. Bearman, who has also added a brief scholarly introduction. The lecture is available as a PDF from here: Media:Cecil_Sharp_Hampstead_Lecture.pdf.

Cecil Sharp: Eye Witness Account of His Folk Song Notation

E. V Lucas (1914) London Lavender makes sporadic reference to Cecil Sharp and contains sheet music of his folk song harvest. The most relevant section is Chapter 18 (pp. 139 to 150). This quotation is from page 141:

If the Director's methods were bewildering to me, what must they have been to these simple folk? For he takes out pencil and his little notebook ruled with staves, and the instant the singer has done he can go to the piano and play the song word for word, with all its peculiarities of movement, its hurryings and pauses, its unexpected cadences, its curious melancholy. Magic, surely! I can just begin to understand shorthand, but not this mystery. During the first verse he sits intent, with his pencil poised over the paper, waiting to strike. During the second verse he is recording all the time. During the third he makes little refining touches, and the tune is complete.

PDF page images of the book are available from the Internet Archive.[1]
 

External references

• Cecil Sharp's Diaries Online at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library

• Michael Heaney, ‘Sharp, Cecil James (1859–1924)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2006 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36040

• C.J. Bearman, Cecil Sharp in Somerset: some reflections on the work of David Harker. Folklore, April, 2002

• Wikipedia article

• Biography in Percival Serle, Dictionary of Australian Biography, 1949

• cecilsharpspeople.org.uk One-stop website for all the singers, musicians and dancers who met Cecil Sharp, as he travelled around England collecting folk music and dance between 1903-23. You can read here about their lives.