Cecil Sharp
(1859-1924)

Died aged c. 65

Cecil James Sharp (22 November 1859 – 23 June 1924) was an English-born collector of folk songs, folk dances and instrumental music, as well as a lecturer, teacher, composer and musician. He was the pre-eminent activist in the development of the folk-song revival in England during the Edwardian period. According to Folk Song in England, Sharp was the country’s "single most important figure in the study of folk song and music." Sharp collected over four thousand songs from untutored rural singers, both in South-West England and the Southern Appalachian region of the United States. He published an extensive series of song books based on his fieldwork, often with piano arrangements, and wrote an influential theoretical work, English Folk Song: Some Conclusions. He also noted down surviving 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, which flourishes to this day. 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, testify to the resilience of the revival he had a large part in sustaining. In the USA, 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 in the field of cultural politics, with claims and counter-claims regarding selectivity, appropriation, bowdlerisation and racism.

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