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Cecil James Sharp (22 November 1859 – 23 June 1924) [1] was an English collector of folk songs, folk dances and instrumental music, as well as a lecturer, teacher, composer and musician. [2] He was a key figure in the folk-song revival in England during the Edwardian period. [3]
Cecil Sharp (born Nov. 22, 1859, London, Eng.—died June 23, 1924, London) was an English musician noted for his work as a collector of English folk song and dance. Sharp was educated at Uppingham School and the University of Cambridge.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Who Was Cecil Sharp?
- How Many Songs Did He Collect?
- Was Cecil Sharp The First Folk Song Collector?
- Why Is Cecil Sharp Considered Controversial?
- What Is Efdss, and Did Cecil Sharp Found It?
- Where Did Cecil Sharp Live?
- How Did He Die?
- Have Any Films Been Made of His Life?
Once described as the man who rescued English folk song, Cecil James Sharp (1859-1924) was known mainly for his folk song and dance collecting. Early attempts at becoming a composer largely resulted in failure and frustration, but two chance meetings led to significant changes in his life purpose. The first of these was on Boxing Day, 1899. Staying...
Sharp began collecting folk songs in 1903, aged 44. He subsequently collected 4,977 tunes, including around 3,000 songs in his native England, and around 1,500 during his four collecting trips to the Appalachian Mountains in the USA. In Somerset alone, Sharp collected over 1,600 tunes and songs, gathering them from 350 source singers. He went on to...
Clearly not. Plenty of people got the bug before him, including Francis James Child (curator of the Child Ballads), Lucy Broadwood, Anne Gilchrist, Kate Lee, Sabine Baring-Gould, and Frank Kidson. However, Sharp has often been criticized for the way in which he ran roughshod over some of his fellow-collectors and their work, not least by Lucy Broad...
As Lucy Broadwood noted, Sharp was a driven man who “puffed and boomed and shoved and ousted” until he got what he wanted, which, ultimately, seems to have been wider recognition of the traditional folk songs and dances that he so loved. It is very tempting to simply describe him as “a man of his time” and leave it at that, but few of his contempor...
EFDSS stands for the English Folk Dance and Song Society, and it lives at Cecil Sharp House. No, Sharp didn’t found the society directly, but he did co-found the English Folk Dance Society in 1911. This merged with the Folk Song Society (of which he had previously been a member; so many societies, so little time) in 1932.
Born in Denmark Hill, South London, Sharp was educated at Uppingham School, Rutland, and Clare College, Cambridge. Despite studying as a mathematician at university, his love of music eventually overcame him and he moved to Australia in 1882 to take up the position of co-Director fo the Adelaide College of Music. Returning to England in 1892, he to...
Cecil Sharp died in Hampstead, North London, on June 23th, 1924, after a short battle with cancer. He was 64 years old. He is buried at Golders Green Cemetery.
While he has yet to become the subject of a movie, his relationship with two of his source singers, Louie Hooper and Lucy White, was the subject of Nell Leyshon’s play, Folk, first performed as a BBC radio play in 2021.
Cecil James Sharp is the best-known collector of English folk music. Between his “discovery” of folk dance in 1899 and his death in 1924 he collected almost 5,000 folk songs and tunes, far more than any other English collector.
When Cecil Sharp died 100 years ago, he had collected almost 5,000 English folk tunes. Andrew Green takes a look at his important legacy
Cecil Sharp and the Quest for Folk Song and Dance. A new biography of Cecil Sharp, written by David Sutcliffe, was published by the Ballad Partners company in September 2023.
Nov 26, 2023 · The new Cecil Sharp biography is David’s second published book, the first being a biography of Rev Charles Marson, the Christian Socialist vicar of Hambridge, who worked with Sharp in their early song collecting.
