Vaughan Williams Memorial Library

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Vaughan Williams Memorial Library
Cecil Sharp House-1.jpg
Cecil Sharp House in Regent's Park, London, home to the English Folk Dance and Song Society
Vaughan Williams Memorial Library
51°32′17″N0°08′57″W / 51.5381°N 0.1493°W / 51.5381; -0.1493
Other information
DirectorTiffany Hore [1]
Website www.vwml.org

The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library (VWML) is the library and archive of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS), located in the society's London headquarters, Cecil Sharp House. [2] It is a multi-media library comprising books, periodicals, audio-visual materials, photographic images and sound recordings, as well as manuscripts, field notes, transcriptions etc. of a number of collectors of folk music and dance traditions in the British Isles. [3] According to A Dictionary of English Folklore, "... by a gradual process of professionalization the VWML has become the most important concentration of material on traditional song, dance, and music in the country." [4]

Contents

Subjects covered include: Folk/traditional/popular song, Child Ballads, Broadside ballads, Industrial/occupational songs, sea songs/shanties, singing games, Nursery rhymes, Street cries, Carols/hymns, Rounds/glees/part songs, Music hall, Ritual/ceremonial dance, Morris dance/sword dance and a great deal more. [3]

VWML regularly features a variety of conferences and events, including Broadside Day, Library Lectures, the Folk Song Conference, and Special Conferences. [5] VWML has also published resources, including the Folk Music Journal. [6] [7]

History

VWML was originally founded as the Cecil Sharp Library in 1930. [8] Sharp's books constituted the bulk of the original library holdings. [9] The first librarian was Joan, Sharp's daughter. [10] In 1940, four bombs hit the Cecil Sharp House during World War II, but the library remained intact. [9] When Ralph Vaughan Williams, composer, collector and past president of the EFDSS, died in 1958, the library was renamed in his honor. [11] The building continued to be designated as the Cecil Sharp House. [12] Over the years the library has added literature, sound and manuscript collections of other folklorists and collectors, such as Lucy Broadwood, Janet Blunt, Anne Gilchrist, George Butterworth, the Hammond brothers and George Gardiner. [13] It also contains copies of the papers and notebooks of Sabine Baring-Gould, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Alfred Williams and James Madison Carpenter; and the field recordings of Percy Grainger, Mike Yates and the BBC Folk Music Archive. [13] [14] [15] From 1979 to 2012, Malcolm Taylor served as the librarian, and then Director, of VWML. [16]

In 2010, VWML received an excellence award by the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML) and in 2011 received designated status by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA). [17] In 2017, the library was renovated for the first time since the 1940s. [18]

Online Archive

In May 2006, VWML Online was launched which hosts a number of the library's indexes to manuscript collections, together with its index to mummers' plays and the Roud Folk Song and Broadside Indexes, the largest of their kind in the English language. [19] [20] [21] The online material has been extended with the addition of a catalogue of the collection of books bequeathed by eminent folk music scholar Leslie Shepard. [22] In addition, both Cecil Sharp's Appalachian diaries from 1915-1918 (in manuscript and transcript form) and over 300 images taken from his photographic collection are available for viewing on-line. [23] The latter are largely portraits of contributors to his music collections from North America and England. [24] [25]

In 2007, EFDSS was awarded a grant, which led to the creation of the Take 6 archive. [26] This archive features of six of the most prominent folk song collections of EFDSS, including the Janet Blunt Collection, the George Butterworth Collection, the Francis Collinson Collection, the George Gardiner Collection, the Anne G. Gilchrist Collection, and the Hammond Collection. [26]

In 2014, EFDSS partnered with English museums and cultural heritage institutions and launched The Full English Archive, the largest online archive in the world of English folk manuscripts. [27] [28] The Full English is currently integrated into the online archives of VWML. [27] The Take 6 archive was also integrated into The Full English. [26]

From 2017 to 2018, folk works collected by James Madison Carpenter were digitized from the Library of Congress and added to the VWML archives as the Carpenter Folk Online. [29] [30]

In 2019, the Folk Song Subject Index went live, which features an "online subject index for folk songs along with a thesaurus of keywords" and is an ongoing project of the VWML. [31]

Related Research Articles

"Hush, Little Baby" is a traditional lullaby, thought to have been written in the Southern United States. The lyrics are from the point of view of a parent trying to appease a crying child by promising to give it a gift. Sensing the child's apprehension, the parent has planned a series of contingencies in case their gifts don't work out. The simple structure allows more verses to be added ad lib. It has a Roud number of 470.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cecil Sharp</span> English folklorist and song collector (1859–1924)

Cecil James Sharp was an English collector of folk songs, folk dances and instrumental music, as well as a lecturer, teacher, composer and musician. He was a key figure in the folk-song revival in England during the Edwardian period. According to Roud's Folk Song in England, Sharp was the country's "single most important figure in the study of folk song and music."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matty Groves</span> Traditional English ballad

"Matty Groves", also known as "Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard" or "Little Musgrave", is a ballad probably originating in Northern England that describes an adulterous tryst between a young man and a noblewoman that is ended when the woman's husband discovers and kills them. It is listed as Child ballad number 81 and number 52 in the Roud Folk Song Index. This song exists in many textual variants and has several variant names. The song dates to at least 1613, and under the title Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard is one of the Child ballads collected by 19th-century American scholar Francis James Child.

"I Saw Three Ships (Come Sailing In)" is an English Christmas carol, listed as number 700 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The earliest printed version of "I Saw Three Ships" is from the 17th century, possibly Derbyshire, and was also published by William Sandys in 1833. The song was probably traditionally known as "As I Sat On a Sunny Bank", and was particularly popular in Cornwall.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Holly and the Ivy</span> Traditional British folk Christmas carol

"The Holly and the Ivy" is a traditional British folk Christmas carol, listed as number 514 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The song can be traced only as far as the early nineteenth century, but the lyrics reflect an association between holly and Christmas dating at least as far as medieval times. The lyrics and melody varied significantly in traditional communities, but the song has since become standardised. The version which is now popular was collected in 1909 by the English folk song collector Cecil Sharp in the market town of Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, England, from a woman named Mary Clayton.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Raggle Taggle Gypsy</span> Traditional folk song

"The Raggle Taggle Gypsy" (Roud 1, Child 200), is a traditional folk song that originated as a Scottish border ballad, and has been popular throughout Britain, Ireland and North America. It concerns a rich lady who runs off to join the gypsies (or one gypsy). Common alternative names are "Gypsy Davy", "The Raggle Taggle Gypsies O", "The Gypsy Laddie(s)", "Black Jack David" (or "Davy") and "Seven Yellow Gypsies".

The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud. Roud's Index is a combination of the Broadside Index and a "field-recording index" compiled by Roud. It subsumes all the previous printed sources known to Francis James Child and includes recordings from 1900 to 1975. Until early 2006, the index was available by a CD subscription; now it can be found online on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library website, maintained by the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). A partial list is also available at List of folk songs by Roud number.

The English Folk Dance and Song Society is an organisation that promotes English folk music and folk dance. EFDSS was formed in 1932 when two organisations merged: the Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society. The EFDSS, a member-based organisation, was incorporated in 1935 and became a registered charity in 1963.

The Farmer's Curst Wife is a traditional English language folk song listed as Child ballad number 278 and number 160 in the Roud Folk Song Index.

"The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter" is an English ballad, collected by Francis James Child as Child Ballad 110 and listed as number 67 in the Roud Folk Song Index.

"Blacksmith", also known as "A Blacksmith Courted Me", is a traditional English folk song listed as number 816 in the Roud Folk Song Index.

"Country Gardens" is an old English folk tune traditionally used for Morris dancing. It was introduced by traditional folk musician William Kimber to Cecil Sharp near the beginning of the twentieth century, then popularised by a diverse range of musicians from Percy Grainger to Jimmie Rodgers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maud Karpeles</span> British song collector

Maud Karpeles OBE, was a British collector of folksongs and dance teacher.

Brian Dawson was a British folk song collector, musician and singer.

The Full English launched in 2013 and is an ongoing English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS) project to create a searchable digital archive of English folk song collections from the early 20th century, thereby preserving and improving the accessibility of these resources. The project is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, The Folklore Society, the National Folk Music Fund and the English Miscellany Folk Dance Group. An offshoot of the archive, also in 2013, was an album and concert tour under The Full English name by a collective of UK folk singers.

"The Maid of Amsterdam", also known as "A-Roving", is a traditional sea shanty. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 649.

The composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was one of the musicians who participated in the first English Folk Song revival, as well as using folk song tunes in his compositions. He collected his first song, Bushes and Briars, from Mr Charles Pottipher, a seventy-year-old labourer from Ingrave, Essex in 1903, and went on to collect over 800 songs, as well as some singing games and dance tunes. For 10 years he devoted up to 30 days a year to collecting folk songs from singers in 21 English counties, though Essex, Norfolk, Herefordshire and Sussex account for over two thirds of the songs in his collection. He recorded a small number of songs using a phonograph but the vast majority were recorded by hand. He was a regular contributor to the Folk Song Society's Journal, a member of the society's committee from 1904 to 1946, and when in that year the society amalgamated with the English Folk Dance Society he became president of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, a position he held until his death.

The Gloucestershire Wassail, also known as "Wassail! Wassail! All Over the Town", "The Wassailing Bowl" and "Wassail Song" is an English Christmas carol from the county of Gloucestershire in England, dating back to at least the 18th century, but may be older.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sam Bennett (folk musician)</span> English Morris dancer

Sam Bennett (1865–1951) was an English Morris dancer, fiddler and traditional singer from Ilmington, Warwickshire.

References

  1. ↑ "Staff" . Retrieved 30 October 2023.
  2. ↑ "History". The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
  3. 1 2 "Our collections: folk music and dance resource". The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
  4. ↑ "Vaughan Williams Memorial Library". Oxford Reference.
  5. ↑ "Past event details and resources". The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. Retrieved 29 October 2023.
  6. ↑ "Folk Music Journal". English Folk Dance and Song Society. 19 August 2019. Retrieved 30 October 2023.
  7. ↑ "Publications". The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. Retrieved 30 October 2023.
  8. ↑ "Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, English Folk Dance and Song Society". Federation of Folk and Traditional Music Collections. 23 June 2021. Retrieved 30 October 2023.
  9. 1 2 "History of the House". English Folk Dance and Song Society. 19 August 2019. Retrieved 30 October 2023.
  10. ↑ "History". The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. Retrieved 30 October 2023.
  11. ↑ "Ralph Vaughan Williams". English Folk Dance and Song Society. 20 June 2014. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
  12. ↑ "Library". English Folk Dance and Song Society. 15 January 2020. Retrieved 30 October 2023.
  13. 1 2 "Archive collections". www.vwml.org. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
  14. ↑ Mike Yates collection, NSA, 2005, retrieved 30 October 2023
  15. ↑ Rooks, Simon (2010). "What Happened to the BBC Sound Archive?". Journal of the Society of Archivists. 31 (2): 180. doi:10.1080/00379816.2010.506791. ISSN   0037-9816.
  16. ↑ "Malcolm Taylor Grant for Folk Collections". The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. Retrieved 30 October 2023.
  17. ↑ "About us". The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. Retrieved 30 October 2023.
  18. ↑ "National folk arts library to see major refurbishment". www.prsformusic.com. Retrieved 30 October 2023.
  19. ↑ Inskip, Charles; Butterworth, Richard; MacFarlane, Andrew (1 March 2008). "A study of the information needs of the users of a folk music library and the implications for the design of a digital library system". Information Processing & Management. Evaluating Exploratory Search Systems. 44 (2): 651. doi:10.1016/j.ipm.2007.05.004. ISSN   0306-4573.
  20. ↑ "Vaughan Williams Memorial Library". The Folklore Society. Retrieved 29 October 2023.
  21. ↑ "Roud Indexes introduction". The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. Retrieved 29 October 2023.
  22. ↑ "Vaughan Williams Memorial Library goes online". The Journal of Music | Music News, Reviews and Opinion. Retrieved 29 October 2023.
  23. ↑ "Cecil Sharp's Appalachian Diaries: 1915-1918". www.vwml.org. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
  24. ↑ "Cecil Sharp's photo collection". The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. Retrieved 29 October 2023.
  25. ↑ English Folk Dance and Song Society (15 July 2014), "Cecil Sharp's photos", Flickr, retrieved 29 October 2023
  26. 1 2 3 "Take 6". The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. Retrieved 29 October 2023.
  27. 1 2 "Past projects". English Folk Dance and Song Society. 19 August 2019. Retrieved 29 October 2023.
  28. ↑ "The Full English". The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. Retrieved 29 October 2023.
  29. ↑ "Carpenter Folk Online | Elphinstone Institute | The University of Aberdeen". www.abdn.ac.uk. Retrieved 30 October 2023.
  30. ↑ "Carpenter Folk Online: Connecting to Britain's Heritage of Traditional Song & Drama". The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. Retrieved 30 October 2023.
  31. ↑ "Folk Song Subject Index". The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. Retrieved 30 October 2023.
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