One of the changes in the collecting tradition was the transition from folk music as a literary study to folk music as a musicological, or at least musical, study. This is perhaps the biggest leap in practices within this collecting tradition, because it changes the reason why
collecting is done. Among the collectors discussed in this thesis, Sharp is the first person working in America to collect folk music for a different reason. Since his background was solidly rooted in music, his collecting was an adjunct of his musical pursuits which included a recently discovered interest in folk music. The most preponderant difference between Sharp’s collecting and the example set by Child was the fieldwork basis of his approach. Child’s emphasis on manuscripts and his belief in the disappearance of genuine folk (or ballad) culture meant that fieldwork was precluded. However, many previous collectors also conducted fieldwork, and were notably forward – thinking regarding what could be
achieved with their collections. Herder, for example, based his Volkslieder collection entirely on fieldwork done in the area that was previously known as Riga (Latvia). Also, his ambition was to promote the music he collected as an ideal form of national culture, and to
demonstrate the value of the Romantic folk ‘purity’. Suppan and Borneman briefly look at Herder’s motivations for his collecting, quoting Herder stating, ‘My only motive has been to stimulate a general awakening and rebirth,’ and argue that, ‘It was the concept of a
humane, ethically and morally intact world which determined Herder’s relation to folksong, and that was also the reason he appealed to his contemporaries to take stock and work on its regeneration…’376 This was also Sharp’s reason for collecting, as he often stated, ‘What better form of music or of literature can we give them than the folk – songs and folk – ballads of the race to which they belong, or of the nation whose language they speak?’377 Although both Herder and Sharp wanted to promote the music they collected, this impulse is driven by very different intellectual contexts. Herder’s came from a Romantic urge to show the ‘purity’ to be found in the rural folk culture of the country, and how vital this ‘purity’ could be for a national culture of Germany. Sharp was driven by a Fabian interest to induce some form of social progress through education, and this education would be based
376
Borneman, Eva, and Suppan, Wolfgang. 1976. ‘Research on Folk Music in Austria Since 1800.’ Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council, Vol. 8. p. 118.
377 Sharp, Cecil J. 1917. English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. New York, G.P. Putnam and Sons. p. xx
in the material of folk culture he had collected. Sharp’s Fabian belief in improvement through education was coupled with a belief in the value of folk music and dance, and how this could be used in education to restore aspects of an idealised past.
Karpeles comments on the divergence of Sharp’s work from Child’s established style,
Inspired by the monumental work of Professor Child of Harvard, the universities of America have taken great interest in the English and Scottish popular ballad; but at that time the subject had been treated almost entirely from the literary standpoint and such collections of mountain ballads as had hitherto been
made...were with a few exceptions restricted to the texts, and the tunes had been ignored.378
The obvious reason for this is once again the philological and literary focus of previous collectors: their primary interest in the words of a song, and their probable inability to easily document the music in standard notation. Very few collectors had musical knowledge or training, and few classically trained musicians aside from Sharp had any documented
interest in folk music until that time. Despite these differences, Sharp inherited many of the characteristics accrued within the Romantic period, some of which were inherited from Child. His preoccupation with folk history and the degradation of folk traditions is the most pervasive of these inherited characteristics. Although he believed folk music was still alive, he insisted that it had been steadily declining, and thought the alleged previous dominance of folk traditions would have made the lives of the folk ‘much brighter and happier’379. This is comparable to Child’s conception of the popular ballad as something which emerged during a period in which certain conditions allowed it.380
Szwed makes several comments regarding the communication of this collecting tradition,
Whether it was the influence of Sharp, or something deeper that Kittredge saw in John Lomax and his cowboy ballads when he came to Harvard as a student, the
378 Karpeles, Maud. 1967. Cecil Sharp: His Life and Work. Routledge Ltd., London. p. 154. 379 Sharp, Cecil J. 1907. ‘Folk Song Collecting’. Musical Times. 48/767. p. 18.
380
professor’s encouragement of Lomax’s recording of music and text was sincere, and gave John the courage to go forward.381
Szwed also claims the work of earlier European collectors can be seen in Lomax’s collecting work,
The history of the early song collectors resonated in John Lomax’s life, and he sometimes found himself reliving it. When John asked former president Theodore Roosevelt, a Harvard graduate himself, to write “an endorsement” of his book, he was repeating Percy’s and Scott’s experiences with ballads in a democratic way.382
There is also significance in Kittredge being another of Lomax’s academic supporters, since both Kittredge and Barrett Wendell were students of Child and their work followed on directly from Child’s. As Filene points out,
Many of the earliest connoisseurs of folk ballads had been literature professors, and they often integrated some folk materials into their course offerings. Francis James Child and George Lyman Kittredge, especially, had inspired generations of young ballad collectors at Harvard.383
This is indicative of the way in which the American collecting tradition developed: it was through prominent collectors and scholars that subsequent collectors like Sharp, the
Lomaxes, and Smith, were introduced to ideas, techniques, and types of collection. Although Sharp’s collecting techniques differed from Child’s in his use of fieldwork, he was clearly working within the same tradition.
Sharp placed himself in this tradition by alluding to the work he is building on, which was apparently the work of the German collectors who conducted some of the earliest
381 Szwed, John. 2010. The Man Who Recorded the World: A Biography of Alan Lomax. William Heinemann, London. p. 12.
382 Ibid. p. 13.
383 Filene, Benjamin. 2000. Romancing the Folk: Public Memory & American Roots Music. University of North Carolina Press. p. 164.
fieldwork with folklore.384 Sharp was not only connecting his work to that of Herder in the use of the term folk song (volkslieder), but also linking his collecting techniques to those of the Grimms, referring to a ‘scientific’ form of folklore. He revealed his familiarity with the most eminent collectors in this tradition, referencing Motherwell and Child, as well as Buchan and Scott.385 Although he criticised the lack of attention paid to folk song tunes, again he was clearly placing himself in this tradition of folk song collectors. Sharp’s
transformation of collecting techniques is in this determination to document the music of folk songs as well as the texts. Along with the previously discussed Fabian socialist
educational aspect of Sharp’s collecting techniques, it could be argued that Sharp’s fieldwork was partly motivated by social and political concerns of the early twentieth century. Walkowitz comments that,
…the historian Georgina Boyes’ view of Sharp as one who “politically,
philosophically and in personal terms…disliked change” seems on the mark…She reminds us that the traditions he transmitted, as in all such conversions, were inventions shaped by his frustrated social aspirations and class and gender prejudices.386
Sharp was living through a period of social change, which had gender and class dimensions which troubled Sharp. As Walkowitz states,
Ironically, the rural and “peasant” pasts were both a problem and a solution. At the same time as reformers organised to teach these urban newcomers how to make budgets, adjust to factory rhythms, and behave like burghers, reformers (sometimes the same reformers) came to believe these newcomers had a vibrant, curative “peasant” past in their blood that only had to be awakened.387
384 Sharp, Cecil J. 1907. English Folk Song: Some Conclusions. London, Simpkin & Co. Ltd. p. 2. 385
Ibid. p. ix – x.
386 Walkowitz, Daniel J. 2010. City Folk: English Country Dance and the Politics of the Folk in Modern America. New York University Press. p.18.
387
This social change was partly what Sharp was acting against when he conducted fieldwork in rural areas, interacting with folk who had not yet been ‘reformed’ for urban life. Sharp also had concerns about the women’s suffrage movement of the period, which undermined gender divisions and traditional gender roles, which made Sharp’s fieldwork experiences even more valuable since they presented a scene in which gender distinctions were still clear. It is also possible to see the concerns of Antimodernism at play in Sharp’s issues with gender politics of the early twentieth century, since much of Antimodernist thought in America was preoccupied with the ‘feminisation’ of American culture. Folk music and culture, rooted in traditional values, could be seen to reassert masculinity. Sharp’s fieldwork is partly an Antimodernist connection with a past in which gender distinctions were clearly defined.
As Sharp states, in keeping with the transformation from texts to tunes, ‘It is time, therefore, that the balance, as between the respective claims of the words and the tunes, should be restored.’388 Pearce suggests the importance of tradition in the practice of collecting,
The study of collecting in social practice is intended to tease out an understanding of how communities develop strategies which enable them to bring together the accumulating possibilities of objects and other social structures…in order to maintain the social pattern and project it into the future.389
The idea of ‘communities developing strategies’ is what happens in the field of folk collecting, consisting of a community of folk music specialists developing the strategies which allow them to record folk songs in one form or another. Sharp’s contributions to the American collecting tradition meant that within a more scholarly – focused collection there is legitimate space for including tunes and texts. As with Pearce’s ‘European tradition of popular collecting,’ the American tradition of folk music collecting is defined by
transformations like those of Sharp which allow it to capture more elements of a folk song.
388 Sharp, Cecil J. 1907. English Folk Song: Some Conclusions. London, Simpkin & Co. Ltd. p. 2.
389 Pearce, Susan M. 1995. On Collecting: An Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition. Routledge Press, London. p. 28.