Vaughan Williams Memorial Library
Encyclopedia
English Folk Dance and Song Society
The English Folk Dance and Song Society 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 as a Company limited by guarantee in 1935 and became a Registered Charity The English Folk...
(EFDSS), located in the society's London headquarters, Cecil Sharp House. 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 the most distinguished collectors of folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
and dance traditions in the British Isles
British Isles
The British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and...
. 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." It is named after Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
, the composer, collector and past president of the EFDSS, who died in 1958.
Prior to that it was known as the Cecil Sharp
Cecil Sharp
Cecil James Sharp was the founding father of the folklore revival in England in the early 20th century, and many of England's traditional dances and music owe their continuing existence to his work in recording and publishing them.-Early life:Sharp was born in Camberwell, London, the eldest son of...
Library, since his books constituted the bulk of the original holdings, but over the years the library has added literature, sound and manuscript collections of other eminent folklorists and collectors such as Lucy Broadwood
Lucy Broadwood
Lucy Etheldred Broadwood was principally an English folksong collector and researcher during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As one of the founder members of the Folk-Song Society and Editor of the Folk Song Journal, she was one of the main influences of the English folk revival of that...
, Janet Blunt
Janet Blunt
Janet Blunt was a folklorist.Daughter of a British general, she spent her first thirty years in India. She then moved to Adderbury in Oxfordshire where she became interested in local folk traditions. Her primary contribution to folklore is her preservation of the Adderbury traditions of folk song...
, Anne Gilchrist
Anne Gilchrist (collector)
Anne Gilchrist OBE FSA was a British folk-song collector.Anne Geddes Gilchrist was born in Manchester, to Scottish parents. She had a musical upbringing and was related to Rev Neil Livingston, who compiled a psalter. After meeting Sabine Baring-Gould she became involved with folk music and joined...
, George Butterworth
George Butterworth
George Sainton Kaye Butterworth, MC was an English composer best known for the orchestral idyll The Banks of Green Willow and his song settings of A. E...
, the Hammond brothers and George Gardiner
George R. Gardiner
George Ryerson Gardiner, was a Toronto businessman, philanthropist and co-founder of the Gardiner Museum, the only museum in Canada devoted exclusively to ceramic art.-Biography:...
. It also contains copies of the papers and notebooks of Sabine Baring-Gould
Sabine Baring-Gould
The Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould was an English hagiographer, antiquarian, novelist and eclectic scholar. His bibliography consists of more than 1240 publications, though this list continues to grow. His family home, Lew Trenchard Manor near Okehampton, Devon, has been preserved as he had it...
, Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
, Alfred Williams and James Madison Carpenter
James Madison Carpenter
James Madison Carpenter, born in Blacklands, Mississippi in 1888, was a Methodist minister and scholar of American and British folklore. He received his bachelor and masters of arts degrees from the University of Mississippi, and a PhD from Harvard in 1929. He is most known for his substantial...
; and the field recordings of Percy Grainger
Percy Grainger
George Percy Aldridge Grainger , known as Percy Grainger, was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. In the course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th century. He also made many...
, Mike Yates and the BBC Folk Music Archive.
Subjects covered include: Folk/traditional/popular song, Child Ballads
Child Ballads
The Child Ballads are a collection of 305 ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, collected by Francis James Child in the late nineteenth century...
, Broadside ballads
Broadside (music)
A broadside is a single sheet of cheap paper printed on one side, often with a ballad, rhyme, news and sometimes with woodcut illustrations...
, Industrial/occupational songs, sea songs/shanties, singing games, Nursery rhymes, Street cries, Carols/hymns, Rounds
Round (music)
A round is a musical composition in which two or more voices sing exactly the same melody , but with each voice beginning at different times so that different parts of the melody coincide in the different voices, but nevertheless fit harmoniously together...
/glees/part songs
Glee (music)
A glee is an English type of part song spanning the late baroque, classical and early romantic periods. It is usually scored for at least three voices, and generally intended to be sung unaccompanied. Glees often consist of a number of short, musically contrasted movements and their texts can be...
, Music hall
Music hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...
, Ritual/ceremonial dance, Morris dance
Morris dance
Morris dance is a form of English folk dance usually accompanied by music. It is based on rhythmic stepping and the execution of choreographed figures by a group of dancers. Implements such as sticks, swords, handkerchiefs and bells may also be wielded by the dancers...
/sword dance
Sword dance
Sword dances are recorded from throughout world history. There are various traditions of solo and mock battle sword dances from Greece, the Middle East, Pakistan, India, China, Korea, England, Scotland and Japan...
and a great deal more.
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 SongRoud Folk Song Index
The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of 300,000 references to over 21,600 songs that have been collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world...
and Broadside Indexes, the largest of their kind in the English language.
The online material has been extended with the addition of a catalogue of the collection of books bequeathed by the eminent folk music scholar, Leslie Shepard. It is planned to extend this catalogue with the other available electronic media in the archive before converting the existing card catalogues.
The archives of six of the UK's most prominent folk song collectors are also available on-line as the "Take 6 archive" including both their indexes and over 22,000 images of collected material including over 5,000 songs.
Finally, 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. The latter are largely portraits of contributors to his music collections from North America and England.