Percy Grainger, the phonograph, and the folk song society

Music and Letters

Volumn 84, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 434-455

  Bearman, C J ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 57349090998     PISSN: 00274224     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/ml/84.3.434     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. The Farthest North of Humanness: Letters of Percy Grainger 1901-1914, ed. Kay Dreyfus (London, 1985)
2. John Bird, Percy Grainger (London, 1976; 2nd edn. 1984; rev, and expanded 3rd edn., Oxford, 1999)
3. For example, see ibid. 194-5, 207-9
4. Cecil J. Sharp and Charles L. Marson (eds.), Folk Songs from Somerset, 5 vols. (London and Taunton, 1904-9)
5. For some information on her family and her life outside folk music, see David Wainwright, Broadwood by Appointment; A History (London, 1982)
6. Percy Grainger, 'Collecting with the Phonograph', Journal of the Folk Song Society [hereafter JFSS], 12 (1908), 147-242
7. Editorial interpolation in Grainger, 'Collecting with the Phonograph', 159
8. Bird, Percy Grainger (3rd edn.), 131
9. Josephson, 'Case for Percy Grainger', 355-6
10. For further details, see C. J. Bearman, 'Kate Lee and the Foundation of the Folk Song Society', Folk Music Journal, 7 (1999), 627-43
11. Broadwood diaries, 25 Dec. 1906
12. See e.g. Cecil J. Sharp, English Folk Song; Some Conclusions (London and Taunton, 1907), 135-41
13. Minutes of Committee, 18 Mar. 1904. Minute Book No. 2, p. 6
14. Broadwood diaries, 18 May 1905
15. For the £5 donated by Lady Farrar, 'Folk Song and National Song', 20. For the Vaughan Williams recordings, Broadwood diaries 21-3 Mar. 1907
16. Ximothy Day, A Century of Recorded Sound: Listening to Musical History (New Haven and London, 2000), 9
17. For some information on Broadwood's collecting methods, see C. J. Bearman, 'The English Folk Music Movement, 1898-1914' (Ph.D. thesis, University of Hull, 2001), 118-21
18. For collecting in a potato field, Sharp, 'Folk Tunes', vol, 3, p. 643
19. For Exmoor, see the letter from Sharp to his wife quoted in Fox Strangways and Karpeles, Cecil Sharp, 41
20. Cecil J. Sharp, Folk Songs from Somerset, Series Four (1908), 83
21. Sharp, English Folk Song: Some Conclusions, 16-31
22. See Sharp to Grainger, 23 May 1908
23. See David Rubinstein, 'Cycling in the 1890s', Victorian Studies, 21/1 (1977), 47-71
24. Ibid
25. Grainger to Holten, 18 Nov. 1907, in Farthest North of Humanness, 162
26. For the American ladies' offer, Grainger to Karen Holten, 11 May 1908, in Farthest North of Humanness, 208
27. For Grainger's work at Winchcombe and more generally in Gloucestershire, see Gwilym Davies, 'Percy Grainger's Folk Music Research in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and Warwickshire, 1907-1909', FMJ 6 (1992), 330-44
28. For Dartmouth, see the table of Grainger's movements in Farthest North of Humanness, 168
29. Grainger, 'Collecting with the Phonograph', 241
30. In 'Collecting with the Phonograph', 149, Grainger said 'it is interesting and instructive to compare tunes noted straight down from the singers with notings down culled from many phonographic repetitions of the same songs. In my own case I must confess that such comparisons turn out sorely uncomplimentary to my recordings without the phonograph.'
31. Stanford's definition of folk music was 'the music which from the earliest times has grown up amongst the people': see C. V. Stanford, 'Music in Elementary Schools: A Lecture Delivered to the Managers of the London Board Schools in 1889', printed in Studies and Memories (London, 1908), 44
32. He alleges: 'While earlier transcriptions had yielded straightforward tunes ripe for the amateur singer, Grainger's were a riot of notes and ornaments'
33. Josephson, 'Case for Percy Grainger', 355
34. Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London, 1978)
35. The best work from this point of view has been produced by Vic Gammon. See 'Folk Song Collecting in Surrey and Sussex, 1843-1914', History Workshop Journal, 10 (1980), 61-89
36. More generally, see V. A. F. Gammon, 'Popular Music in Rural Society: Sussex 1815-1914' (D.Phil, thesis, University of Sussex, 1985)
37. Boyes, Imagined Village, 49
38. Harker, Fakesong, 194-5
39. For a critique of Marxist assumptions about folksong as the cultural property of the working class, see C. J. Bearman, 'Who Were the Folk? The Demography of Cecil Sharp's Somerset Folk Singers', Historical Journal, 43 (2000), 751-75
40. See the forthcoming entry for Joseph Taylor by the present writer in Oxford New Dictionary of National Biography
41. Grainger, 'Collecting with the Phonograph', 164
42. Watson, Song and Democratic Culture, 33
43. For refusals to give Broadwood indecent material, see Gammon, 'Folk Song Collecting', 72
44. Grainger to Holten, 9 Apr. 1908, in Farthest North of Humanness, 206
45. Note dated 20 June 1908, 'Collecting with the Phonograph', 190
46. See also the similar note relating to 'Georgie' on p. 191
47. Frank Kidson, Traditional Tunes: A Collection of Ballad Airs (Oxford, 1891)
48. Taylor was driving his trap on estate business when the horse shied and he was thrown out. He was not badly injured, but collapsed and died the following day. See Lincolnshire Star, 7 May 1910
49. For the acknowledgement to Grainger, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, ed. Maud Karpeles (London, 1932), p. xx