Thanks Jack Campin for the information. So 'social Darwinism' is not really relevant to Sharp setting out his approach.

You are confused. Social Darwinism certainly is relevant. It's one of the strands in the racism that Sharp clearly expressed sometimes.


However, I think Darwinism on its own is.

No. Darwinism is about biology. Period.


He clearly thought that the nations of Europe were inherently different in such a way that nature, if not interfered with by nurture, could produce different national folk musics.

That wasn't really Social Darwinism either, it would have been straight racist ideology - if Sharp had ever signed up to anything that crude. I don't think he did, and neither did Grainger, who wrote much more about links between "race" (whatever meaning he gave it) and musical idiom.


He was writing at a time when the history books had stories of how the indo-european tribes had spread, with the dark-haired Celts of Wales, the red-haired Scots and the Scandinavian blonds having their places on the map.

That story has only been refined with time, not really discarded, and it gives no support to theories linking race and culture.