Review: From Cecil Sharp to the String Band

Subject: Review: From Cecil Sharp to the String Band
From: Vin2
Date: 23 Aug 10 - 08:55 AM

Hi folks. Interesting review emailed to me recently of a new book....

Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music by Rob Young. From Cecil Sharp to the String Band and beyond, Rob Young gives a fascinating, enjoyable account of British folk's eccentrics.

Here's the link.......

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/22/electric-eden-rob-young-faber

Subject: RE: Review: From Cecil Sharp to the String Band
From: Vin2
Date: 24 Aug 10 - 06:39 AM

Extract from the link.........

In the summer of 1903, in the garden of a rural vicarage in Somerset, a chance meeting took place that would radically alter the course of 20th-century British culture and music. Cecil Sharp, a former bank clerk turned classical composer, was conversing with some friends when he heard a gardener singing to himself as he worked. Sharp noted down the tune and asked the gardener for the words. That evening, Sharp performed his own, more musically ornate, version of "The Seeds of Love" with a female vocalist at a choir supper. A member of the delighted audience noted that it was "the first time that the song had been put into an evening dress".
This story, one of many fascinating tales told by Rob Young in his epic study of the various transformations of British folk music in the 20th century, is illuminating on many levels. Cecil Sharp, who subsequently travelled throughout Britain collecting old songs, is now regarded as the father of the English folk-song revival. John England, the gardener who set Sharp off on his journey of discovery, – and appropriation – has remained relatively unknown and unheralded, at least until now. Rob Young dubs him "the man who inadvertently triggered the 20th century folk-song revival".
Sean O'Hagan - The Observer, Sunday 22 August 2010

Subject: RE: Review: From Cecil Sharp to the String Band
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 24 Aug 10 - 06:55 AM

Hmmm, I think the suggestion that Cecil Sharp and John England's meeting "would radically alter the course of 20th-century British culture and music" is something of a stretch, but there we go...

Subject: RE: Review: From Cecil Sharp to the String Band
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 24 Aug 10 - 06:59 AM

Baring Gould & Kitson had already happened, Gardiner & the Hammonds were having the same idea about the same time, also Alfred Williams ~~ more a matter of catching the zeitgeist at the right time, I should say. But isn't John England a supremely suitable name for C Sharp's first informant?!

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Review: From Cecil Sharp to the String Band
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 24 Aug 10 - 07:01 AM

Priscilla Wyatt-Edgell and Fuller Maitland also go back to the 1890s, for that matter.

~M~

Subject: RE: Review: From Cecil Sharp to the String Band
From: Vin2
Date: 24 Aug 10 - 08:45 AM

Hey, interesting comments; shall investigate these other links to our past. Cheers folks !