Cecil Sharp and the Quest for Folk Song and Dance
David Sutcliffe
Ballad Partners 497pp (pb) £20
At the centenary of Cecil Sharp’s death, here’s a long overdue modern assessment of the legendary folk music collector’s life and work. David Sutcliffe, a folk singer himself, does an immaculate job of showcasing someone who’s languished as some kind of ‘unknown known’. Yet Sharp, as Sutcliffe demonstrates, was the very opposite of monochrome. His boundless enthusiasm for the tasks he set himself made him theSharp-harvested tunes, Sutcliffe also shows how the act of gathering and publishing this material was underpinned by Sharp’s classical music training. Indeed, Sutcliffe travelled to Australia to research the formative years his subject spent there as a pianist, violinist and conductor. This is no purely adulatory exercise, though, and Sutcliffe assesses brickbats that have been hurled at Sharp’s method and working mindset. A pity there’s no examination of his ongoing legacy, but there should be no disincentive to sampling this engagingly told tale.
