Cecil Sharp, the English folk song collector, played an important role in the folk song revival movement of the Edwardian period. Sharp, generally known as “the folk song collector,” amassing a large number of folk songs and ballads sung and heard in England and Southern Appalachia, was a music teacher before engaging with folk song collecting. I argue that Sharp's role as an educator helped him create a purpose and principle for popularizing and disseminating folk songs.
Sharp believed that introducing folk songs into music education would contribute to the preservation and dissemination of traditional music, leading to the formation of a national culture. In 1905, the British Board of Education considered the introduction of traditional folk songs into elementary schools and published Suggestions for the Considerations of Teachers and Others Concerned in the Work of Public Elementary Schools (1905), but there were few authentic folk songs, passed down orally, in the proposed list of songs. Sharp opposed this decision and developed his own method to adopt folk songs for education. This paper illuminates how Sharp's ideas and practices contributed to music education in Britain while acknowledging his limitations in bringing folk songs into schools.
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