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PRESS RELEASE
Folk Music Library Goes Online - 6 May 2006
The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library today launches VWML Online.
Indexes to the collections of some of the best-known folk music collectors of the twentieth century are now available on the Library's website - http://library.efdss.org
In the early years of the twentieth century, musicians and activists such as Ralph Vaughan Williams in East Anglia, Cecil Sharp in Somerset (and the Appalachian Mountains of the USA), Lucy Broadwood (Sussex), Henry and Robert Hammond in Dorset and George Gardiner in Hampshire collected hundreds of folk songs and tunes from agricultural workers, Gypsies and artisans in towns and villages in rural communities in England and beyond. For some - such as Vaughan Williams - the songs provided the inspiration for his compositions and editing The English Hymnal. Others, including Cecil Sharp, adapted the songs for use in schools. In recent decades, these songs have become increasingly popular as performed by musicians such as Martin Carthy, Norma Waterson, their daughter Eliza Carthy, and Kate Rusby. And now a whole new generation is becoming aware of the folk arts that surround them.
VWML Online allows anybody to search these important collections by titles, the source singers' names, and their place of residence and dates of collection.
Perhaps you live in a village or town that was famous for its singing, or are related to a dancer whose tunes are now performed by morris musicians up and down the country? You might well track them down here.
And in the case of the Cecil Sharp collection, there are also photographs of some of the musicians he met a century ago: marvellous images of the people who in many cases sang the songs and played the tunes that had already passed through several generations of the same family.
The indexes are also linked to the Roud Folk Song Index, a monumental database of 146,000 references to songs collected from oral tradition all over the English-speaking world. The Roud Index, compiled over many years by researcher and author Steve Roud, is an on-going project which is constantly being up-dated. Once armed with a Roud Number or reference to a song, you are on your way to finding it - most likely in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library - the Archive of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.
English Folk Dance and Song Society
Cecil Sharp House
2 Regent's Park Road
London NW1 7AY
Folk Music Library Goes Online - 6 May 2006
The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library today launches VWML Online.
Indexes to the collections of some of the best-known folk music collectors of the twentieth century are now available on the Library's website - http://library.efdss.org
In the early years of the twentieth century, musicians and activists such as Ralph Vaughan Williams in East Anglia, Cecil Sharp in Somerset (and the Appalachian Mountains of the USA), Lucy Broadwood (Sussex), Henry and Robert Hammond in Dorset and George Gardiner in Hampshire collected hundreds of folk songs and tunes from agricultural workers, Gypsies and artisans in towns and villages in rural communities in England and beyond. For some - such as Vaughan Williams - the songs provided the inspiration for his compositions and editing The English Hymnal. Others, including Cecil Sharp, adapted the songs for use in schools. In recent decades, these songs have become increasingly popular as performed by musicians such as Martin Carthy, Norma Waterson, their daughter Eliza Carthy, and Kate Rusby. And now a whole new generation is becoming aware of the folk arts that surround them.
VWML Online allows anybody to search these important collections by titles, the source singers' names, and their place of residence and dates of collection.
Perhaps you live in a village or town that was famous for its singing, or are related to a dancer whose tunes are now performed by morris musicians up and down the country? You might well track them down here.
And in the case of the Cecil Sharp collection, there are also photographs of some of the musicians he met a century ago: marvellous images of the people who in many cases sang the songs and played the tunes that had already passed through several generations of the same family.
The indexes are also linked to the Roud Folk Song Index, a monumental database of 146,000 references to songs collected from oral tradition all over the English-speaking world. The Roud Index, compiled over many years by researcher and author Steve Roud, is an on-going project which is constantly being up-dated. Once armed with a Roud Number or reference to a song, you are on your way to finding it - most likely in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library - the Archive of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.
English Folk Dance and Song Society
Cecil Sharp House
2 Regent's Park Road
London NW1 7AY
