Chapter 14 - The English Folk Revival

Summary

Vaughan Williams’s lifelong association with the English Folk Revival presents an unexpected paradox. Despite his substantial experience as a folk-song collector, holding leading positions in major Revival institutions, composing and arranging music for its performances and producing groundbreaking writings on theory, his contribution – if it is acknowledged at all – is reduced to the view that he was an establishment figure who simply continued the ideas of Cecil Sharp. This caricature of the man and his work – a cypher with nothing original to say and a toff unable to relate to working-class singers – is not only wrong but ignores all available evidence. Benefitting from recent republications of his own writings and new scholarship following the fiftieth anniversary of his death, this chapter positions Vaughan Williams as a tempering influence on the more dubious aspects of the Folk Revival. From his first day as a collector, his methods and approaches were advanced for their time. And while supporting the value of Sharp’s aim of revival, Vaughan Williams’s letters and actions show he directly challenged Sharp’s authoritarian and unsound assumptions. An undogmatic, respectful, and humane observer of the traditional music he encountered, Vaughan Williams still has much to offer to contemporary folk-song researchers.