The joint conference of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library and the Traditional Song Forum
With the support of the Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA), Cymdeithas Alawon Gwerin Cymru (Welsh Folk Song Society), and the Elphinstone Institute (University of Aberdeen)
For over two hundred years, and for a variety of reasons, ‘folk’ song and music enthusiasts have ventured into the field and become collectors – gatherers of material which has greatly enhanced our understanding of the vernacular culture of the past.
Their activities have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, and to mark the centenary of the deaths of two key figures – Cecil Sharp and Sabine Baring Gould – and the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ella Mary Leather, we are organising a wide-ranging assessment of the collectors’ lives and works, with a major two-day conference.
We will investigate collectors as individuals and networks, their achievements and failures, motives, methods, strengths and weaknesses, social and political context, the contemporary collector, and the underlying ethics of collecting itself.
Full weekend: £60
One day only: £35
Book for Saturday, Sunday or both days together:
Programme
SATURDAY
9.30 – REGISTRATION, TEA AND COFFEE
9.55 Welcome
10.00 - 11.00 SESSION 1 – KEYNOTE 1
1.1 Brian Peters
'Not to bury Sharp, but to crucify him': A critical appraisal of the academic assault on England's foremost folk song collector'
11.00 – 11.30 COFFEE BREAK
11:30 – 1.00 SESSION 2: Analysis
2.1 Caroline Macafee
Weighing the catch: Quantitative analysis of singers and song transmission
2.2 David Atkinson
What actually is there in the collections? Sociology of texts: Phenomenology of reception
2.3 Paul Mansfield / Hugh Miller
Context and interaction: Issues in writing about historical song collecting
1.00 – 2.00 LUNCH
2 - 3.30 SESSION 3: Later Collectors
3.1 Carol Davies
Gwilym Davies: A modern approach to folk music collecting
3.2 Chris Greencorn
‘Genuine, but better variants known elsewhere’: Helen Creighton’s folk song collecting in Nova Scotia
3.3 Julia Bishop
‘A wrestler with sounds’: James Madison Carpenter and collecting with the Dictaphone in Britain, 1928-35
3.30 – 4 COFFEE BREAK
4 – 5.30 SESSION 4: Welsh Collectors
4.1 Rhidian Griffiths
Observers of Welsh traditional song
4.2 Dr. Elen Wyn Keen
The champion of collectors and his Canorion.
4.3 E. Wyn James
Welsh folk songs in Aberystwyth, London and Paris
5.30 – Close
SUNDAY
9.30 – REGISTRATION, TEA AND COFFEE
9.55 Welcome
10 - 11.00 SESSION 5 – KEYNOTE 2
5.1 Martin Graebe
Sabine Baring-Gould: 100 years on
11.00 – 11.30 COFFEE BREAK
11.30 - 1.00 SESSION 6: Female Collectors
6.1 Lynn Noel
Joanna Colcord: A sailor’s life, a collector’s legacy
6.2 Peter Snape
Anne Geddes Gilchrist: Folk song collector and scholar
6.3 Angela Fogg
Seven sons, 800 children’s games and more. The life and collecting of Alice Gomme.
1.00 – 2.00 LUNCH
2.00 - 3.00 SESSION 7: Lesser-known collectors
7.1 Malcolm Barr-Hamilton
W. Percy Merrick (1868-1955): A blind folk song collector
7.2 Andrew King
Dr Farquhar MacRae: Collector and traditional singer
3.00 – 3.30 COFFEE BREAK
3.30 – 5.00 SESSION 8: From the Irish Sea
8.1 Catherine Ann Cullen
‘They Call Me Jack of All Trades’: Four multi-tasking ballad collectors born in nineteenth-century Ireland, and how their several occupations and experiences coloured their interest in gathering songs
8.2 Áine Heneghan
‘The man who saved a feast of music from the famine years’: James Goodman as a collector of Irish traditional music
8.3 Stephen Miller
‘Your last proposal about music hunting sounds charming. We must think it over’: W.H. Gill and J.F. Gill as Manx folk song collectors
5.00 FINAL REMARKS
