An Edition of George Butterworth's Folk Music Manuscripts

Description

The abstract in this M.Phil. thesis states: George Butterworth collected folk music in England between 1906 and 1913. In collecting folk songs, he was sometimes accompanied by Francis Jekyll or Ralph Vaughan Williams. On Butterworth's premature death in 1916, only his field collection of Morris dances and sword dances, made under Cecil Sharp's direction, had been published in full. Butterworth's large collection of folk songs was left in the form in which it had been noted down, the words divorced from the tunes, apart from the few songs published incompletely in the 'Journal of the Folk Song Society' and in [Butterworth's] 'Folk Songs from Sussex (1913)'. So that the songs can be studied and performed again, the editor has fitted the words and music of the opening stanzas back together. In the case of songs which Butterworth collected with Vaughan Williams, the editor has deduced missing information on the songs' provenance by comparing Butterworth's copies with Vaughan Williams' manuscripts. This edition contains Butterworth's collection of folk dance tunes as noted from field informants prior to publication in piano arrangements, Jekyll's collection of Irish folk dance tunes and Butterworth's fieldwork 'Diary of Morris Dance Hunting'. Volume One contains a biographical sketch of Butterworth, an introduction to the folk music manuscripts, and the text and tune transcriptions of the songs noted by Butterworth, Jekyll and Vaughan Williams. Volume Two contains the folk dances noted by Butterworth and Jekyll; Butterworth's fieldwork diary; a copy of a letter sent by Butterworth to Sharp in 1915, whilst billeted at Ashford in Kent, in which he offers the notation for the Earsdon sword dance; and the editor's annotations of songs noted by Butterworth, Jekyll and Vaughan Williams. A final section contains a list of catalogues and a bibliography. The photographs include a portrait of Butterworth, taken in Leeds in 1913, his Chelsea home, the memorial doors of Deerhurst church, Gloucestershire, a folk dance group in Stratford-upon-Avon, circa 1911 and the Thiepval Memorial ( Thiepval, France).

Metadata

Identifier ggnxh65n
IRN 409981
Class Mark LAVC/SRP/1/085
Level File
Type of Record Archives - ISAD(G)
Peristent Link http://prototype1.library.leeds.ac.uk/ggnxh65n
Collection(s) Leeds Archive of Vernacular Culture
Category Archive
Parent Record Postgraduate Theses and Dissertations
Creator(s) Dawney, Michael
Date 1975
Size and Medium v, 307 bound typed leaves; ii, 131 bound typed leaves; 6 b/w photographs. 2 volumes. Copy.

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