Vaughan Williams Memorial Library

Vaughan Williams Memorial Library

The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library is the library and archive of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS), located in the society's London headquarters, Cecil Sharp House. It is a multi-media library comprising books, periodicals, audio-visual materials, photographic images and sound recordings, as well as manuscripts, field notes, transcriptions etc of a number of the most distinguished collectors of folk music and dance traditions in the British Isles. According to "A Dictionary of English Folklore", "... by a gradual process of professionalization the VWML has become the most important concentration of material on traditional song, dance, and music in the country." It is named after Ralph Vaughan Williams, the composer, collector and past president of the EFDSS, who died in 1958.

Prior to that it was the Cecil Sharp Library, since his books comprised the bulk of the holdings, but over the years the library has added literature, sound and manuscript collections of other eminent folklorists and collectors such as Lucy Broadwood, Janet Blunt, Anne Gilchrist, George Butterworth, the Hammond brothers and George Gardiner. It also contains copies of the papers and notebooks of Sabine Baring-Gould, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Alfred Williams and James Madison Carpenter; and the field recordings of Percy Grainger, Mike Yates and the BBC Folk Music Archive.

Subjects covered include: Folk/traditional/popular song, Child Ballads, Broadside ballads, Industrial/occupational songs, sea songs/shanties, singing games, Nursery rhymes, Street cries, Carols/hymns, Rounds/glees/part songs, Music hall, Ritual/ceremonial dance, Morris dance/sword dance and a great deal more.

In May 2006, VWML Online was launched which hosts a number of the library's indexes to manuscript collections, together with its index to mummers' plays and the Roud Folk Song and Broadside Indexes, the largest of their kind in the English language.

External links

* [http://efdss.org/library.htm Vaughan Williams Memorial Library]
* [http://library.efdss.org/cgi-bin/home.cgi VWML Online]


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  • Vaughan Williams Memorial Library — (VWML)    The library and archives service of the *English Folk Dance and Song Society. The original nucleus for the library was the collection of books bequeathed by Cecil *Sharp on his death in 1924, and the collection was renamed after Ralph… …   A Dictionary of English folklore

  • Ralph Vaughan Williams — For classification of anti arrhythmic agents, see Vaughan Williams classification. Vaughan Williams in 1919, by William Rothenstein Ralph Vaughan Williams OM ( …   Wikipedia

  • English Folk Dance and Song Society — The English Folk Dance and Song Society formed in 1932 when two organisations merged: the Folk Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society formed by Cecil Sharp in 1911.The Folk Song Society, founded in 1898, focused on collecting and… …   Wikipedia

  • Roud Folk Song Index — The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of 300,000 references to over 21,600 songs that have been collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is a combination of the Broadside Index (printed sources before… …   Wikipedia

  • Clive Carey — Francis Clive Savill Carey CBE (30 May 1883 – 30 April 1968),[1] known as Clive Carey, was a British baritone, singing teacher, composer, opera producer and folk song collector. Biography Clive Carey was born at Sible Hedingham, Essex in… …   Wikipedia

  • W. Llewelyn Williams — (10 March 1867 ndash; 22 April 1922), was a Welsh journalist, lawyer and Liberal Party politician. He was born at Brownhill Llansadwrn, Towy Valley, Carmarthenshire; a memorial plaque was erected in front of the house in 1938. Born into a well… …   Wikipedia

  • Hamer, Frederick — (1909 69)    A keen *morris and country dancer and an active member of the *English Folk Dance and Song Society and the *Morris Ring, from the 1930s, and he made several important contributions on morris traditions in Northamptonshire. He later… …   A Dictionary of English folklore

  • Butterworth, George Sainton Kaye — (1885 1916)    One of the most promising of the Edwardian generation of musicians interested in folk music, his work was sadly curtailed by his death in France in August 1916. He came to folk music through his acquaintance with Ralph *Vaughan… …   A Dictionary of English folklore

  • English Folk Dance and Song Society —    The EFDSS was formed in 1932 by the amalgamation of the *Folk Song Society (founded 1898), and the *English Folk Dance Society (EFDS) (founded 1911). At that time, the two societies had a number of leading figures in common, including Ralph… …   A Dictionary of English folklore

  • Sharp, Cecil James — (1859 1924)    Born in London, Sharp spent much of his early adulthood in Australia, returning to England in 1892, planning to make a living in music. He served for many years as music master at Ludgrove Preparatory School, and Principal of the… …   A Dictionary of English folklore

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