Conference report: Vaughan Williams and Folk Song
English Dance and Song Spring 2023
This obituary by Dick Hobbs appears in English Dance and Song, the magazine of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. The world’s oldest magazine for folk music and dance, EDS was first published in 1936 and is essential reading for anyone with a passion for folk arts.
Tiffany Hore, Director of Library and Archives, reports on the 2022 conference of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library
Ralph Vaughan Williams was everywhere in 2022: anyone inclined towards the folk or classical genres found themselves metaphorically falling over him. There was a readymade opportunity for us, the library which bears his name, to shine a light on his folksong activity for people across the musical spectrum. Our two-day conference in November brought together scholars and practitioners from across the world in stimulating debate.
We titled the conference ‘Once more to the mouths of the people’, a quotation selected to provoke discussion. Vaughan Williams’ stated intention was to recover the dying song repertoire of the ‘folk’ and give it back to the people as their own, but who were (and are) the ‘people’? Exclusively the educated middle classes, or did his vision of the democratisation of ‘good’ music bear fruit through the English Hymnal and his work in community music? A panel session ended the conference by facing this question head on, and the papers which preceded it provided rich fruit to inform it.
Papers were grouped thematically, with session one taking us to the micro-level of the individual song. The VWML’s own archivist Malcolm Barr-Hamilton spoke on All things were quite silent while Georgina Boyes took Down in yon forest as her topic. There followed a song recital, introduced by John Francis of Albion Records. The exquisite singing of tenor Gwilym Bowen and baritone Johnny Herford, with renowned accompanist Will Vann, allowed delegates to ponder the composer RVW’s use of source material.
Sessions followed on ‘People and places’ featuring Caroline Davison (author of the recent book The Captain’s Apprentice) on his personal relationships with key women, Irene Shettle on his early collecting around Leith Hill and his relationship with the Broadwoods, and Paul and Liz
Davenport on his collecting trip to Rotherham and connections there. In ‘Music for the people’ Parker Gordon addressed his little-known involvement with community pageants, Katie Palmer-Heathman considered the folk tunes in the English Hymnal, and Julian Onderdonk broached the subject of copyright.
In ‘National and International’, Don Niles was beamed in from Papua New Guinea to speak about Vaughan Williams’ work as founding president of the International Folk Music Council and Jiří Čevela from the Czech Republic compared the collecting practices of Vaughan Williams and Leoš Janáček. Matt Simons tackled the question of Vaughan Williams and Englishness.
Reverting to the ‘people and places’ theme, Martin Graebe spoke on his collecting in the west and Jill Bennett on Norfolk. We then considered lesser-known sources, with talks from Sean Goddard on his folk dance recordings and Rhian Davies on his Welsh folk song arrangements, before a final discussion involving John Frances, Julian Onderdonk and Steve Roud discussing the conference’s title.
Putting on an event like this is a major undertaking, and we owe a debt of thanks to Julian Onderdonk, Martin Graebe and Katie Howson who assisted in the selection of papers and generally offered sage advice. The ultimate success of the event rested on the speakers and musicians, who all opened up fascinating new perspectives on our library’s dedicatee, from the stage where the man himself once stood as President of EFDSS.
