George Barnet Gardiner
George Barnet Gardiner
(c.1852-1910)
George Gardiner was born in Kincardine-on-Forth, Perthshire, the fifth of six children and son of a minister. He excelled in classics at the University of Edinburgh and became a classics master at the Edinburgh Academy, a post held until 1896.
Subsequently, he became a translator and travelled extensively in Europe. Significantly, Gardiner met Henry Hammond in 1890 when working at the Academy. The two men became close friends and shared a passion for folk song. Gardiner was inspired by an international interest in the subject and in 1903 entered into “a systematic study of the folk songs of Europe”. He learned of the burgeoning interest in folk song in England and immediately joined the Folk-Song Society, and began collecting. He started near Bath in 1904 in collaboration with Hammond to whom he would entrust noting of the tunes. None of these songs, though submitted to the Journal of the Folk-Song Society, were printed, but two items from a later batch did appear in the 1905 edition.
Lucy Broadwood, suggested to Gardiner that he concentrate on the largely unexplored county of Hampshire, where composer Balfour Gardiner (no relation) would assist with the noting of tunes. After an initial burst of activity there in 1905, Gardiner returned with two other collaborators, Charles Gamblin and C.F. Guyer, to work in a more concentrated manner.
Gardiner's methods of working have led to some confusion; he probably visited singers alone, noting repertoire, and only later asked a collaborator to visit and take down tunes. This resulted in some singers not being found at a later date and tunes were not then available. His notebooks and finished manuscripts do not therefore match in terms of the numbers of songs noted. Of approximately 1,100 songs noted up to December 1907, Gardiner copied out only 800, but another 600 or so songs remained in his notebooks.
His collecting ceased by 1909, when The Folk-Song Society's Journal (no. 13) was devoted to his work. 1909 saw the publication of a third volume of Folk-Songs of England, 16 of Gardiner's collected songs were included, arranged for piano by Gustav Holst. The work of James Reeves and Frank Purslow led to a reappraisal of his immensely important collection and its true worth, placed in context with his contemporaries.
Gardiner died on 19 January 1910 after a brief illness and was buried in Warriston Cemetery, Edinburgh. His folk song manuscripts reside at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, London and his books with the Mitchell Library, Glasgow.
Browse George Gardiner's collection in The Full English digital archive.
