Maud Karpeles

Maud Karpeles (12 November 1885 – 1 October 1976) was a collector of folksongs and dance teacher.

Maud Karpeles was born in London in 1885. In Berlin at the "Hochschule für Musik" she studied piano for six months. In 1892 a women's settlement had been created in Cumberland Road, Canning Town in 1892. The purpose was to enable the poorest girls to take part in sport and cultural activities. Karpeles became a Fabian and joined the settlement as a social worker. She began look for "something creative for a girls' club to do".

Together with her sister Helen Karpeles (1887–1976) she went to the Stratford-upon-Avon Festival in 1909, where they first encountered folk dances and songs. This inspired Maud to create a folk dance club at the Canning Town Settlement. When Cecil Sharp gave lectures on folk dance, it was her folk dance club that demonstrated them. The English Folk Dance Society (EFDS) was founded in 1911, with Karpeles' dancers at the heart of it. Karpeles became as much interested in the songs as the dances, and joined Sharp on collecting expeditions. Sharp, a married man with children, allowed Karpeles to share his house for long periods.

Collaborator with Cecil Sharp

In 1914 Sharp went to the USA to a Shakespeare production to teach choreographed folk dances to the actors, and to give lectures. Later in 1914, all folk dancing lectures and classes ceased during the First World War. Sharp's first collaborator had been Mary Neal. She had formed another dance group, the Espérance Club of Morris Dancers. When Mary Neal moved in the direction of Women's Suffrage, Sharp distanced himself from her, and adopted Maud Karpeles instead, as his main assistant. Sharp returned to the Appalachian Mountains in 1916, this time together with Maud Karpeles. They collected over 1,500 tunes (over 500 different songs) in a period of 46 weeks in isolated communities. Many of them were obviously related to songs they had encountered in England. This strengthened their conviction that folk songs were subject to a kind of Darwinian selection over generations, and diffusion across the sea. These songs and tunes were published in 1932.

At the end of the war, neither Mary Neal's Espérance Guild, nor Maud's group reformed. Effectively the folk dance movement changed from being working class to being middle class. Sharp arranged for teachers to give classes in country dance and morris, to members of the society, using his books for guidance. Choirs were created to sing folk songs in unison, even though all the singers who had provided the songs, had normally sung solo. After about 1920, Sharp ceased to collect dances - he was then in his 60s - but Karpeles was only in her 30s. She collected clog-morris dances from the north-west of England, in Royton and Abram. She continued to collect English country dances in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1929 Cecil Sharp House opened and William Kimber and Maud Karpeles laid the foundation stone.

Newfoundland and executorship

Sharp died in 1924, but just beforehand, he had expressed a wish to search for songs in Newfoundland. His theory predicted that the emigrants from Scotland and England would have brought folk songs with them. They would still be found there, if anyone cared to look. Karpeles took up the challenge, and went there alone in 1929 and 1930, In 1934 "Folk Songs from Newfoundland" was published, possibly her greatest achievement. She became Sharp's legal executor, and fought legal battles on behalf of his estate. As Georgina Boyes notes in her book "The Imagined Village", there is a certain irony in placing any kind of copyright on folk songs which were given freely by people.

1932 and after

The "English Folk Dance Society" (EFDS) merged with the "Folk-Song Society" (FSS) in 1932 to become the "English Folk Dance and Song Society" (EFDSS). By this time the FSS had ceased to collect songs, and all the profits came from teaching dances and selling song-books. EFDSS elected Karpeles as honorary secretary. She continued to edit Sharp's manuscripts and was an energetic organiser of international festivals. Karpeles organised the International Folk Dance Festival and Conference in London in 1935. In 1950, and again in 1955, she returned to the Appalachian Mountains. This time she recorded singers for the BBC. Some of the people she met remembered meeting Sharp the first time around. Once the folk singer Phil Tanner was discovered in Gower, Wales, Karpeles made sure that he was recorded. Karpeles was awarded the OBE in 1961, for services of folk music. She received two honorary degrees: one from Université Laval in Quebec (1961) and one from the Memorial University of Newfoundland (1970).

Cecil Sharp's "English Folk Song: Some Conclusions" was considered to be a classic on the subject and Karpeles added material to the second, third and fourth editions. She never wavered from the original idea of the essential purity of folk song, free from commercialisation or vulgarity. Today a more interactive theory is widely held. Songs from the music hall can be adopted and reused by country singers. In addition erotic songs occupy an important place in folk music, though Sharp bowdlerised texts in accordance with the social mores of his time. She never lost her concern for the less fortunate. During the Second World War she helped refugee musicians and with the Red Cross. In 1962 refugees from Tristan Da Cunha arrived in Britain. Karpeles visited them and encouraged them to sing their folk songs. In 1967 she published "Cecil Sharp: His Life and Work". In 1974 she published two substantial volumes: "Cecil Sharp's Collection of English Folk Songs Vol 1 & 2". "The Crystal Spirit" (1975) is shorter version of the collection. Maud Karpeles died in 1976.

Legacy

It is still possible to see Maud dancing. In 2000 The "English Folk Dance and Song Society" issued as set of 55 trading cards with a "flicker book" celebrating the heroes of the folk-song revival. The flicker book shows a morris dance being performed by Cecil Sharp, Maud and Helen Karpeles. The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library in Cecil Sharp House has her unpublished papers and diaries.

Bibliography

Maud Karpeles

• "The Lancashire Morris Dance, containing a description of the Royton Morris Dance, collected and edited by Maud Karpeles" (London: Novello & Company) (1930)
• "Twelve Traditional Country Dances" (1931/1956 London: Novello and Co for the English Folk Dance Society)
• "The Abram Morris Dance" (Journal of English Folk Dance and Song Society) (1932)
• "Folk Songs From Newfoundland" (1934)
• "A Report on Visits to the Tristan Da Cunha Islanders" (Journal of English Folk Dance and Song Society) (1962)
• "Cecil Sharp: His Life and Work" (1967)
• "Folk Songs from Newfoundland" (1971 Faber and Faber)
• "An Introduction to English Folk Song" (1973)

Maud Karpeles and Lois Blake (illustrated by Roland A. Beard)

• "Dances of England & Wales" (1950)

A. H. Fox Strangeways and Maud Karpeles

• "Cecil Sharp" (1933 1st ed) (1955 2nd ed) (1967 3rd ed)

Edited by Maud Karpeles

• "English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. Collected by Cecil J. Sharp" (2 volumes, 1932. London: Oxford University Press)
• "Folk Songs of Europe" (1964. New York: Oak Publications)
• "Cecil Sharp's Collection of English Folk Songs Vol 1 & 2" (1974)
• "The Crystal Spring" (1975) (This is a selection from the 2 vols of "English Folk Songs" 1974)

Cecil Sharp

• "English Folk-Song: Some Conclusions" (preface by Maud Karpeles in 2nd ed 1936)
• "English Folk-Song: Some Conclusions" (edited by Maud Karpeles in 3rd ed 1954 and 4th ed 1965)
• "Eighty English Folk Songs from the southern Appalachians collected by Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles" (1968 Faber & Faber) (Piano accompaniments by Benjamin Britten)

Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles

• "80 Appalachian Folk Songs" (1983)

Kenneth S. Goldstein and Neil V. Rosenberg (editors)

• "Folklore Studies in Honour of Herbert Halpert: a Festschrift" (St John's 1980)

(contains a chapter by Carole Henderson Carpenter called 'Forty Years Later: Maud Karpeles in Newfoundland')

Dr Pauline Alderman

• "The Journal of the International Congress on Women in Music" (June 1985)

(contains an article called "Four Generations of Women in Musicology". Maud is classified as being in "The Second Generation".)

External links

• Biography
• Newfoundland
• Flicker book
• Pauline Alderman

Persondata
Name	Karpeles, Maud
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	12 November 1885
Place of birth
Date of death	1 October 1976
Place of death