This year (2024) is the 100th Anniversary of Cecil Sharp, who died on 23 June 1924. While primarily recognized these days as a collector of folk song and for instigating the revival of morris dancing, his important role as a dance historian has been largely overlooked.
For Sharp, the song-collecting expeditions into the Appalachians during and after WWI had resulted in a vast quantity of new material that then needed to be processed, arranged, published and lectured about. At the same time, his health – never of the best – began to deteriorate. He moved to Montreux in Switzerland for several months in October 1922, in company with his faithful amanuensis Maud Karpeles, in the hope that the change of climate would help him recuperate. While there, he spent his time trying to master French – without any great success in the spoken form – but his ability to read and translate was more in keeping with his character. This led to him making a full translation of Arbeau’s Orchesography. On his return to England, he made the acquaintance of Cyril Beaumont while browsing in his Charing Cross Road bookstore. Learning that they were both working on the same project of bringing Arbeau to the attention of the English-speaking public, he passed over his completed manuscript (now in the collections of the Vaughan Williams Library).
Karpeles remarks that “Cecil invited Mr Beaumont to dinner and met his enquiries about the interpretation of certain obscure passages by placing his manuscript in Mr Beaumont’s hands, an act of generosity which Mr Beaumont accepted with the remark that he felt as though he had his hands in another man’s till.”
Beaumont published the first English translation of Orchesography in 1925, with an extensive introduction by Peter Warlock, composer of the well-known Capriole Suite based on Arbeau’s tunes. There is no acknowledgement of Sharp in Beaumont’s publication, despite the close relationship described by Karpeles.
Sharp’s attention was diverted at this point towards writing a complete History of Dance, with the help of his friend Paul Oppé. This resulted in a very elegant volume: The Dance: An Historical Survey of Dancing in Europe, that was finished and published on the 1 January 1924, only a few months before Sharp’s death on 23 June.
The book gives a valuable insight into the way that Sharp thought about both the past of dance and where he felt it should go in the future. Although it may lack the detailed knowledge of historical dance that modern scholarship might bring to the subject, it is a valuable account of what was known at the time, as well as being amply illustrated with a fine selection of prints, many in colour. The first attempt to give a detailed description of the dances themselves did not appear until 1949 with the publication of Mabel Dolmetsch’s Dances of England and France.
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Bill Tuck has been an enthusiastic performer of early music for many years – particularly in the context of dance accompaniment, whether for 15th century basse dances or 19th century quadrilles. His instrumental interests range from pipe and tabor to sackbut, trumpet and flute, with a particular enthusiasm for rediscovering the visual as well as aural significance of such instruments in a theatrical context. As a director of Chalemie Theatre Company his interest is in the recreation of 18th century English pantomime and commedia dell’arte. He holds a Diploma in Music from the Open University and PhD in Mathematics from Sydney University and was formerly Senior Research Fellow in Computing at University College London. Since October 2017 he has been Chairman of the Early Dance Circle.