Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury

A photographic exhibition telling the story of Cecil Sharp’s remarkable record of Somerset folk singers and their songs in the early 1900s.

Folk song is England’s musical secret. When you sing ‘To be a Pilgrim’ or ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ you are singing tunes collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The carol ‘It Came upon the Midnight Clear’ uses a tune, which used to accompany medieval mumming plays.

In Somerset, more than 350 people sang to Cecil Sharp and his helpers. Theirs were the collective voice of the nation, and through them generations of English people speak to us. Yet most people are unaware of this intangible heritage and the continuity linking the past with the present.

In 2006, Yvette Staelens and Chris Bearman, with the designer Andrew Crane, produced ‘The Somerset Folk Map’ which presented the work of Cecil Sharp in the context of continuing folk traditions. The Map is published by Somerset County Council as a free educational and tourism resource.

Now the Arts and Humanities Research Council has funded the Cecil Sharp project, based at Bournemouth University, and the resulting exhibition ‘The Singing Landscape’ .

The exhibition aims to raise public awareness of folk music through the enthusiasm for family history. It will bring alive the folk songs, the singers and the landscape through which the song collectors moved. The exhibition will tour to 5 other venues in Somerset, including the South Somerset Museum in Yeovil, the Bishops Palace in Wells and Bridgwater Arts Centre.

Each exhibition venue will also host a folk song and singers’ presentation, to which the audience will be invited to share their family histories and stories and will be presented with copies of the Somerset Folk Map. Do you have a singing ancestor? Come and see the show, hear the songs and read the map to find out.

For more information please contact the exhibition organiser Mary Gryspeerdt: mcgryspeerdt@somerset.gov.uk or see http://www.somerset.gov.uk/somerset/culturecommunity/museums/somersetmuseums/somersetrurallife/cecilsharp/index.cfm