'It wants all the creases ironing out': Percy Grainger, the Folk Song Society, and the Ideology of the Archive

Abstract

The legacy of the Folk Song Society in England in the early twentieth century has been a difficult one. As historiographical winds have changed direction, so too has the reputation of the Society risen and fallen. Percy Grainger’s contribution to folk music scholarship has proven perhaps the most divisive, both in his time and ours, and has, as a result, rarely been given the credit it deserves for its insight into the performance practice of the English folk singer. Instead, Grainger has become a weapon with which historians of various persuasions attack one another. This study examines Grainger’s work and its reception by the Folk Song Society, as well as studies of Grainger by both Marxist historians and more recent revisionists in the field of musicology and social history, after which an alternative and more fruitful perspective of his work will be provided using the tools of post-structuralism.