Maud Karpeles
Maud Karpeles OBE, (12 November 1885 – 1 October 1976) was a British collector of folksongs and dance teacher.
Early life and education[edit]
Maud Pauline Karpeles was born at Lancaster Gate in Bayswater, London, in 1885.[1] She was the third of five children.[2] Her father, Joseph Nicolaus Karpeles, was a German immigrant who was born in Hamburg, and naturalised as a British subject in 1881.[1] He worked as a tea merchant and stockbroker.[1] Her mother, Emily Karpeles (née Raphael), was born in London.[1] Both her parents were Jewish but nonreligious.[1][2] Her family moved to Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, when she was about ten.[1] Like her sisters, Karpeles went to boarding school in Tunbridge Wells, where she learned to play the violin and piano, and studied German.[1] In 1906, she spent six months at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, taking piano lessons and going to concerts.[3]
Collaboration with Sharp[edit]
English Folk Dance Society[edit]
In 1910, the Karpeles sisters formed an informal Folk Dance Club, together with a group of girls who had been practicing every week at their parents' house.[7][1] On 3 April 1911, they held a fundraiser for the Invalid Children's Association at Baker Street in London.[1] The Folk Dance Club roped male relatives to join them in dancing, and gave a performance in front of an audience of 500 people.[7] Cecil Sharp gave a lecture and contralto Mattie Kay sang.[7] The event was well received and raised an impressive £60.[1]
The popularity of the Folk Dance Club grew quickly,[7] as Maud Karpeles and her dancers started to give more public demonstrations,[1] and Sharp traveled across the country to promote folk dancing.[7] Maud and Helen Karpeles were soon teaching Morris, sword, and country dancing classes five hours a day as members of his teaching staff.[7][8] At the Shakespeare Festival that summer, the Folk Dance Club gave performances each week in the Memorial Theatre Gardens.[7] Following a public meeting in December 1911, the Folk Dance Club dissolved to make way for a new national entity, the English Folk Dance Society (EFDS).[7] Helen then became the Honorary Secretary of the EFDS – a role which Maud would take over from 1922 to 1930.[7]
Assistant to Sharp[edit]
In 1913, Maud Karpeles started working for Sharp as his amanuensis, after he developed neuritis in his right elbow.[11] Initially, she wrote his letters in longhand, but quickly learned typewriting and shorthand.[1] In May 1914, Karpeles was involved in Harley Granville-Barker's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Savoy Theatre, which featured folk music and dancing.[1] Sharp arranged the music and choreography, while Karpeles trained the dancers.[1]
Karpeles lived with the Sharp family when they moved to Hampstead in 1915, not long after his wife, Constance Sharp, suffered a life-changing illness.[10] Cecil Sharp referred to Karpeles as "the faithful Maud".[8] On their many travels together, Sharp would introduce her as his "adopted daughter".[8] She would continue to work closely with him until his death in 1924.[10]
Work in America[edit]
With the outbreak of World War I, folk dancing activities were put on hold,[7] and Sharp decided to seek work in the United States to support his family.[12] In the summer of 1915, Maud Karpeles accompanied him to the United States for the first time.[13] She was one of three British teachers assisting Sharp at a summer school he was directing in Maine.[7][13] During this trip, Sharp met with Olive Dame Campbell, who shared her collection of 200 ballads she had collected in the Appalachian Mountains, inspiring Sharp to embark on his own expedition.[12]
Fieldwork in Newfoundland[edit]
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, and that they would still be found there, if anyone cared to look.
From 1929 to 1930, Karpeles finally took up the challenge, and spent around 14 weeks collecting songs.[16] In 1934, she published her collection Folk Songs from Newfoundland.[17]
Death and legacy[edit]
Maud Karpeles died in 1976. 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. This Kinora Spool can also be seen on the DVD "Here's a Health to the Barley Mow: A Century of Folk Customs and Ancient Rural Games" released by the British Film Institute and the EFDSS in 2011, and on YouTube.[18] The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library in Cecil Sharp House has her unpublished papers and diaries.[19]
Maud Karpeles
Maud Karpeles and Lois Blake (illustrated by Roland A. Beard)
A. H. Fox Strangeways and Maud Karpeles
Edited by Maud Karpeles
Cecil Sharp
Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles
Kenneth S. Goldstein and Neil V. Rosenberg (editors)
Dr Pauline Alderman