Waart, Edo de. 56 Wachmann, Eduard 56

1. To c1850.

In Wales itself, church music was virtually destroyed when the monasteries, priories and chantries were dissolved in 1536, 1538 and 1547 respectively. Not even a fragment of musical manuscript remains in the cathedral libraries of Wales. Unlike England, Wales was slow in responding to the Reformation spirit and only in 1621, some 80 years after the metrical psalms were first introduced in England, was the first Welsh translation of the Book of Common Prayer published, the work of Edmund Prys: it contained 12 English psalm tunes. In England in the same year Thomas Ravenscroft published The Whole Booke of Psalmes, which purported to contain a few Welsh tunes. But the poverty of the Church, and the disinclination of the Welsh-speakers to adopt the Reformed faith, kept its music at a low ebb for a long time. Despite the encouragement given to music and organ playing by the Six Articles of 1539, the choir of Llandaff Cathedral was suppressed and its organ destroyed as late as 1691.

In about 1735 a native Methodism arose among Welsh-speaking preachers of the established Church. The movement appealed particularly to the Welsh-speaking peasants and became known as the Methodist Revival; official separation from the Church followed in 1823, and by 1880 four-fifths of the population was nonconformist. Inspired by Wesley and Whitefiled in particular, the revivalists introduced congregational singing in about 1740. In response to appeals to compose hymns, William Williams (Pantecelyn) published his Aleluja, neu Casgliad o hymnau (‘Alleluia, or Collection of hymns’, 1744) and Selection of Psalm- and Hymn-Tunes (1787); the music for both consisted mostly of popular English tunes. Welsh folktunes were later adapted and used; this was an important turning-point, for traditional musical values were again finding a place in Welsh religious life. Of some 40 of the more important hymnbooks published between 1816 and 1867, most have both Welsh and foreign tunes. In the 18th century progress in propagating hymns was slow; few could read music, and performance was restricted to unison singing. But during the 19th century better tunes were found, harmonized versions were published and, from about 1862, taught in Sol-fa notation in the chapel schools. Singers at cymanfa ganu (hymn-singing festivals) began including oratorio choruses, such as those of Handel and Mendelssohn, in their repertory, and Welsh chapels rapidly became the focus for the musical life of the community.

Wales, §I: Art music

2. From c1850 to 1945.

There was also in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries a considerable amount of orchestral and instrumental activity (mostly amateur), particularly in south Wales, and by the last decades of the 19th century the anual large-scale oratorio and cantata performances at the National Eisteddfod were usually accompanied by a full symphony orchestra. Welsh composers whose works were performed in these concerts, and at the triennial festivals held in Cardiff from 1892 to 1910, included David Evans, Daniel Protheroe and David Jenkins, as well as Joseph Parry. But even earlier, in the late 1830s, the Crawshaw family had established at Cyfarthfa Castle, near Merthyr Tydfil, the first British brass band. This included among its members some who were acknowledged as Europe’s finest instrumentalists, and they performed transcriptions of some of the most recent European works (including Verdi overtures) even before they reached London. New compositions, such as Parry’s impressive overture Tydfil, were also encouraged.

Parry’s death in 1903 marked the end of the Victorian era in Welsh music, and a new generation of composers began looking towards wider horizons and to react healthily against Parry’s legacy. The University of Wales started awarding its own music degrees in 1905, and in 1912 conferred a BMus degree on the most interesting of these young composers, Morfydd Owen (1891–1918). The pivotal figure in Welsh musical life in the years immediately following the First World War was Walford Davies (1869–1941). His appointment to the Gregynog chair of music at Aberystwyth in 1919 coincided with the setting-up of the University Council of Music, which he headed and which transformed musical life for thousands of people throughout the principality. A notable innovation was the creation of resident chamber ensembles at the university colleges of Cardiff and Aberystwyth (the first of their kind in Britain). Davies left Aberystwyth in 1926 but continued to be influential in Welsh musical affairs, partly through his connection with a remarkable series of festivals at Gregynog Hall in Montgomeryshire, which flourished until World War II and brought to Wales Elgar, Holst, Vaughan Williams, Adrian Boult and other distinguished musicians.

Davies also attempted, through the University Council of Music, to establish a national orchestra for Wales, and in 1928 a concert by an orchestra of 70 players, conducted by Sir Henry Wood, was given in the City Hall, Cardiff, and broadcast by the BBC. An appeal for financial support from local authorities was unsuccessful, however, and the orchestra was disbanded in 1931. When Wales was granted regional broadcasting status in 1936, the BBC took up the reins and an ensemble was established which set the foundations of the present BBC National Orchestra of Wales. During this period several composers were active in both vocal and instrumental music, notably David de Lloyd (1883–1948), J.R. Heath (1887–1950), Cyril Jenkins (1889–1978), T. Hopkin Evans and Bradwen Jones (1892–1970); David Vaughan Thomas (1873–1934), however, is the only composer of this generation whose music retains a secure place in the repertory. These were also the years when the collecting of Welsh folk-music began to have an impact on the music of Welsh composers.

3. Since 1945.

The end of World War II marks a major turning-point in the development of Welsh music. In 1946 the Welsh National Opera was established in Cardiff by Idloes Owen, and the National Youth Orchestra of Wales, under Clarence Raybould, began its work as an invaluable training-ground for generations of instrumentalists and composers. In 1947 the first International Eisteddfod, a brainchild of the scholar and composer W.S. Gwynn Williams, was held at Llangollen, and in the same year the Swansea Festival was inaugurated in the newly-built Brangwyn Hall. Swansea was the home of Daniel Jones (1912–92), one of a number of gifted professional composers who revitalized Welsh musical life in the 1940s. Another was Grace Williams (1906–77), whose career was assisted by the presence at the BBC of two active composers, Mansel Thomas (1909–86) and Arwel Hughes (1909–91). Best remembered as composers for the vocal miniatures, Thomas and Hughes expended much of their practical efforts on behalf of their contemporaries, most notably Alun Hoddinott (b 1929) and William Mathias (1934–92), the only Welsh composers so far to have found international success. Two notable song-writers who recognized that their gifts were best suited to a small canvas were Meirion Williams (1911–76) and Dilys Elwyn-Edwards (b 1918), whose best works are likely to endure as long as the Welsh language itself.

In 1954 the Guild for the Promotion of Welsh Music was established by John Edwards to encourage audiences and performers to explore the new repertory; it also published a valuable journal, Welsh Music. David Wynn (1900–83) was one of the most prominent composers supported by the Guild; his pupils Robert Smith (1924–99) and Mervyn Burtch (b 1929) have also been closely associated with the Guild’s activities. In the late 1950s the British Council established a Welsh committee which later became the Welsh Arts Council, eventually gaining autonomy from London and, in 1994, its own royal charter. It has done much to promote Welsh music, notably by commissioning over 1000 new works, issuing recordings and attracting British and foreign orchestras to Wales with a remit to perform works by Welsh composers. It has also supported music festivals at Llandaff, the Vale of Glamorgan, Cardiff, Fishguard, St Aspah and St David’s Cathedral, and in 1973 it entered into an agreement with the BBC to expand the BBC Welsh Orchestra to full symphonic strength. This was finally achieved by 1987, and in 1995 the orchestra was renamed the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. From 1974 the WNO, too, was consolidated as a fully professional company with its own full-time chorus and orchestra; it has since achieved wide acclaim as one of the finest British opera companies.

Music education also took enormous strides after World War II. The Cardiff College of Music and Drama, founded in 1949, was later expanded to form a national conservatory. Music departments in the University of Wales at Cardiff and Bangor also entered into a period of expansion and developed a higher profile. The Gregynog Chair at Aberytswyth, filled by the composer Ian Parrott from 1950 to 1983 and then by David Wulstan, was left unoccupied in 1987 when the department closed for full-time study, but musical life in the college has continued to flourish. In 1976 a Welsh Music Information Centre was established jointly by University College, Cardiff, and the Welsh Arts Council to assemble an archive of Welsh music which could then be promoted effectively. The centre was suspended in 1997, but the intention was formed to re-open it in 2002 as part of a more comprehensive Ty Cerdd (Music House) to be developed in conjunction with the Welsh Amateur Music Federation at a new Wales Millennium Centre. Most of the centre’s manuscript archives were transferred to the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth.

Composers of a new generation, including many taught by Hoddinott or Mathias, were able to profit from study abroad, from a greater awareness of the international avant garde and from well-developed institutions. Of several who made some initial impact, including Jeffrey Lewis (b 1942), Richard Elfyn Jones (b 1944), Howard Rees (b 1945) and John Hopkins, only John Metcalf (b 1946) has gone on to fulfil early expectations with a mature style of some individuality based on white-note harmony and intense lyricism. Two of Metcalf’s contemporaries who have worked a good deal in the USA are Hilary Tann and Rhian Samuel, both of whom are also active as academics. Composers who have settled and worked in Wales include Charles Barber, whose work is deeply influenced by African and gamelan music (alongside other ‘world’ musics), while John Cale and Richard Barrett have enjoyed most of their success, in popular and avant-garde music respectively, outside Wales. Composers such as Gareth Glyn, Lyn Davies (b 1955), John Hardy and Dalwyn Henshall (b 1957) have been more acutely conscious of their indigenous heritage, but it perhaps remains for those of a younger generation, including Pwyll ap Sion, Guto Puw, Paul Mealor, Huw Watkins and Ceiri Torjussen, to explore fully the interaction of Welsh classical and popular cultures within the full range of international developments.

Among Wales’s most prominent musical ambassadors during the 20th century were singers who achieved international success in opera, including Geraint Evans, Stuart Burrows, Gwyneth Jones, Margaret Price, Robert Tear, Dennis O’Neil, Bryn Terfel, Gwyn Hughes Jones and Rebecca Evans – an impressive list for a relatively small country. Many of these made their operatic débuts with the WNO but found it impossible to return to the company at the height of their careers because of the inadequate resources of Cardiff’s cramped New Theatre. Plans for a new opera house in Cardiff Bay were abandoned in 1997, but the Millennium Centre is intended by 2002 to house the WNO alongside other performing companies in conditions of unprecedented splendour for Wales. The launch of National Youth Arts Wales early in 2000 consolidated the achievements of the Welsh National Youth Orchestra, Brass Band, Choir and Chamber Ensemble and laid foundations for future progress.

See also Cardiff; Swansea.

Wales, §I: Art music

BIBLIOGRAPHY

F. Griffith: Notable Welsh Musicians of Today (London, 2/1896)

J. Graham: A Century of Welsh Music (London, 1923)

R.E. Roberts: ‘Welsh Music in the Tudor Period’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1925–6), 1–24

J. Lumley Davies: ‘The Contribution of Welshmen to Music’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1929–30), 38–113

P. Crossley-Holland: ‘Secular Homophonic Music in Wales in the Middle Ages’, ML, xxiii (1942), 135–62

I. Lewis: Cerddoriaeth yng Nghymru [Music in Wales] (Liverpool, 1945)

P. Crossley-Holland, ed.: Music in Wales (London, 1948)

A.F.L. Thomas: ‘Random Notes on Contemporary Welsh Music’, The Chesterian, xxi (1956–7), 115–19

D. Jones: Music in Wales (Cardiff, 1961)

E. Cleaver: Gwŷr y gân (Llandybie, 1964; Eng. trans., 1968, as Musicians of Wales)

O.T. Edwards: ‘Music in Wales’, Anatomy of Wales, ed. R. Brinley Jones (Cardiff, 1972), 107–26

E. Warkov: ‘Modern Composers' Use of Welsh Texts: Some Points of View’, Welsh Music, v/10 (1975–8), 31–41

R. Bohana: ‘Music’, The Arts in Wales 1950–75, ed. M. Stephens (Cardiff, 1979), 5–25

M. Boyd: ‘Welsh Composers’, ibid., 27–50

I. Parrott, ed.: The Story of the Guild for the Promotion of Welsh Music, 1955–1980 (Swansea, n.d.)

D.R.A. Evans: ‘A Short History of the Music and Musicians of St. David's Cathedral, 1230–1883’, Welsh Music, vii/8 (1982–5), 50–66

G. Lewis: ‘“Welsh” Music’, Welsh Music, vii/2 (1982–5), 6–19

R. Fawkes: Welsh National Opera (London, 1986)

I. Cheverton: ‘Cathedral Music in Wales during the Latter Part of the Seventeenth Century’, Welsh Music, viii/1 (1986–9), 6–17

O.T. Edwards: ‘A Fourteenth-Century Welsh Sarum Antiphonal, NLW MS 20541’, Journal of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society, x (1987), 15–21

G. Lewis: ‘Praise the Lord! We are a Musical Nation’, The New Wales, ed. D. Cole (Cardiff, 1990), 123–40

D.I. Allsobrook: Music for Wales: Walford Davies and the National Council of Music (Cardiff, 1992)

L. Davies: ‘Cwmni opera Cymru’, Taliesin, lxxxiii (1993), 86–93

D.R.A. Evans: ‘The Powell Collection of Music Manuscripts’, CMc, no.52 (1993), 64–72

J. Davies: Broadcasting and the BBC in Wales (Cardiff, 1994)

D.I. Allsobrook and B.B. James: First in the World: the Story of the National Youth Orchestra of Wales (Cardiff, 1995)

D.R.A. Evans: ‘Recent Discoveries at Aberystwyth: Welsh Music Manuscripts in the Music Department Archive’, CMc, no.59 (1995), 101–15

J. Harper and W. Thomas, eds.: Welsh Music History/Hanes Cerddoriaeth Cymru (1996–)

S. Webb: The Music of Wales (Pen-y-Groes, 1996)

D. Galliver: Church Music in South Wales, 1870–1950 (Adelaide, 1997)

G. Williams: Valleys of Song: Music and Welsh Society, 1840–1914 (Cardiff, 1998)

Wales

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