(b Penmynydd, Anglesey, c1580; d Pen-y-Dentyr, Llandegfan, Anglesey, 1665). Welsh harper and poet. He was the copyist of the greater part of ‘Musica neu Beroriaeth’, GB-Lbl Add.14905 (pp.15–112, dated 1613 on p.69). The manuscript is the largest and earliest surviving collection of Welsh harp music, and is generally known as ‘the Robert ap Huw manuscript’.
He was brought up at Bodwigan, Llanddeusant, Anglesey, where his father had settled. He may be the ‘boye of llan ythyssante b[e]ing harper’ mentioned in a list of payments of 1594–5 (Lbl Add.14918, f.9v). He became an itinerant musician, and was among the last to pursue such a career in Wales. In the winter of 1599–1600 he toured the households of minor gentry in north-east Wales. In April 1600 he was arrested and imprisoned in Ruthin on charges of abducting a young lady and several instances of theft, including ‘writtinges’ (i.e. manuscripts) and a petticoat. He escaped in May but was tried in his absence.
By at least 1615 Robert had become pencerdd (bardic master of music). A poem by Huw Machno (Cywydd i ofyn telyn; GB-Ob) names him as a musician of King James I, and Robert's own will states that his harp bore the silver arms of the king. There is no known record of his employment at court, but unnamed Welsh musicians received payments from Prince Henry's privy purse (1608–9) and Queen Anne's household accounts (1615–16, 1618–19). In later life he was a gentleman farmer on Anglesey.
Robert had connections with the intellectual and literary circles of Wales, which were at that time engaged in the copying and preservation of the Welsh language and other cultural artefacts. The manuscript Lbl Add.14905 may be associated with this movement; it may even have arisen from a specific commission. Lewis Morris, the antiquarian who owned the manuscript from the late 1720s, appears to have added the title-page ‘Musica neu Beroriaeth’ and pages with supplementary comments and notes. The manuscript is a retrospective compilation of the work of named Welsh musicians and poets of the 14th and 15th centuries belonging to an oral tradition that had declined rapidly during the 16th century, in spite of attempts to revive the eisteddfodau. An 18th-century hand (perhaps Lewis Morris) attributes a portion of the repertory (pp.23–34) to the 16th-century harper Wiliam Penllyn, who gained admission as pencerdd athro (master and teacher of music) at the eisteddfod in Caerwys in 1567.
The notation employed by Robert (for further discussion, see Wales, §II, 1; for illustration, see Notation, fig.121) has three elements: a letter-based tablature naming each string with additional signs to indicate fingering and the precise way in which the strings are to be plucked and stopped (a number of special techniques are indicated), especially in executing the musical figuration; a number sequence to indicate the two basic harmonic elements which form the ‘24 measures’ (24 set harmonic patterns listed on p.107 of the manuscript, which form a structural foundation for virtually every type of composition in this repertory); and tunings. There are annotations in Welsh, a graphic explication of the tablature (‘principles for learning the pricking’), and separate tables of figuration and tunings. Many modern transcriptions have been highly speculative on account of uncertainties relating to each of these elements. However, Taylor (in Welsh Music History, 1999) has clarified the interpretation of the tablature and Evans (op. cit.) has made progress towards the reconstruction of the Welsh tuning and scale schemes. There are five ‘standard and guaranteed’ tunings: is gywair (‘lower tuning’, a diatonic scale with no accidentals), cras gywair (‘hoarse tuning’, pentatonic: C, D, E, G, A), lleddf gywair y gwyddil (‘Irishman's re-tuning’, pentatonic: C, D, E, G, B), go gywair (‘sharp tuning’, diatonic scale with the E flattened), and bragod gywair (‘mingled tuning’, diatonic with E and B flattened); and a sixth, common tuning, tro tant (‘turn string’, diatonic with B flattened). Robert's table indicates that cras gywair and lleddf gywair are pentatonic, but reconstruction of the other scales is dependent on evidence found in other sources. The tablature requires a harp with 25 strings (c-g''' or C-g'', the bass octave having no e string), intended for harp with horse hair strings, and brays, played with medieval fingernail technique. The form of tablature used by Robert ap Huw is also found in Lbl Add.14970, a copy of an earlier source made by Iolo Morganwg in about 1800. Comparable figuration, reduced to ornaments or ‘graces’, is recorded in Edward Bunting's Ancient Music of Ireland (1840), perhaps gathered at the Belfast harp festival of 1792.
The Robert ap Huw manuscript may contain the earliest extant European harp music (allowing for the updating that is inherent to the process of oral transmission). It consists principally of three types of piece: four gostegion (preludes), 15 caniadau (textless song settings; some of the most extended works), and eight profiadau (technical tests). There are also four shorter pieces, and four sets of clymau cytgerdd (‘knots of harmony’): exercises based on harmonic patterns which make use of all or some of the 24 measures. Attempts to link the caniadau with recitations of surviving Welsh poems have yet to prove successful in performance. Suggestions that the compositions contain references to melodies popular in 16th-century Europe cannot be substantiated. The music is sectional, repetitive, and often based on short melodic patterns set over a chord sequence dictated by the 24 measures. Stylistically and aesthetically the repertory is quite distinct from contemporary harp, lute and keyboard music; much of its character depends upon the understanding and interpretation of the system of harp tuning.
BurneyH, ii, 110–14
Musica neu Beroriaeth (MS, GB-Lbl Add.14905); ed. H. Lewis (Cardiff, 1936) ed. W. Thomas (Godstone, 1987)
E. Jones: Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards (London, 1784, enlarged 4/1825)
J. Thomas: ‘The Musical Notation of the Ancient Britons’, The Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, ed. O. Jones, E. Williams and W.O. Pughe (Denbigh, 2/1870), 1207–47
A. Dolmetsch: Translations from the Penllyn Manuscript of Ancient Harp Music (Llangefni, 1937) [transcr. from GB-Lbl Add.14905]
P. Crossley-Holland: ‘Secular Homophonic Music in Wales in the Middle Ages’, ML, xxiii (1942), 135–62
T. Dart: ‘Robert ap Huw's Manuscript of Welsh Harp Music (c1613)’, GSJ, xxi (1968), 52–65
J. Travis: Miscellanea musica Celtica (Brooklyn, NY, 1968)
D. Wyn Wiliam: Robert ap Huw, 1580–1665 (Denbigh, 1975) [incl. catalogue of poetry from GB-AB, Cdp, Lbl]
P.D. Whittaker: ‘A New Look at the Penllyn Manuscript’, Welsh Music, iv/6 (1975), 46–56
P. Greenhill: ‘An Interpretation of the Harp Tunings of the ap Huw Manuscript’, Welsh Music, v/3 (1976), 37–42
O. Ellis: The Story of the Harp in Wales (Cardiff, 1980, 2/1991)
P. Morgan: The Eighteenth-Century Renaissance (Llandybïe, 1981)
C. Polin: The ap Huw Manuscript (Henryille, PA, 1982)
C. Polin: ‘A Possible Provenance for Parts of the ap Huw Manuscript’, Welsh Music, vii/8 (1985), 7–23
P. Crossley-Holland: The Composers in the Robert ap Huw Manuscript: the Evidence for Identity, Dating and Locality (Bangor, 1998)
Welsh Music History/Hanes Cerddoriaeth Cymru, iii (1999) [Robert ap Huw issue, ed. S. Harper; incl. N.W. Powell: ‘Robert ap Huw: a Wanton Minstrel of Anglesey, 5–29; W. Taylor: ‘Robert ap Huw's Harp Technique, 82–90; P. Toivanen: ‘The Robert ap Huw Manuscript and the Dilema of Transcription’, 97–113; S. Harper: ‘The Robert ap Huw Manuscript and the Canon of 16th Century Harp Music’, 130–61; and R. Evans: ‘Robert ap Huw's Harp Tunings: some Possible Solutions’, 336–7]
Robert ap Huw Congress homepage http://www.tns.lcs.mit.edu/harp/events/aphuw/ap_toc.html
Two Worlds of the Welsh Harp, Dorian Recordings DOR–90260 (1999)
JOHN HARPER