(b Bryn Cynan, c1710; d Ruabon, 7 Oct 1782). Welsh harper. He was blind, and was taught to play the Welsh triple harp by a relative, Robert Parry of Llanllyfni, and by Stephan Shon Jones of Penrhyndeudraeth. With perseverance and (according to the report of another blind harper, Richard Roberts of Caernarvon, 1796–1855) ‘earnest prayer for the gift of playing the harp’, Parry became the most distinguished harper of his generation in Great Britain. From 1734 he was harper to the first Sir Watkin Williams Wynn of Wynnstay, Ruabon, and continued from 1749 to his death in the service of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn II. This Welsh baronet was an active patron of the arts and he numbered Sir Joshua Reynolds, David Garrick and Handel among his friends. It was probably in playing for Sir Watkin’s circle in London that Parry so impressed Handel and also recommended himself to the attention of the Prince of Wales, who became his patron. A performance of Parry’s at Cambridge in 1757 proved to be a source of inspiration for Thomas Gray’s Pindaric Ode The Bard; Gray wrote to his friend William Mason:
Mr Parry has been here and scratched out such ravishing blind harmony, such tunes of a thousand years old, with names enough to choke you, as have set all this learned body a dancing, and inspired them with due respect to my old bard, his countryman, whenever he shall appear. Mr Parry, you must know, has set my Ode in motion again, and has brought it at last to a conclusion.
Parry’s most important contribution lay in the fact that, in collaboration with Evan Williams, a Welsh organist and fellow harper in London, he published the first collection (supposedly entirely) of Welsh melodies. Of the 24 untitled tunes in Antient British Music at least half are indisputably Welsh: a few of Parry's florid arrangements, however, can be identified as tunes known in 16th-century England, such as The Frog Galliard (Aria II), Monsieur's Almain (Aria X) and Mall Sims (Aria XXIII). Mock Nightingale (Aria VI) is a variant of an early 18th-century country dance tune and Aria XV is derived from the 17th-century ballad Methinks the Poor Town. This kind of variety was typical of a professional Welsh harper's repertory passed on orally before the middle of the 18th century.
Parry's final volume, British Harmony, contains, among its traditional Welsh tunes, a May carol and a New Year quęte song, while the piece Erddigan tro'r Tant has some of the characteristics of the harp music of the Robert ap Huw period. As in his other collections no words are printed with the music. However, in 1745, shortly after the appearance of Antient British Music, Parry and Williams intended to bring out a volume of Welsh tunes with words. A specimen manuscript exists containing six tunes with Welsh words to be sung in canu penillion style, the earliest examples of this form of traditional Welsh singing.
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Antient British Music, or A Collection of Tunes, never before published, which are retained by the Cambro-Britons (more particularly in North Wales), hp/hpd/vn/fl, bc (London, 1742), collab. E. Williams |
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A Collection of Welsh, English & Scotch Airs with New Variations also 4 New Lessons, hp/hpd (London, 1761), also incl. 12 Airs, gui |
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Twelve Airs, gui/2 gui (London, c1765) |
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British Harmony, being a Collection of Antient Welsh Airs, the Traditional Remains of those originally sung by the Bards of Wales (Ruabon and London, 1781, 2/c1809 as Cambrian Harmony) |
Y Cerddor [The musician], xi/Sept (1889)
R. Griffith: Llyfr Cerdd Dannau [Book of music for the harp] (Caernarvon, 1913)
W.S. Gwynne Williams: Welsh National Music and Dance (London, 1932, 4/1971)
J.Ll. Williams: Y Tri Thelynor [The three harpists] (London, 1945)
R.D. Griffith: ‘Parry, John’, The Dictionary of Welsh Biography down to 1940, ed. J.E. Lloyd and R.T. Jenkins (London, 1959)
A. Rosser: Telyn a Thelynor [Harps and harpists] (Cardiff, 1981)
O. Ellis: The Story of the Harp in Wales (Cardiff, 1991)
S. McVeigh: Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn (Cambridge, 1993)
OWAIN EDWARDS/PHYLLIS KINNEY