A principality in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Wales was a separate country from 613 to 1282, when it came under English rule. It is largely a highland area with a traditionally pastoral economy, although in parts of lowland south Wales agriculture is also important, and investment from outside Wales brought new industries to the principality in the late 20th century. The population includes descendants of various pre-Celtic, Celtic and other stocks, and about a quarter are Welsh-speaking. As a result, the Welsh are actively conscious of their Celtic heritage, and this is reflected in their music and in the late survival of archaic forms and instruments. Despite a long history of traditional music, it was not until the 19th century, when the development of coalfields in north-east and south Wales created dense urban centres, that art music, outside the church, began to develop.
GERAINT LEWIS (I), LYN DAVIES (I, bibliography), P. KINNEY (II)
After the long and slow alignment of the Celtic Church with Rome, the Latin period was fully established by Norman times (11th century) and it continued until the Reformation. Archbishop Peckham (Injunctions, 1284) charged the clergy to observe the canonical house as before and to celebrate Mass with fitting reverence cum cantu. At St David’s, Wales’s foremost cathedral, Bishop Adam Houghton ordered (c1382) that the master and seven priests ‘live together in a collegiate manner and perform the Divine Office according to the Salisbury Missal’. Song scholars and church music flourished until the Reformation, but on coming to the English throne the Tudors, though of Welsh descent, opposed the continuation of a separate Welsh culture and language (in the Act of Unification in 1536). Welsh musicians followed the Welsh nobility to England to live and speak in the English way, and this inevitably weakened the partnership between music and the Welsh language. The names of Welsh minstrels at the English court appear in account books of the late 15th and 16th centuries and Welsh names occur among the Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal, singing men and children. Elway Bevin was a Gentleman Extraordinary of the Chapel Royal in 1605. Composers with Welsh names contributed to the polyphonic tradition in England: they included Sion Gwynedd (fl mid-16th century) and Philio ap Rhys (fl 16th century) ‘off saynt poulls in london’, who composed an organ mass. Thomas Tomkins (1572–1656), though of Cornish parentage, was born at St David’s.
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.
Musical life in Wales flourished during the Victorian era, though mainly at an amateur level. The industrial communities of south Wales in particular supported the formation of large mixed-voice choirs partly fuelled by religious revivalism. The acknowledged pioneer in the field was Ieuan Ddu, who established a fine choir in Merthyr Tydfil about 1840. Choirs were also driven by a competitive spirit which found an outlet in much-prized visits to London's Crystal Palace and in the annual meetings of the National Eisteddfod. The latter fostered competitions in all fields, including composition, and a number of Welsh composers became proficient and quite ambitious. With oratorios of Handel, Haydn and Mendelssohn established as staple fare, ‘Tanymarian’ wrote the first Welsh oratorio, Ystorom Tiberias (‘The Storm at Tiberia’), in 1868 and Joseph Parry the first Welsh opera, Blodwen, in 1874. Solo singing, both public and domestic, encouraged a huge output of songs, many of which (particularly some by Parry and R.S. Hughes) have remained popular.
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.
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.
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)
3. Notated sources of the 18th century.
No manuscripts of Welsh secular music exist prior to the early 17th century. Although music was an important part of Welsh life, the secular tradition was an oral one. Music of the court was sophisticated, complex, bound by strict rules and passed on orally from teacher to pupil. The songs and dances of rural harpers, ploughmen or maidservants were not noted down before the 18th century, and knowledge of music from the period before 1600 depends mainly on literary references, passages from the Welsh Laws and comparison with other Celtic societies, especially Ireland.
An early reference to music in Wales describes praise-singing in Welsh courts. In De excidio et conquestu Britanniae (mid-6th century) the monk Gildas chastised the ruler of north-west Wales for disregarding God's praises, sung with sweet rhythm in tuneful church melody, and listening instead to court bards yelling forth his own praises like bacchanalian revellers. This, the earliest reference to bards in Wales (see Bard, §2), gives a picture of contrasting singing styles: the ecclesiastical, pleasing and harmonious; the bardic, strongly declamatory. About half a century later, in a famous couplet, the churchman Venantius Fortunatus noted that the instrument used by the Britons to sing God's praises was the crotta, the vernacular name for the type of lyre which later developed into the bowed Crwth.
The earliest substantial knowledge of the position of music in Wales comes from the sections dealing with bards in the Welsh Laws which tradition says were formulated in the 10th century although the earliest copies date from the 12th and 13th centuries. Music and poetry were closely connected in Wales; in Welsh terminology a cerdd can be either poem or song and caniad refers to either poetry or music. The pencerdd (chief bard) was an important court official and usually had a datgeiniad (declaimer) to declaim his songs. Lesser bards might declaim their songs to their own harp accompaniment. The Laws mention three instruments in the court, harp, crwth and pipes. The high status of the harp is indicated by the fact that the king presented the pencerdd with a harp on his appointment.
Music and poetry as described in the Laws were essentially aristocratic. It is the Norman-Welsh ecclesiastic Giraldus Cambrensis who gives the first significant account in the 12th century of the music of other classes of society, describing a saint's day festival with men and women sometimes dancing and sometimes singing unpolished peasant songs, Itinerarium Cambriae (Dimock, 1868). In this connection Giraldus mentions oxen songs, a type which continued in use in Glamorganshire until the end of the last century. He also corroborates references in the Laws that state that the Welsh play three instruments and confirms the predominance of the harp. When he writes of musical instruments in Wales, he repeats what he had written about Irish instrumental performers in The Topography of Ireland, showing how close the two cultures were. Here Giraldus is not discussing the songs of ordinary people but professional instrumentalists performing elaborate music for an aristocratic audience. He seems to be describing music that differs from the general trend of European music of that period, but the words are open to more than one interpretation.
In a later chapter Giraldus describes Welsh singing:
They do not sing in unison like other nations, but in many voices and in many rhythms and intervals. In a company of singers, as is usual with this nation, there are as many tunes and varieties of voice as there are heads, all uniting finally in harmonious concord with the smooth sweetness of B flat, in one integrated melody. (Descriptio Cambriae, I, Dimock, 1868, 189–90).
This description has caused considerable dissension. As an educated 12th-century ecclesiastic who had travelled abroad, Giraldus would have been familiar with the church music and polyphony of his day. It is possible that what he heard was heterophony, which is still performed by the Gaelic hymn-singers of the Hebrides. There is some evidence that Welsh congregations used to sing in the same way. The 19th-century hymn writer John Roberts (Ieuan Gwyllt) (1822–77), chastised singers for singing something they had made up themselves instead of being true to the melody, some rushing ahead, some lingering on the notes, some overloading each note with three, four or even half a dozen grace-notes (Roberts, 1863). This 19th-century description may be a distant echo of what Giraldus heard in the 12th century, although it can also be argued that he was describing the rondellus.
Lack of evidence makes it difficult to know what kind of music was used in the Celtic church before the Normans took control, but two Welsh church music manuscripts exist from a later period: a Bangor Pontifical and the 14th-century Penpont Antiphonal (Edwards, 1990) which includes matins, lauds and vespers for St David's Day and is the earliest existing manuscript of music-making in Wales by Welshmen. Poetry of the period is rich with terms relating to church music.
Political and economic developments helped to end the hierarchical bardic system which was already in decline by the 16th century. The accession of a Welsh dynasty to the English throne in the late 15th century saw many bardic patrons leaving Wales in hope of preferment in England, and the increasing anglicization of these patrons doomed the bardic order. Efforts were made to preserve their art through writing down what had previously been passed on orally. The earliest surviving collection of secular music in Wales is the ‘Musica neu Beroriaeth’ (GB-Lbl Add.14905), a manuscript compiled by the poet and professional harpist, Robert ap Huw (c1580–c1665). This source may represent the work of poets and musicians from the 13th to the 16th centuries; the compositions, which are for a horsehair- or gut-strung harp played with the fingernail, are probably the oldest surviving European harp music. The works have a range of 24 notes (‘measures’) and utilize five basic tuning patterns; the notation itself is a form of tablature, based upon letters of the alphabet. The decipherment of the Robert ap Huw manuscript was long the cause of debate and conjecture; only recently has scholarship clarified the likely meaning of the source (see in particular Taylor, 1998). For a more detailed discussion of the source and its significance see Robert ap Huw.
There are numerous references to the learned music of the bardic order but very few to traditional music before the 17th century. Apart from Giraldus's mention of oxen songs, there is a 16th-century poem that alludes to singing verses with the harp in a tavern and a description of entertainment at a 16th-century saint's day festival where professional bards declaimed their poetry and young women sang popular songs. Verses to be sung to ballad tunes such as Adew my pretie pusie and About the bank of Helicon were noted in 16th-century manuscripts. By the 17th century there was considerable change in Welsh music. Foreign tunes brought in by drovers, students or seasonal workers contended with traditional culture: the verses of one Welsh ballad intermingle titles of popular English tunes such as Greensleeves and Queen Dido with Welsh terms from the bardic tradition. As tunes with a distinct rhythm and regular metre became more popular, improvisation tended to die out and much poetry was now written to specific airs, some of them foreign. This is borne out by tune-names in Welsh books and manuscripts where Welsh poetry is written to be sung on such tunes as Crimson Velvet or Spanish Pavan.
In spite of the decline of the bardic order, poetry continued to be predominant among the Welsh, and many acknowledged poets produced verse for folk celebrations such as Christmas and May Day. A pre-Reformation Christmas service was gradually adapted into a Protestant carol service called the plygain, the chief purpose of the carols being to propagate basic Christian beliefs. They were serious and doctrinal in nature and tended to be longwinded, some depicting man's history from Creation to Armageddon, others outlining the life and acts of Christ. There were very few stories from the New Testament Apocrypha, no lullaby carols and no Nativity, Annunciation or Epiphany carols corresponding to English folk carols of the period. The poetry was complex, retaining some of the features of bardic poetry such as consonance, alliteration and internal rhyme but using regularly accented metres. Some of the most popular plygain tunes were native Welsh ones, such as Ffarwel Ned Puw, but others were written to be sung to popular English ballad tunes, e.g. See the Building or Let Mary Live Long.
Traditions in south Wales were different; the poetry was less complex and the words could be read or sung. Cwndidau (from the Latin conductus) in 15th- and 16th-century Gwent and Morgannwg were moral or religious songs in traditional metres, and the homely carols of Vicar Prichard (?1579–1644) in the 17th century delighted generations of the faithful; some of the carols have come down in oral tradition to the 20th century. Another type of traditional religious song was the halsing of south-west Wales. It was often performed at home or at religious festivals, but when sung in church the custom was for eight or ten people to divide into two groups and chant the carol alternately, finishing together with a chorus. The 18th-century antiquarian Edward Williams (Iolo Morganwg) (1747–1826) described the north Wales carol as ‘adapted to a particular or set Tune … in a very artificial and complex kind of stanza’ and the south Wales style as ‘a loose recitative kind of verse sung with a Cathedral-like Chant’.
Christmas carols were also sung from door to door, as were May carols, which were simpler and more joyous in nature though still moral in tone. There is evidence that these were accompanied: a Christmas carol in 1736 was to be sung by two men and two boys with harp and fiddle, and some music manuscripts of May carols include phrases for the harp. The most interesting is a carol noted by the 18th-century antiquarian William Jones of Llangadfan (1726–95), who set down the music with the directions ‘So’ (solo voice) and ‘Sy’ (symphony/instrument) above the notes, indicating that the singer enters at certain points while at others the instrument plays alone (GB-AB 171E). There are at least three versions extant of the tune played by the harp but none of these indicates the vocal part which may well have been improvised. However in a 19th-century manuscript (GB-AB 1940) there is an unaccompanied May carol which fits the harmony of the instrumental tune and may have been sung with it (ex.1).
The custom of going from house to house at holiday seasons was not confined to religious carols. Some calendar customs may be related to pre-Christian rituals at the winter solstice. In south Wales the Mari Lwyd (‘Grey Mare’) party processed from door to door during the Christmas season (fig.1). The Mari Lwyd was a horse's skull with a pole inserted into it and draped in a white sheet decorated with coloured ribbons. The pole that moved the horse's jaws was carried by one of the party hidden under the sheet. He was escorted by a leader and other members of the party, all male, sometimes including, a fiddler or a harper. This custom differs from other pre-Christian horse ceremonies in the poetic competition that took place before the singers were allowed in the house. The Mari Lwyd party would sing extempore verses outside the house but could not enter as long as the party inside could match them. Once inside, wassailing took place. More than one Mari Lwyd tune exists but that found most often is an angular tune with a pentatonic basis and much repetition (ex.2).
Gwyl Fair y Canhwyllau or Candlemas (held on 2 February) was another occasion when a party of male singers gathered outside a house and a ritual poetic contest followed. After the singers gained the right to enter, the wassail bowl was passed in order to pledge the health of the Virgin Mary and Child, represented during the ritual by a young girl seated in the centre of the room. This was followed by entertainment with riddles and feat songs, which included singing tongue-twisting words, remembering the greatest number of verses or performing cumulative songs. The ritual appears to have died out after the 18th century but some feat songs have remained popular, such as Cyfri'r geifi (‘Counting the Goats’).
Other Welsh calendar customs involving singing were New Year and Shrove Tuesday quête songs and Hunting the Wren, part of Twelfth Night activities. After a wren was caught it was taken in procession by the young men of the neighbourhood. Two kinds of song were connected with the ceremony: one in question-and-answer form setting out the pattern of the hunt, the other describing the wren's capture.
During the 17th century, publishers catered for an increasingly literate public. Although moral or religious themes pervaded most Welsh books of this period, lighter ballads and verses in almanacs were written to be sung on popular tunes of the day. But no Welsh music was published until the early 18th century when Aria di Camera (c1730) ‘a choice collection of Scotch, Irish and Welsh airs’ printed five Welsh tunes without words, all dance tunes. In 1742 the most famous Welsh harper of the day, blind John Parry (?1710–82), and his amanuensis, fellow harper Evan Williams (b 1706–), brought out Antient British Music, which claimed to be ‘tunes never before published’ and ‘supposed … to be the remains of the music of the Antient Druids’. Neither claim was correct: three of the tunes had appeared previously in Aria di Camera and the connection with the druids has long since been discounted. The volume contains 24 untitled airs, about half of which appear to be Welsh, while some are derived from 16th-century dance tunes formerly popular in England but retained in the repertory of Welsh musicians and passed on orally. The arrangements have Baroque features and represent a cultivated urban style designed to appeal to wealthy patrons. Though the melodies were instrumental in style and no words were included in the printed collection, manuscript references indicate that poetry could be sung to at least two-thirds of them.
A recent discovery throws some light on this singing. It was known that Parry and Williams had intended to bring out a second volume ‘which will show the Nature of singing with the Harp, Violin, etc., at this time by the Welsh at their Musical Meetings’. A specimen copy was prepared in 1745 but nothing came of the plan (GB-Lbl Add.14927, f.130). When the manuscript was rediscovered more than two centuries later at the Royal College of Music in London bound in with a copy of Antient British Music, it was found to contain six songs in which symphonies for the harp alternate with the voice, occasionally in a regular pattern but more often irregular. In spite of musical arrangements that owe more to art song than traditional music, this manuscript is invaluable in showing for the first time how voice and instrument are fitted together, a craft known in Wales as canu penillion (singing verses) or canu gyda'r tannau (singing with the strings) (fig.2).
Other manuscripts containing Welsh traditional music begin to appear in the second half of the 18th century. One of the most important is the tunebook of John Thomas (GB-AB J. Lloyd Williams MS 39), a professional fiddler whose manuscript dated 1752 contains about 470 tunes, some copied from printed sources as diverse as Antient British Music and country dance collections. From Thomas's repertory, it is possible to deduce where he performed and who were his audience. He undoubtedly played for dances attended by the gentry; the manuscript contains numerous minuets, hornpipes and rigadoons as well as country dances. It would have been the gentry, too, who called for Lully's Minuet, selections from Handel operas, parlour songs and theatre pieces. Other tunes in his collection, often noted without key signatures, accidentals or barlines, came from oral tradition. His manuscript is valuable for the earliest notation of many tunes popular in 18th-century Wales which were used interchangeably for ballads, plygain carols and the music of the anterliwt. This was a rustic drama with dialogue, songs and dances, usually accompanied by the fiddle. It included phallic dances for the Fool, and it is probable that Thomas played the fiddle in this entertainment since a tune to one of the phallic dances is to be found in his manuscript along with almost 50 tunes used in the anterliwtiau of the period (ex.3).
A different light is shed on traditional Welsh music by a fiddle manuscript dated 1778 (Archive of the University of Wales, Bangor, 2294). Morris Edwards was also a professional fiddler but although he and Thomas played some of the same repertory, the differences between the manuscripts are great. Edwards's collection is much smaller, about 150 tunes, but more carefully written with time and key signatures and bar lines. Like Thomas he includes pieces copied from printed books but most come from Welsh publications rather than country dance books. This collection gives the impression of being more conservative than Thomas's and more traditionally Welsh; several tunes carry suggestions of earlier music. In 1761 John Parry (of Ruabon) brought out A Collection of Welsh, English and Scotch Airs containing 21 harmonized airs with elaborate variations for harp and 12 unharmonized airs for guitar. Only a dozen of these were Welsh and five had been published previously. Parry's most important contribution to traditional music came out in 1781, the year before his death. He makes no attempt to connect this publication with the druids or with antiquity, calling it simply British Harmony. The collection contains 42 airs, many with variations and all without words. The arrangements are simpler, the traditional element includes a tune associated with May carolling and another connected with New Year quête singing, and there are fewer purely instrumental tunes.
The influence of the 18th-century antiquarian movement was strong on edward Jones (ii) (1752–1824), the most important collector and editor of traditional Welsh music, a harper and the first to print tunes with Welsh words, including the earliest appearance of Ar hyd y nos (‘All through the Night’) and Nos Galan (‘Deck the Halls’). Jones's interest in druidism and the urge to connect tune names with ancient legends make his antiquarian notes to the tunes almost worthless, but there is much of interest in the introductions to Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards (1794) and The Bardic Museum (1802). Although many pieces are no earlier than the 18th century, some have an older pedigree; these include an interpretation of the tablature of Caingc Dafydd Brophwyd in the Robert ap Huw manuscript as well as other tunes mentioned in 16th-century music treatises. By the early 19th century, Jones's collections had become a quarry for publishers and editors.
Side by side with secular music for the harp there developed a strong tradition in religious song. Two examples have come down in oral tradition from the period when Wales was Roman Catholic: a Christmas carol with a pentachordal melody in plainchant style and a prayer for the release of a soul in purgatory (ex.4). With the rise of Protestantism, Welsh church goers sang metrical psalms as well as halsingod and plygain carols, but the remoteness and relative poverty of Welsh churches meant that there were very few choirs. The greatest outpouring of religious music in Wales came in the 18th century with the evangelical hymn. During the period 1816–59 over 50 hymnbooks had been published with tunes taken from Welsh folksongs, English hymns and secular tunes, adaptations of classical pieces, or compositions by local musicians, many of whom had learnt the basic principles of music from the introductions to some of these books. Their harmonies were often crude and monotonous, melodies full of slurs, melismas and repetitions, and music badly barred, causing misaccentuation. By mid-century John Roberts, a Presbyterian minister strongly influenced by his admiration for the German chorale, had revised this collection of hymns, omitting some, correcting others and establishing a corpus of Welsh hymns that has remained the backbone of the tradition. His endeavour was aided by the development of Tonic Sol-fa which made music-reading easy and inexpensive for Welsh congregations, and the Cymanfa Ganu (hymn-singing festival) which taught them to sing with discipline.
Other music for voice included carols and ballads. Their words were published in almanacs which appeared at irregular intervals for over 150 years from the mid-17th century, as well as in books and ballad sheets until the end of the 19th. Much of this poetry was moralistic in tone and no music was printed, although tune names were given.
Revival of the Eisteddfod, a competitive meeting of bards and musicians which had fallen into decay after 1567, was instigated by publishers of almanacs, who advertised eisteddfod sessions in their publications. These were small affairs where poets and musicians met in taverns and competed for ale but they led to the revival of the eisteddfod as a cultural institution. By the end of the 18th century, the eisteddfod was patronized by a society of London Welshmen who set standards with regard to poetry and music. Welsh gentry and literary clerics began to take an interest, hoping to inspire their compatriots to catalogue ancient Welsh manuscripts and collect traditional tunes. The earliest collector of this kind of tune in Wales and one of the earliest in Europe was Edward Williams (Iolo Morganwg) whose collection, frequently noted on the backs of envelopes or scribbled on bits of paper, is still largely unpublished. He noted Welsh dances, songs with words and at least half a dozen tunes to which the ancient Welsh metre cywydd deuair fyrion were sung. In an eisteddfod held in 1837 the prize for a collection of native Welsh folksongs was awarded to a young south Wales gentlewoman, Maria Jane Williams (1795–1873), and in 1844 her collection of 43 songs with Welsh words and accompaniment for harp or pianoforte was published. Although there are clear indications that she edited both words and music of Ancient National Airs of Gwent and Morganwg (Williams, 1844), the volume is valuable as the first publication in Wales to print the songs of the people, including wassail songs, feat songs, ballads, dance tunes, a May carol, a nursery song, a dialogue song and an archaic dream/vision ballad. The wide compass and highly ornamented melodies include several modal tunes in sharp contrast to the harp tunes of north Wales. The following year John Thomas (1795–1871), the second-prize winner in the same eisteddfod, published The Cambrian Minstrel, a book of 148 unaccompanied tunes including folk airs noted from south Wales singers, popular ballads, harp tunes and many of his own compositions. The value of this interesting collection is impaired by numerous printing errors, by his inability to deal with modal tunes and by his discarding the original words in favour of his own verses.
Among the literary clerics who promoted traditional Welsh culture in the eisteddfod was the vicar of Kerry, John Jenkins (Ifor Ceri) (1770–1829). During the period 1815–25, and probably earlier, he collected 212 tunes from Welsh oral tradition (GB-AB 1940; J. Lloyd Williams 36). Unlike the 18th-century collectors, Jenkins looked for airs connected with words and meant to be sung. He noted tunes familiar to him, collected others from musical friends and preferred to obtain them from singers rather than instrumentalists, sometimes naming the informant or place beside the title of the song. Jenkins was from south Wales but his parish was in mid-Wales and there are abundant examples from both parts of the country. His three manuscript volumes form the most important systematic collection of Welsh traditional music made before the 20th century, but any analysis of musical styles based on it must take account of the fact that there are no modal tunes in his collection: all are major or minor and it is probable that Jenkins, who played the cello and had had musical training, ‘corrected’ some modal tunes by setting them down in the minor.
The eisteddfod continued to grow in importance and concerts began to be held in the evenings to attract anglicized members of the audience. During the day, in addition to poetic contention, there were competitions in harp playing and in canu gyda'r tannau. A drawing of such a competition in 1824 shows a group of men gathered around a single harp with an audience in the background. Adjudicator and harper chose a tune and the contestants drew straws to determine the order of competition. The contest began after the harper had played the air once through. The first singer could choose any metre he wished; he could not begin with the harp but had to strike into the tune with an improvised descant at least a bar after it had started, being careful to choose a metre that would allow him to finish exactly with the harp. The remaining contestants had to follow the same metre but without repeating the same verses. At the end of the round, those who had made mistakes were eliminated and the next round began with a different air on the harp as well as a change in the order of performance. The competition continued until all but one had been eliminated; in the 1824 eisteddfod it took the best part of a day.
By the 19th century, the finest performers had discarded the single harp in favour of the triple harp introduced into Britain from Italy in the 17th century. This became so popular in Wales that it was known as the Welsh harp. The single harp, usually used for dancing, had about 30 strings and stood about four feet high; transposition was effected by the dextrous use of the fingers. The triple harp, with a compass of about five octaves, had about 95 strings in three rows (the outer diatonic strings being tuned in unison and the middle row providing the chromatic tones) and was used to display technical brilliance in harp competitions.
Harpers had special significance as tradition bearers and as the 19th century progressed their status rose. It was probably the harp's importance in the eisteddfod tradition that saved it from the zeal of the Methodists. The religious revivals of the 18th and 19th centuries ‘put an end to all the merry meetings for dancing, singing with the harp, and every kind of sinful mirth’, according to one preacher. One man buried his harp after a religious experience and other harps were burnt. Dancing was hit even harder with the abandonment of the twmpath (dancing on the green) and maypole dancing. Old calendar customs fell into disuse. Preaching festivals took the place of patronal celebrations and wakes became prayer meetings. In south Wales, one vicar transformed an excessively violent annual football match between two villages into a religious festival, Canu'r pwnc (‘Singing the text’) (Jenkins, 1971). This custom has survived in churches and chapels in south-west Wales. The participants gather in the meeting-house and declaim passages from the Bible in a distinctive stylized chant; the tempo is regular and the delivery somewhat staccato with punctuation marked by a fermata on the first word of a phrase and a strong snap with a dip in pitch on commas or full stops. The chanting may be in unison or in parts, usually on the octave, the fifth or the fourth, but sometimes on the major second and there is at least one example of chanting on the augmented fourth.
The later 19th century saw increased publication of traditional airs; many were arrangements of published harp music with words in English or in Welsh commissioned from contemporary poets. Some collections were published without words. Most of the tunes in the first volume of John Parry's The Welsh Harper (1839) were taken from Edward Jones's collections, and airs from Jenkins's manuscript collections formed a large part of the second (1848). Parry edited the tunes ruthlessly, including words to only a few and almost all of those in English. Numerous manuscripts, including one which won the prize for the best collection of Welsh traditional tunes at the 1858 eisteddfod (GB-AB Add.331), provided the tunes for Bennett's two-volume collection Alawon fy Ngwlad (1896), again without words and with much editing of the airs.
Industrialization and the growth of cities and towns brought rapid and far-reaching changes. The popularity of Irish songs sung by immigrants, English parlour songs, music-hall tunes and American minstrel songs had a profound influence. There are almost two dozen Welsh versions of St Patrick's Day in the Morning used as a dance tune, blacksmith's song, immigrant ballad, macaronic love song, nursery rhyme and hymn. Home Sweet Home was often sung with carol words and The King of the Cannibal Islands was a favourite. Over half a century after minstrel parties toured Wales, a Cardiganshire schoolteacher noted a number of Welsh folksongs in his rural area; eight of the tunes were American including Wait for the Wagon, Oh Susannah, Ring the Bell, Watchman and The Ship that Never Returned.
As Wales began to acquire cultural institutions such as the University of Wales, a National Museum and a National Library, the conservation of the cultural heritage became increasingly important and in 1908 the Welsh Folk-Song Society was formally established. The editor and guiding genius was Dr J. Lloyd Williams (1854–1945), a botany lecturer and musician who encouraged his students to collect folksongs in their native areas. Lloyd Williams was indefatigable in the work of the young society, collecting a substantial number of songs himself, researching old manuscripts, promoting the use of folksongs in schools, giving lectures on their importance in the Welsh cultural tradition and editing the Journal of the Welsh Folk-Song Society from 1909 until his death. Most important of all, he established a scientific basis for the collection and analysis of Welsh songs, emphasizing the necessity of detailed information about performer, area and background, and demonstrating the division of tunes into families by comparative study.
The Welsh Folk-Song Society was followed in 1935 by Cymdeithas Cerdd Dant Cymru (The Cerdd Dant Society of Wales), established to revive the art of singing with the harp. The term cerdd dant (‘the craft of the string’) links it with the long history of the art in Wales. The impromptu oral tradition of singing to the harp was in serious decline by the early 20th century and, rather than see it die out, a society was formed to standardize rules and formalize competitions. In its new form, the art became a popular element of the eisteddfod and, as trained musicians took an interest it, became more sophisticated. The impromptu element has disappeared; vocal descant is written rather than improvised and small groups and choirs take part. There is a cerdd dant festival in a different part of Wales each year with hundreds of performers and large audiences.
The Welsh Folk Dance Society, established in 1949, had a much harder task. Traditional dancing in connection with ancient customs or for social purposes had been almost entirely wiped out by cultural changes and nonconformist disapproval. The only traditional dancers left were step- and clog-dancers, many of them Welsh gypsies, who contributed much to Welsh traditional music through their talented harpers and fiddlers. Traditional social dances have had to be reconstructed from manuscripts and from the memories of people who, when young, had seen them danced. The revival has been extremely successful and there are numerous folkdance parties throughout Wales as well as athletic young male dancers performing traditional steps. Because dance does not demand language fluency, it attracts large numbers of both Welsh and English speakers.
The eisteddfod was central to the development and social acceptance of these traditional activities. In addition to numerous local eisteddfods, there are two main festivals: the National Eisteddfod and the Welsh League of Youth Eisteddfod, concerned with both Welsh traditional and European classical culture. The National Eisteddfod stages the main ceremonies and competitions which include folksong, folkdance and cerdd dant as well as classical music and recitation. Other events are dedicated to literature, arts and crafts, popular music or public lectures. The language of the festival is Welsh. The Welsh League of Youth holds a similar, smaller eisteddfod.
Traditional activities are also flourishing outside the formality of the eisteddfod. Some Welsh pop groups specialize in traditional vocal and instrumental music, and some use traditional instruments such as harp and crwth in combination with bouzoukis, fiddles, mandolins, pipes or bodhrán. Their treatment of the music is lively and less reverential than the rather careful singing in the eisteddfod. Dancing is also thriving and the twmpath has been revived in modern form. The harp is blossoming, particularly after the formation of the Welsh Harp Society in 1961. Even the triple harp, which nearly disappeared with the inauguration of the pedal harp, is being revived and interest in early Welsh music and performing traditions has led to a revival of instrument making and research. Folkdance groups have revived the Mari Lwyd, though without the poetic contention formerly central to the ritual, and plygain carol services are increasing (fig.7). The Museum of Welsh Life (formerly the Welsh Folk Museum) at St Fagans, Cardiff, has contributed greatly to research in traditional Welsh music and has issued two volumes of songs transcribed from its tape archives as well as several records. In 1981 a department of ethnomusicology was established at the University of Wales, Bangor, to promote research into traditional music with particular attention to Wales. There has been less interest in the traditional music of non-Welsh-speaking areas.
The first systematic investigation of the tonal basis of Welsh folksong was made by Peter Crossley-Holland in a pioneering study of a controlled sample of 400 tunes taken from the first four volumes of the Journal of the Welsh Folk-Song Society (Crossley-Holland, 1968). The results indicated that diatonic scale patterns are the most common, frequently in seven-, six- or five-note scales. Most are in some form of major or minor scale; about 14% are in the D-Dorian mode but there are few examples of other modes and the pentatonic scale also seems to be uncharacteristic of Welsh folksong. The tonic is placed low more often than centrally, and tonic and final are almost always identical except for eight circular airs. None of these scales is exclusively Welsh and all have parallels in other European countries, but most appear to be nearer to English than to either Irish or Scottish modes.
The compass of these melodies ranges between 5 and 13 tones, with most in a medium compass of 8 or 9. Some wide-compass tunes have come from sources outside Wales. More than one 18th-century Welsh ballad or carol was written to be sung on English broadside ballad tunes such as See the Building or Let Mary Live Long and wide-compass Irish tunes were also popular. A surprising number of Welsh tunes are pentachords, a type rare in English folksong (Kinney, 1986). These pentachordal tunes occur in many diverse categories (ex.5); they are found in almost every part of Wales and printed in collections since 1794. Most are unornamented and many were sung to words in traditional Welsh poetic metres. Descants to canu gyda'r tannau in the mid-19th century (Jones, 1885) show some of the same characteristics of narrow compass and lack of ornamentation and it is possible that the folksong style may have been influenced by the tradition of declamation associated with Welsh poetry.
Declamation in the folk tradition is found in canu'r pwnc and in the hwyl (a heightened form of speech used by preachers in the 19th and early 20th centuries), and there are also traces of declamation in Welsh folksongs. About 30 songs open with the singer chanting on a single note, usually the fifth of the key (ex.6); in one song each of the first three phrases opens with chanting on the fifth and in another the first three phrases open with chanting on the tonic, the third and the fifth respectively.
Ornamentation of Welsh folksongs tends to be simple and consists largely of passing notes or slurs with almost no melismas. About 40% have no ornamentation; this includes not only the more archaic type of song such as calendar customs and cumulative songs but also ballads and love songs. By contrast only 18% are highly ornamented; this includes many older ballads and carols as well as tunes from the English or Irish tradition but none of the archaic tunes. There is some evidence that ornamentation was at one time more widespread and perhaps more prevalent in the south than in the north. The south Wales tunes published by M.J. Williams (1844) are notable for the high degree of ornamentation in the airs, though the graces, appoggiaturas, trills and melismas found there may be more closely related to art music of the period than to Welsh tradition (ex.7).
Conjunct melodic movement is frequently found in Welsh traditional music; the most popular cadence pattern is a three-note descent by step, ending on an accented syllable; next in popularity is a cadence pattern that finishes with a double tonic on an unaccented syllable. In Welsh, which is markedly polysyllabic, the strong accent usually falls on the penultimate syllable and this results in a large number of musical phrases that finish on an unaccented syllable. In traditional singing there is a tendency to ‘snap’ these unaccented syllables giving the effect of syncopation or of an appoggiatura.
The majority of Welsh folksongs are strophic, with four equal phrases; the most popular formal patterns are AABA and ABCD. Songs in the older categories tend to have irregular phrase lengths, as do the older ballad and carol tunes. The latter are frequently long with seven or more phrases and these are sometimes made more irregular by the style of the singers who extend anacruses and cadences. By contrast, songs performed with the harp tend to be regularized by the instrumental accompaniment.
Refrains are common in Welsh folksong between lines of verse and/or as a burden at the end of a verse or couplet. There is evidence that some instrumental symphonies later became sung refrains. The 18th-century tune Triban Morganwg appeared in manuscript with symphonies for the harp interpolated in the vocal line (GB-AB 171E). When a variant of the tune was later printed in Ancient National Airs of Gwent and Morganwg, the symphonies for the harp had become ‘fa la la’ refrains for the voice, and later variants replaced the ‘fa la la's with vocables (Kinney, 1984) (ex.8).
Songs associated with Welsh calendar customs are many and varied. In addition to the May and plygain carols discussed above, there were three peripatetic customs around the winter solstice which involved singing. Several different tunes have been noted in connection with the Mari Lwyd ceremony, one melodic type with a pentatonic basis contrasts with another type in which step-wise motion is prominent. All contain considerable repetition, which may be due in part to the improvisatory nature of the verses. Repetition is also a feature of the processional songs used in Hunting the Wren where each question and answer is repeated four times. Several of the processional tunes are extant, showing some diversity: one major key version is a variant of the tune called Dargason in Playford's English Dancing Master; another is a minor key pentachordal tune (ex.9). The third of these customs featured quête songs connected with the New Year and called calennig. The custom was for young men and children to sing at the doors of the neighbourhood, wishing the family a happy New Year and asking for calennig, which might be money or a gift of food. Songs connected with this custom also vary: some are in a dancing rhythm with four regular phrases, others are chanted with considerable repetition in a limited compass. Feat songs, which played a notable part in Gŵyl Fair festivities, included the singing of cumulative songs in which the feat was to sing the verses in correct order and in one breath as quickly as possible. In one case at least the singer danced at the same time, accelerating the dance with the increasing pace of the refrain.
Probably the largest category of Welsh folksongs comprises those connected with love, including praise of the loved one and sorrow over parting. There are numerous night-visit songs, happy, sad or humorous, and some of these courtship songs deal with an old Welsh custom known as caru yn y gwely (courting in bed), similar to bundling in the USA. When the songs were published early in this century, references to this custom were deleted. This also applied to erotic songs which were not published, apart from ballad sheets, until the 1970s. The imagery is usually that of mowing the grass or milling the grain, but there is one based on the collier's trade. All these song types are found in other parts of the British Isles but the device of sending a bird as love messenger seems to be popular only in Wales. This was called llatai in classical poetry but folk poets also used it. In folksong, the love messenger is usually a blackbird and some of the poetry is macaronic, mixing Welsh and English (ex.10).
Welsh broadside ballads follow love songs in popularity. Some ballads are narratives, although child ballads are rare in Wales and only two have been collected from oral tradition. Many of the rest have comic, moralistic and even doctrinal themes. In the 17th and 18th centuries, countless ballads were written in simple folk metres and sung to familiar folk melodies. At the same time, other more ambitious poets were writing ballads and carols in cynghanedd (a complex system of assonance, alliteration and internal rhyme) set to English tunes of the day such as Gerard's Mistress or Heart of Oak. In the 19th century, ballads continued to be produced in great volume, but taste had changed. Poetry in cynghanedd was discarded and simpler metres were sung to popular Welsh tunes or others from abroad such as The Girl I Left behind Me and Just before the Battle, Mother.
Many traditional Welsh songs deal with the natural world. This category includes songs about birds and animals, both wild and domesticated, with words that are sometimes humorous or satirical. Birds are sought out not only as love messengers but also as love counsellors, taking part in dialogues with humans. There are songs praising the holly tree as the finest tree in the wood, and others where flowers and herbs play a symbolic role. Perhaps those songs that display love of place are the most characteristically Welsh. Some praise a favourite spot, others enumerate the stops on a journey, and sailors' farewell songs list the places passed on the way out to sea.
These farewell songs are very different from sea shanties. There is only one Welsh-language shanty extant, used as a capstan or rope shanty, though others in English have recently been discovered in Barry, south Wales. In general, most Welsh songs of occupation are about the work of fishing, shepherding, milling or farming, rather than songs used to lighten the burden. There is one example of a Welsh folksong used in the smithy when striking the anvil, and in the 18th century Iolo Morganwg noted a milkmaid's song used to call the cattle, but the most important category is that of oxen songs, which were used in the Vale of Glamorgan until the end of the 19th century. The chore of ploughing was accomplished by two people, a man to guide the plough and another, usually a young lad, to walk backward facing the oxen, holding a goad and singing throughout the day ‘to keep the oxen in good heart’. The singer was expected to know literally hundreds of verses on any subject, satirical or serious. These quatrains were distinguished from other songs by the ‘call’ to the oxen at the end of each verse. At least 21 oxen song tunes are extant, the last being recovered in oral tradition as recently as 1978, and about half of these belong to one melodic family (Kinney and Evans, 1986) (ex.11).
Humour can be found in all the above categories as well as in songs of exaggeration and satire, and in some macaronic songs. Much of the satire is directed at lazy neighbours, clumsy lovers, miserly employers and wives, although there are also songs where women have revenge. There are only a few specifically women's songs, and none among the peripatetic calendar customs which were male rituals. Some songs give the woman's view of courtship and marriage, including arranged marriages and mother-in-law troubles. A very few, mostly still unpublished, deal with the problems of pregnancy outside marriage.
Early references to the telyn (harp) are to be found in medieval manuscripts but its origins are obscure and no native instrument has survived from before about 1700. The small 30-string medieval/Renaissance harp was succeeded by increasingly larger single-string harps (see §5 above) which in turn gave way to the 95-string triple harp. By the end of the 19th century, the triple harp had been displaced by the pedal harp, which still survives and flourishes as a popular instrument in Wales, although there is a revival of interest in the triple harp (see Harp, §V, 5(i)).
The lyre which accompanied early Celtic bards (see Rotte (ii)) gradually developed into the rectangular crwth (crowd) in Wales. Early forms had three strings, later enlarged to six, with a flat bridge that enabled the performer to play chords (fig.9). In time, a bow was adopted and drone strings added to be plucked with the left hand while the right used the bow. Its status was officially acknowledged in medieval courts but its popularity declined and by the 18th century the crwth was discarded in favour of the fiddle, which for a time also acquired its name in Wales though not its status. Fiddlers played an indispensable part in wakes and weddings, dances and fairs; Welsh gypsy fiddlers kept the tradition alive into the 20th century.
The pibau (pipes), though mentioned with telyn and crwth in medieval treatises, did not have the same status because they did not accompany bardic declamation. The Pibgorn (horn pipe) had a single reed, cowhorn bells and wood or bone barrels pierced by seven finger-holes. Like the crwth, its use had declined by the 18th century. A related instrument used in south Wales was the cornicyll (pipe) with a concealed reed and a mouthpiece that screwed on and off. Unlike the pibgorn, the pibau cod (bagpipe) continued in popularity into the 19th century, playing an important part in country ‘horseback weddings’. A 17th-century manuscript shows two sets of bagpipes: one a single-chanter and the other a double-chanter bagpipe (GB-Lbl Add.15036, f.66r).
An engraving illustrating instruments considered to be traditionally Welsh includes a large single-string harp, a six-string crwth with two drone strings and a bow, a three-string crwth, a pibgorn, a semicircular bugle horn called corn buelin, and a tabwrdd (tabor) (Jones, 1794).
Among instruments popular in the tavern or in the stable-loft where farmhands were housed were the biwbaw or sturmant (jew's harp), made of wood or metal, held between the teeth and struck with the finger, as well as the mouth-organ which superseded it and the concertina.
J.D. Rhys: Cambrobrytannicae Cymraecaeve linguae institutiones et rudimenta (London, 1592)
J.F. Dimock, ed.: ‘Itinerarium Cambriae: liber I’, ‘Descriptio Cambriae: liber I’, Giraldi Cambrensis opera, vi (London, 1868/R), 32–3, 183–90
J. Lloyd Williams: ‘Welsh National Melodies and Folksong’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1907–8), 1–46
L. Blake: Welsh Folk Dance (Llangollen, 1948, enlarged 2/1954 as Welsh Folk Dance and Costume)
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T.M. Owen: Welsh Folk Customs (Cardiff, 1959, 4/1987)
P. Crossley-Holland: ‘The Tonal Limits of Welsh Folksong’, Journal of the Welsh Folk Song Society, v/2 (1968), 46–73
G. Thomas: The Caerwys Eisteddfodau (Cardiff, 1968)
D. Jenkins: The Agricultural Community in South-West Wales at the Turn of the Century (Cardiff, 1971), 197–207 [pwnc recitation]
O.T. Edwards: ‘Music in Wales’, Anatomy of Wales, ed. R. Brinley Jones (Cardiff, 1972), 208–26
C. Bullock Davies: ‘Welsh Minstrels at the Courts of Edward I and Edward II’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1972–3), 104–22
P. Kinney: ‘The Tunes of “Yr hen benillion”’, Canu gwerin, ii (1979), 30–45
M. Evans and P. Kinney: ‘Hanes a datblygiad canu gyda'r tannau’ [The history and development of singing with the strings], Gwŷr Wrth Gerdd [Music makers] (Ruthin, 1981), 72–91
D. Huws: ‘Dr. J. Lloyd Williams and Traditional Music’, Canu gwerin, vi (1983), 40–46
D.R. Saer: ‘The Welsh Folk Song Society 1908–1983’, ibid., 6–31
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S. Page: Antient British Music, 1742: the First Collection of Welsh Harp Airs, with a Background to the Collecting of Traditional and National Music in the 18th Century (diss., U. of London, Goldsmiths College, 1984)
D. Huws: ‘Melus-seiniau Cymru’ [The Melus-seiniau Cymru manuscript], Canu gwerin, viii (1985), 32–50; ‘Atodiadau’ [Appendices], ix (1986), 47–57
S. Burstyn: ‘Is Gerald of Wales a Credible Musical Witness?’, MQ, lxxii (1986), 155–69
P. Kinney: ‘Narrow-Compass Tunes in Welsh Folksong’, Canu gwerin, ix (1986), 12–29
H.T. Edwards: The Eisteddfod (Cardiff, 1990)
A.O.H. and E. Jarman: The Welsh Gypsies (Cardiff, 1991)
J. Lloyd Williams: ‘Yr hwyl Gymreig’ [The Welsh hwyl], Canu gwerin, xiv (1991), 15–29
D.R. Saer: ‘Canu at iws’ [The role of traditional songs], Cymdeithas alawon gwerin Cymru (1992)
M. Evans: ‘Contest Singing’, Welsh Music History, i (1996), 84–91
W. Thomas: A Bibliography: Traditional Music in Wales, ii (Denbigh, 1996)
P. Weller: ‘Gerald of Wales's View of Music’, Welsh Music History, ii (1997), 1–32
A. Urquahart and others: Aria di Camera (London, 1730)
J. Parry [of Ruabon] and E. Williams: Antient British Music (London, 1742)
J. Parry [of Ruabon]: A Collection of Welsh, English and Scotch Airs (London, 1761)
J. Parry [of Ruabon]: British Harmony (Ruabon and London, 1781, 2/1810 as Cambrian Harmony)
E. Jones: Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards (1784, 2/1794, rev. and enlarged 4/1825)
E. Jones: The Bardic Museum (London, 1802)
J. Parry [Bardd Alaw]: A Selection of Welsh Melodies (London, 1809)
J. Parry [Bardd Alaw]: A Collection of Welsh Airs (London, 1810)
E. Jones: Hen ganiadau Cymru [Old songs of Wales] (London, 1820, enlarged 2/1825)
R. Roberts: Cambrian Harmony (Dublin and Caernarfon, 1829)
J. Parry [Bardd Alaw]: The Welsh Harper, i–ii (London, 1839–48)
M.J. Williams: Ancient National Airs of Gwent and Morganwg (Llandovery, 1844; facsimile reproduction with introduction and notes on songs by D. Huws, Aberystwyth, 1988, 2/1994)
J. Thomas [Ieuan Ddu]: Y caniedydd Cymreig/The Cambrian Minstrel (Merthyr Tydfil, 1845)
J. Owen [Owain Alaw]: Gems of Welsh Melody (London and Wrexham, 1860–64, 2/1873)
B. Richards: Songs of Wales (London, 1873, 4/1879)
J. Jones: Hanes ac henafiaeth canu gyda'r tannau [The history and antiquity of singing with the strings] (London, 1885)
N. Bennett: Alawon fy ngwlad [The airs of my country] (Newtown, 1896)
L.D. Jones: ‘Hunting the Wren’, Journal of the Welsh Folk Song Society, i/3 (1911), 99–113
R. Griffith: Llyfr cerdd dannau [A book of cerdd dant] (Caernarfon, 1913)
W.S. Gwynn Williams: Welsh National Music and Dance (London, 1932, 4/1971)
Musica neu Beroriaeth (MS, GB-Lbl Add. 14905); ed. H. Lewis (Cardiff, 1936); ed. W. Thomas (Godstone, 1987)
R.D. Griffith: Hanes canu cynulleidfaol Cymru [The history of congregational singing in Wales] (Cardiff, 1948)
W.S. Gwynn Williams: Caneuon traddodiadol y Cymry: Traditional Songs of the Welsh, i–ii (Llangollen, 1961–3)
P.D. Whittaker: British Museum Additional Manuscript 14905: an Interpretation and Re-examination of the Music and Text (diss., U. of Wales, 1974)
D.R. Saer: Caneuon llafar gwlad: Songs from Oral Tradition, i–ii (Cardiff, 1974–94)
P. Kennedy: Folksongs of Britain and Ireland (London, 1975)
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P. Kinney: ‘Vocal and Instrumental Interaction in Earlier “canu penillion”’, Canu gwerin, vii (1984), 28–38
P. Kinney and M. Evans: Canu'r Cymry: Welsh Folk Songs, i–ii (Arfon, 1984–7)
P. Kinney and M. Evans: ‘Canu'r ychen’ [Oxen songs], Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1986), 99–113
R.H. Bowen: Tro llaw: 200 Welsh Hornpipes (Aberystwyth, 1987)
J. Rimmer: ‘Edward Jones's Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards, 1784: a Re-assessment’, Canu gwerin, x (1987), 26–44
G. Vaughan-Jones: Hen garolau plygain [Old plygain carols] (Talybont, 1987)
P. Kinney: ‘The Tunes of the Welsh Christmas Carols’, Canu gwerin, xi (1988), 28–55; xii (1989), 5–29
G. Vaughan-Jones: Mwy o garolau plygain [More plygain carols] (Talybont, 1990)
O. Ellis: The Story of the Harp in Wales (Cardiff, 1991)
P. Kinney and M. Evans: Hen alawon carolau a cherddi [Old airs, carols and songs] (Aberystwyth, 1993)
P. Kinney: ‘Contraboncin, Pigransi’ [Country Bumpkin and Peg a Ramsey], Canu gwerin, xvii (1994), 18–27
P. Kinney: ‘O lafar i lyfr’ [From oral tradition to print], Cymdeithas alawon gwerin Cymru (1995) 1–15
M. Evans: ‘Canu Cymru yn yr unfed ganrif ar bymtheg’ [Vernacular song in 16th-century Wales], Cof Cenedl [A nation's memory], xiii (1998), 33–68
W. Taylor: ‘Robert ap Huw's Harp Technique’, Welsh Music History, iii (1998), 82–96
P. Toivanen: ‘Pencerddin valinnat: etnomusikologinen näkökulma Robert ap Huw: käsikirjoitukseen sekä vanhan walesilaisen harppumusiikin virityksiin’ [Pencerdd's choices: an ethnomusicological point of view on the Robert ap Huw manuscript and the tunings of early Welsh harp music] (diss., U. of Jvyäskylä, Finland, 1998)
D. Barrington: ‘Some Accounts of Two Musical Instruments Used in Wales’, Archaeologica, iii (London, 1786), 30–34
A.O.H. Jarman: ‘Telyn a crwth’ [Harp and crowd], Llên Cymru, vi (1961), 154–73
M.S. Davies: ‘The Pibgorn’, Welsh Music, iv/1 (Denbigh, 1972), 5–10
A. Johns: ‘The Welsh Crwth’, English Dance and Song, xxxvii/1 (1975), 92–3
A. Rosser: Telyn a thelynor [Harp and harper] (Cardiff, 1981)
B. Miles: Swyddogaeth a chelfyddyd y crythor [The function and craft of the crowder] (diss., U. of Wales, Aberystwyth, 1983)
J. Shorland: ‘The Pibgorn’, Taplas, no.17 (1986), 15
T. Schuurmans and D.R. Saer: ‘The Bagpipe’, Taplas, no.21 (1987), 12–15
Carolau plygain: Plygain Carol Singing, Sain C700N (1977) [with bilingual commentary booklet by D.R. Saer]
Caneuon llofft stabal: Stable-Loft Songs, Sain C764N (1980) [with bilingual commentary booklet by D.R. Saer]
Traditional Welsh Music, AdLonni AH2 (1981) [Canu penillion and folksongs]
Cyfarch y delyn [Saluting the harp], perf. R.H. Bowen, Sain SCD 4074 (1991)
Gorau gwerin: the Best of Welsh Folk Music, Sain SCD 2006 (1992)
Penceirddiaid Cymru, Sain SCD 2130 (1997)