The Accounts for the past year have been audited and certified and the Statement of Receipts and Payments is appended to this Report. THE HONOURABLE SOCIETY OF CYMMRODORION. Statement of Receipts and Payments. FROM 9TH NOVEMBER, 1925, TO 9TH NOVEMBER, 1926. Cr. To Balance in hand, November, 1925 243 9 7 By Rent of Offices, Lighting, Repairs and 74 0 0 .. Subscriptions received 1292 8 0 Interest on Contingent Fund Sale of Publications, and sundry receipts Donation from the Brecon Note: The Council holds to meet 5 per cent. National War Bond, due 200 0 0 4 per cent. National War Bond, due On Deposit at the Bank ,, Library (Books) 200 0 0 43 3 3 ,, Commission on Publications sold and Subscriptions received Examined and found correct, Joint JOHN HINDS, Treasurer. E. VINCENT EVANS, Secretary. TRANSACTIONS OF THE Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion. SESSION 1925-26. WELSH MUSIC IN THE TUDOR PERIOD.1 BY REV. CANON R. E. ROBERTS, M.A., Precentor of S. Martin's Collegiate Church, Leicester. BEFORE we proceed to study Welsh music in the Tudor period it would be well to glance at the state of artistic culture in Wales in the Middle Ages. In spite, if not because, of having to fight incessantly for its very existence the Welsh genius for poetry and music was never more potent or more purely expressed than it was in the ages that short-sighted people call "dark". It was then that princes and peasants in happy concord made poetry, sang songs, and played the harp. There is a document of the reign of Charles I written by Robert ap Huw, of Bodwigan, in Anglesey, which claims to throw some light on Welsh music in mediæval times. Its author represents that he had copied "some part" from the manuscript of William Penllyn, Harper and Chief Bard to Queen Elizabeth, who at the Caerwys Eisteddfod of 1568 wrote down the traditions of his own day as to what had been the findings of the great Congress held under Prince Gruffydd 1 Read before the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion at King's College in the Strand on Friday the 11th day of February, 1926. In the chair, Mrs. Mary Davies, Mus. Doc. B ap Cynan in 1090, “with some of the most ancient pieces of the Britons, supposed to have been handed down to us from the Druids". For the guidance of bards and musicians in those days it appears that five keys were settled: Is-gywair, Cras-gywair, Lleddf-gywair, Go-gywair and Bragod-gywair; whilst the "ancient pieces" referred to consisted of the famous Prelude to the Salt said to have been sung at the Court of King Arthur, and the 24 "measures", followed by 12 variations on a ground bass, i.e., a short theme repeated in the bass with changing harmonies above it. Now, this latter was a form of writing not uncommon among English composers in ap Huw's time. It seems to me incredible that he should have borrowed a contemporary style from England and without any foundation claimed for it such marked antiquity. Every consideration suggests that he must have had some reasons for his representations, and that English composers were in this respect following an old Welsh style. There is unfortunately no existing copy of Penllyn's manuscript, and it may well be that some of ap Huw's claims are extravagant. I am not concerned to uphold them. But there is an accumulation of direct and indirect evidence that in the Middle Ages the Welsh people, high and low, made music one of their chief interests, and that they developed it on strong national lines. We know far too little of the music of this period. There would of course be the modal style, authorized by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, but it was always enriched by national characteristics. Professor Gwynn Jones, in his illuminating lecture at a recent meeting of the Welsh Folk Song Society, told us that in studying the literature of this period he frequently comes upon musical expressions which seem to be beyond anyone's ken at present, and in 66 the subsequent discussion Sir John Morris-Jones complained that students of music had been less industrious than students of literature in exploring the early history of their art. I hope we may yet recover some of the treasures that are hidden in the bosom of those distant ages, and that this lecture, by a mere amateur, may encourage better qualified students to make researches and bring to light fresh examples of our great national art. If it fails to do that, it will have failed in its one and only purpose. Giraldus Cambrensis stated in the twelfth century that the Welsh were notable for the sweetness of their musical instruments" and for singing "in different parts". Some doubt has been thrown upon this apparent reference to harmony; but in view of the fact that music played so large a part in the life of Welshmen, and that their special genius has always been a discriminating ear, I do not think it is incredible that they should have sung some sort of harmony even in the twelfth century. Anyway, Welsh music and poetry reached a high standard in the fourteenth century. The latter was written in themesurau caethion ", involving the use of elaborate "Kynghanedd ". Unfortunately we have no actual manuscript music that can be proved to be older than the seventeenth century, but we have lists of airs, such as Gadael Tir, Hun Gwenllian, Mwynen Gwynedd, and Susanna, that were almost certainly sung in the Middle Ages, and various forms of some of them are still extant. Susanna is of special interest to me because it has phrases and intervals which bring back to my mind the "hwyl of the old Welsh preachers, to hear whom I would walk 1 Some months after this lecture was delivered the author heard at the National Eisteddfod, in Swansea (August 1926) Dr. Vaughan Thomas' settings to ancient poems in the Cywydd metre, in which the rhythm was admirably preserved, and the whole treatment was intelligent and artistic. |