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| ISBN-13: | 9781783168576 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Wales Press |
| Publication date: | 10/15/2016 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 289 |
| Product dimensions: | 7.50(w) x 9.60(h) x 0.80(d) |
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Welsh Traditional Music
By Phyllis Kinney
University of Wales Press
Copyright © 2011 Phyllis KinneyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7083-2358-8
CHAPTER 1
The Oral Tradition
No manuscripts of secular music have survived from Wales, if indeed there were any, before the end of the sixteenth century. Although music was an important part of Welsh life, the secular tradition was an oral one. The music of ordinary people, the songs and dances of ploughmen, nursemaids, blacksmiths and itinerant fiddlers were not noted down before the eighteenth century, whereas music favoured by cultivated Welsh gentry from later medieval times until the seventeenth century was sophisticated, complex, bound by strict rules and passed on orally from teacher to pupil. Knowledge of music from an earlier period depends upon literary references, passages from the Welsh Laws and comparison with other Celtic societies such as Ireland.
One of the earliest references to music in Wales was made by the sixth-century monk Gildas in De Excidioet Conquestu Britanniae where his caustic indictment of Maelgwn Gwynedd, lord of Anglesey and Gwynedd, gives a picture of praisesinging in early Welsh courts. The monk berates the ruler for not listening to the 'tuneful voice' of Christians singing the praises of God with sweet rhythm and melodious church song, instead of his own bards, a rascally crew who yell forth his praises like Bacchanalian revellers. This earliest reference to bards in Wales gives an interesting picture of two styles of singing: the ecclesiastical style, pleasing and harmonious; and the bardic style, strongly declamatory. Some half-century later the churchman Venantius Fortunatus mentions the instruments used:
Romanusque lyra, plaudat tibi barbarus harpa, Graecus Achilliaca, crotta Brittanna canat. [Let the Roman praise you with the lyra, the barbarian with the harpa, the Greek with the lyre of Achilles, the Briton with the crotta]
Although Venantius calls these instruments by different names, lyra, harpa, crotta, it appears that they were all species of lyre, the 'crotta' of the Britons being the vernacular name for an early unbowed ancestor of the crwth (crowd).
The close connection of music and poetry in this period, and for many centuries to follow, is evident in Welsh terminology: a cerdd can be either a song or poem and caniad can mean poetry or music. However, information about music and poetry in early Wales is extremely scarce. The Roman occupation, which lasted some four hundred years until the end of the fourth century, affected the nature of Celtic society in the conquered areas; for clues to bardic tradition in this period it is necessary to turn to Ireland, which the Romans never conquered.
When St Patrick arrived there in the fifth century, Celtic culture was still similar to that described by Caesar in Gaul. Poets held an important position at Celtic courts and their influence was powerful; in addition to singing praises, elegies and satires, they were prophets, story-tellers, genealogists and historians. In time, court poets formed a professional hierarchy in which each class had its own rank and dignity. The chief poet had a special chair in the court and his status was equal to that of the king. Bardic training was long and demanding; it took twelve years for the chief poet to complete his education and seven for an ordinary bard. Because the appeal of the poetry was first and foremost to the ear, music was an essential part of the bardic performance, sustaining the rhythm of the words.
The Marquis of Clanricarde, in describing the performance of a poem in the presence of a wealthy patron in early seventeenth-century Ireland noted that it was accomplished:
with a great deal of Ceremony, in a Consort of Vocal and Instrumental Musick. The Poet himself said nothing, but directed and took care, that everybody else did his Part right. The Bards having first had the Composition from him, got it well by Heart, and now pronounc'd it orderly, keeping even Pace with a Harp
Sometimes the harp was joined by the tiompán, a kind of lyre, and at a later period the poet sang to his own accompaniment. Although the Marquis was writing in the eighteenth century, the tradition was a conservative one and his description represents a very much older custom.
Welsh society in the period after the Romans left seems to have been much like that of Ireland in terms of bardic duties and status, but references to musicians in early Welsh poetry are vague. Interpretation of the place of music in Wales before the English conquest in 1282 depends upon literary and legal references and the writings of the ecclesiastic, Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales). The Laws of Hywel Dda (Hywel the Good) derived their name from the tenth-century king Hywel and represent a native legal tradition which was predominantly oral and which had evolved over a long period, though the earliest extant written manuscripts come from the thirteenth century. Because of this, the Laws incorporate much material which refers to earlier times and many references that suggest the warrior aristocracy of a heroic age.
These Laws describe three kinds of poet. Lowest in stature was the cerddor, a bardic apprentice being trained in the craft of poetry and whose status was defined by the fact that no serf or villein's son could practise the bardic craft without the king's permission. Above him came the bardd teulu, a court officer and bard of the warband. At the top was the pencerdd, a master-poet who had the privilege of sitting at court in a chair which symbolised his authority and had to be won in poetic competition. In the heroic age, court poets would be expected to perform their songs before battle and at the victory feast after a successful battle where they would sing the praises of the king and his war-band. Although the word 'sing' is used, it would probably be a mistake to think in modern terms since the style was almost certainly declamatory rather than melodic.
By the time the Laws were written down the harp was the supreme instrument of the Welsh; in addition to the performances of professional harpers, harp-playing was part of the education of a noble. However, according to one version of the Laws, two other instruments, the crwth and the pipes, had high if not equal status. At a twelfth-century feast held by the Lord Rhys in Cardigan Castle, a chair was awarded to the winner of a competition between harpers, crouthers and pipers.
The inherent conservatism of the bardic order meant that, even after the passing of the heroic age with its warrior aristocracy, poets retained much of their status and influence. Apprentices had to pass through various stages of instruction, which might take as many as nine years before attaining the rank of pencerdd, and only a pencerdd could assume the right to be a bardic teacher, demanding many years of study through predominantly oral instruction. Although the poetry created was essentially aristocratic and had little or no place in the lives of ordinary members of the community, the bardic order continued to train poets in this style and to hold degree examinations to the end of the sixteenth century.
There is no detailed description of musical styles until the end of the twelfth century when the Norman-Welsh ecclesiastic, Giraldus de Barri, known as Giraldus Cambrensis, accompanied Archbishop Baldwin on a tour through Wales to preach the Third Crusade. The Archbishop, impressed by Topographica Hibernica (The Topography of Ireland), an early work by Giraldus, suggested that he should write the history of the tour and it is from his copious notes on the places they visited and the customs of the people, published in his Itinerarium Kambriae (The Journey through Wales) and Descriptio Kambriae (The Description of Wales), that we have our first significant description of music in Wales. These reports include the musicmaking of ordinary people for the first time.
The second chapter of the Itinerarium Kambriae contains a description of the feast-day of St Eluned in Breconshire, where sick people would come together from far and wide in the hope of being cured. Giraldus describes men and women, in the church or the churchyard, sometimes dancing, sometimes as if in a peaceful trance, then suddenly jumping up in a frenzy and indicating with gestures the work they had been doing unlawfully on holy days. One would appear to put his hand to the plough, another seemed to urge on the oxen with a goad, both singing crude rustic songs as if to ease their work. This first report to give any detail of folk singing in Wales is significant in that the writer mentions oxen songs, a type which continued in use in Glamorganshire until the end of the nineteenth century, some eight hundred years later.
The tenth chapter of the Descriptio Kambriae confirms the importance of the harp, with Giraldus remarking that Welsh courtiers consider the ability to play the harp greater than all other accomplishments, while in every house there would be harps and, if guests should arrive early in the day, the young women of the household would play for them on the harp. In the twelfth chapter, Giraldus corroborates the references in the Laws that the Welsh play three instruments – harp, pipes and crwth.
It also contains what he said about Irish instrumental performers in the Topographica Hibernica, showing how close the two cultures were in his day. He describes them as playing with fingers moving so swiftly that they seem to be disputing with each other, yet preserving harmonic consistency while performing with unfailing artistry a variety of music on diverse instruments with sweet rapidity, unequal equality and discordant concord finishing in tonal unity. Whether the strings sound in fourths or in fifths, the performers always begin with B flat and return to it at the end so as to finish with a pleasing sound. The treble strings are played rapidly above the deeper tones of the lower strings giving particular enjoyment to the listener while concealing their artistry. Those who have studied and who understand the mysteries of this art would get great pleasure from it, but for those who listen without comprehension it would be like a disorderly tumult, producing exhaustion and boredom in unwilling listeners.
Here it is obvious that 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 his words are open to more than one interpretation. The final sentences imply that this is sophisticated instrumental music for the educated ear.
In the thirteenth chapter Giraldus describes Welsh singing:
When they come together to make music, the Welsh sing their traditional songs, not in unison, as is done elsewhere, but in parts, in many modes and modulations. When a choir gathers to sing, which happens often in this country, you will hear as many different parts and voices as there are performers, all joining together in the end to produce a single organic harmony and melody in the soft sweetness of B-flat.
In the northern parts of Great Britain, across the Humber and in Yorkshire, the English who live there produce the same symphonic harmony when they sing. They do this in two parts only, with two modulations of the voice, one group humming the bass and the others singing the treble most sweetly. The two peoples must have developed this habit not by any special training but by age-old custom, by long usage which has made it second nature. It is now become so common with them both and so firmly established that you never hear a simple melody sweetly sung, for it is always in many parts, as with the Welsh, or in two, as with the English of the north. What is even more remarkable, small children sing in parts, and tiny babies do so, too, from the moment they stop screaming and first begin to sing.
As the English in general do not adopt this way of singing, but only those who live in the north, I think that these latter must have taken their part-singing, as they did their speech, from the Danes and Norwegians, who so often invaded those parts of the island and held them longer under their dominion.
Understandably, Giraldus' description of singing in this chapter has given rise to considerable dissension. As an educated ecclesiastic of the twelfth century who had travelled abroad he would have been familiar with the polyphonic church music of his day and obviously he considered the part-singing in Wales and the north of England to be of a different order. Many suggestions have been offered including the surmise that Giraldus was guilty of immense exaggeration. However, two proposed solutions deserve more serious attention, though they appear to be mutually exclusive. The first is the conjecture by Lloyd Hibberd that what Giraldus heard was heterophony, that is music in which two or more musicians perform variations on a tune simultaneously. Heterophony can still be heard in Britain among the Gaelic hymn-singers of the Hebrides, where each member of the congregation decorates the basic melody line with grace notes according to individual inclination, but the result is a harmonious unity. There is some evidence that Welsh congregations used to do the same thing. The great hymn reformer John Roberts ('Ieuan Gwyllt', 1822–77) wrote in 1859 that singers must be careful to stick to the melody and not sing something they have made up themselves, those homespun parts improvised by people who are too lazy to learn the appropriate parts. Later, in 1863, he chastises singers for their untidy performances – some rushing ahead, some lingering too long on the notes and some overloading each note with three or four or half a dozen grace notes. It is possible that this nineteenth-century description is a distant echo of what Giraldus heard in the twelfth.
On the other hand Ernest Sanders suggests that Giraldus' reference to singing in many parts fits the description of the rondellus, a polyphonic technique in which two or three voices exchange phrases at regular intervals. It was normally written in three parts but when sung by a group of men, women and children, it would have been heard at different octaves. The well-known part song, 'Sumer is icumen in' can be sung as a rondellus by as many as twelve parts over a twopart ostinato. Giraldus' description of singing as developed 'not by any special training but by age-old custom, by long usage which has made it second nature', suggests improvisation. Certainly there is evidence of improvisation in medieval church music. Early in the twelfth century, John of Affligem described improvised organum as the harmonious combining of different notes, as produced by at least two singers; while one sings the plainsong, the second voice moves around it at different pitches, coming together at the cadence in unison or at the octave. In the rondellus, however, the voices exchanged parts and, according to Walter Odington, an Englishman writing about 1300, 'what is sung by one may be sung by everybody in turn ... Each thus sings the other's part'. The rondellus and related techniques were well known in areas close to the Welsh border and may perhaps have been influenced by Celtic traditions. Was the singing that Giraldus heard a form of the rondellus? It is impossible to be certain, but he was, after all, at pains to make clear that this was a company of many singers, including small children, and that they sang in this manner through long custom rather than training. It is possible that the decorated psalm-singing heard in the Western Isles of Scotland and in nineteenthcentury Wales fits that description more closely.
Less than a century after Giraldus died Wales was conquered by Edward I of England and lost its independence, but although Wales was now counted among the lands of the English crown it was not part of England. The princely courts no longer existed, but poets and musicians retained much of their importance through the patronage of the clergy and the uchelwyr (influential landed gentry). Many of these new leaders of Welsh society were men of considerable culture, patrons of the arts of prose and poetry, and many poets themselves came from this class. The period between the Conquest at the end of the thirteenth century and the Acts of Union (1536–43), by which Wales became part of England, has been called the most brilliant age of Welsh literature. Music and poetry were still sister arts and much of the poetry was declaimed or sung to instrumental accompaniment, appealing to the ear rather than the eye. Bardic training continued to be lengthy, highly regulated and predominantly oral, and bards were still expected to be learned in the intricacies of the Welsh language, the genealogies of their patrons and in prophetic poetry, praise-singing and elegies.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Welsh Traditional Music by Phyllis Kinney. Copyright © 2011 Phyllis Kinney. Excerpted by permission of University of Wales Press.
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Table of Contents
ForewordAcknowledgements
List of illustrations
Abbreviations
A note on the translation of Welsh terms and transcription of the musical examples
Introduction: What is Traditional Music?
1. The Oral Tradition
2. The Watershed
3. Manuscript to Print
4. Edward Jones and Traditional Airs
5. Seasonal Festivities
6. Carols, Ballads and the Anterliwt
7. The Early Collectors: Iolo Morganwg and Ifor Ceri
8. The Great Change
9. The Momentum Continues
10. J. Lloyd Williams and the Welsh Folk-Song Society
Notes
Appendix 1: Cerdd Dant
Appendix 2: Printed Music Collections
Bibliography
Index
Index of Music