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The Story of the Harp in Wales Ellis, Osian. University of Wales 0708311040 9780708311042 9780585309088 English Celtic harp--History, Folk music--Wales--History and criticism. 1991 ML1005.E44 1991eb 787.95 Celtic harp--History, Folk music--Wales--History and criticism.
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Page iii
The Story of the Harp in Wales Osian Ellis
1
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ã Osian Ellis, 1991 The realizations and arrangements of the music and songs in this publication are the copyright of the author and should be acknowledged in any performance ã 1991 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without clearance from the University of Wales Press, 6 Gwennyth Street, Cardiff, CF2 4YD. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Ellis, Osian The story of the harp in Wales. 1. Harps. History I. Title 787.95 ISBN 0-7083-1104-0 All music included in this book (other than facsimile manuscripts) has been prepared by the author. The cover illustration Penillion Singing near Conway by J.C. Ibbetson, 1792 is reproduced by kind permission of the National Museum of Wales. Cover design by Ruth Dineen. Typeset and printed at the Alden Press, Oxford and London
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Preface This small volume is not intended as a learned document, but rather, it is an attempt to present within a small compass a statement of the major features of what is considered to be the traditional musical instrument of the Welsh people. During the last decade a flowing stream of fresh scholarship has emerged from several sources in Wales, England and America. In a short volume such as this I have not always been able to take full account of this new work, and further research again will be needed for an extensive scholarly treatment of the subject. The shape of this book has been designed to accommodate music and, for those who might wish to play the music on any instrument (preferably a harp!), it should be convenient for placing on a music-stand. Perhaps I should mention that where I have translated Welsh verse into English I have considered it useful to do so literally and unadorned; I aim not to charm but to instruct.
OSIAN ELLIS ST DAVID'S DAY 1 MARCH 1991
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Acknowledgements The illustrations in this book are included by kind permission of the following: Welsh Folk Museum, St Fagans, Cardiff: the Foelas crwth (p.4), the Mostyn silver harp (p.13), triple harp (p.50), Nansi Richards (p.77). National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth: Statute of Gruffudd ap Cynan (p.9), Musica neu Beroriaeth (pp.15,17 and 30), harp drawing by Gwilym Puw (p.29), Blind John Parry (p.53), extract from the Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards (p.56), Ceiriog (p.60), John Roberts (p.69), the Roberts family (p.70). National Library of Ireland, Dublin: John Derricke's Image of Ireland (p.45). Parry Library, Royal College of Music: Y Galon Drom, Antient British Music Part II, Evan Williams MS 1745 (p.63). The National Trust and Robert Chapman Photography: Cotehele Tester or bedhead, Cotehele House, Cornwall (p.14). I should like to thank Mr Gareth Haulfryn Williams of the Caernarfonshire Historical Society, for kindly making a search of the Cefn Amlwch papers in pursuit of the young John Parry, but alas, without uncovering any new evidence. Many of the documents are no longer extant. Finally, I am most grateful to the staff of the University of Wales Press for their care and attention, and especially to Ms Liz Powell who has kindly dealt with the design and preparation of the book for the press.
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The Story of the Harp in Wales The earliest harps
It is no easy task to trace the history of the harp in Wales. The old, fragile instruments have disappeared over the centuries, and there survive only Welsh harps from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; most of these cannot be strung and played because they are structurally weak, and they would collapse and break if any tension were put on the strings. However, let us first try to trace the worldwide development of the harp. It is found in many civilizations, and it is generally believed to have come from the simple bow of the hunter (Fig.1). The percussive twang of the taut bowstring would have intrigued early man, and over millenia he would have exploited, developed and elevated the bow to the status of a musical instrument just by adding more strings and a resonating chamber to amplify the
sound, sometimes by placing the bow on the mouth, or by adding a gourd or wooden sound-box (Fig.3). These primitive instruments are still made and played in parts of Africa and Asia, like the beautifully decorated Burmese harp (Fig.4), and the wooden harp with head-carving from Gabon in West Africa (Fig.5). The sound-box would not always be of wood, but it might be covered in skin or parchment (Figs. 4 & 6). Because of the present-day custom of cataloguing musical instruments scientifically, we must now call these: bowshaped harps (Figs. 2, 4 & 6), and angle-harps (Figs. 3 & 5), and from these there emerged the frame-harp with a front pillar, which gave greater strength, and, consequently, allowed more tension and a higher pitch and tuning. The frame-harp in Wales will be the main subject of our study. Another ancient instrument was the Iyre (Fig.8) found in pre-Christian Sumeria, Egypt, Greece and Rome, usually U-shaped, and a close relative of the Hebrew kinor (Fig. 7) played by David as he calmed the demented Saul with his music, and to which he may have sung or declaimed his Psalms. The primitive crwth or crowd (Fig. 9) may have been a mutation of the lyre, and, according to the poet-priest, Venantius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers in France during the sixth century, it was played in ancient Britain: Romanusque lyra, plaudat tibi barbarus harpa, Graecus Achilliaca, crotta Britanna canat. Let the Romans praise with the lyre, the barbarian with harp, the Greeks with Achillian poems, and the Britons with the crwthcrotta.
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The Britons, or the early Welsh, played, according to Venantius, not the harp, but the crwth, and they played with their fingers and nails, long before the bow (like a violin or cello bow) was introduced from Arab countries during the tenth and eleventh centuries. It was the barbarian who played the harp, and to a Roman or later Italian, like Venantius, the barbarian indicated one of the Teutonic tribes of Germany, the Low Countries, and the Angle and Saxon tribes then busily invading British shores from across the North Sea. According to historians and authorities on old Anglo-Saxon literature, the heroic poetry of the Teutonic peoples was always sung or recited to the harp. Tacitus, a Latin author, relates that their songs were their only historical records. Arminius, one of the Germans who conquered a Roman army, was afterwards celebrated in song. Long after the Anglo-Saxons had settled in Britain these Germanic people were still singing popular lays about their ancestors. There is no doubt that many of their songs were of great antiquity and of obscure origin, and the Old English heroic poems reflect acquaintance with earlier versions before separation from other Germanic tribes.
Eulogies of heroes, and funeral and wedding songs would be among the kinds of poetry sung. Epic poetry probably came to be declaimed rather than sung; the Old English expression is singan ond secganto sing and to say. This is a development parallel to that of the Greek Homeric epics: the stresses would continue to be marked by the strum of the harp, and the laws of music would still govern the composition, except for the loss of melody. The vitality of the English alliterative tradition is proved by its re-emergence in the fourteenth century, after being driven underground for three centuries by Norman and French influences, and it has left sufficient impression on English popular ballads to suggest that it had a long history on the lips of the people (Bruce Pattison, Music and Poetry of the English Renaissance). There are many references to the harp in old Anglo-Saxon literature; in Heorot, when Beowulf was entertained by King Hrothgar, a minstrel sang to the harp. Again, the Venerable Bede describes how Caedmon, after feasting in fine company, would sidle away rather than be embarrassed, for he could not sing or play the harp as every respectable Saxon was expected to do in those days. After the feast, the harp would be passed from hand to hand, and each person was expected to contribute in his turn to this Teutonic singsong. But were these frame-harps, or angle-harps or rotesthe latter very similar to the primitive crwthas the word suggests: crwth, crotta, rota, rote, etc.
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The frame-harp in Britain It is impossible to give a precise date for the appearance of the frame-harp in Britain. Some authorities would claim that it arrived with the Teutonic peoples, or that it was imported from the Near East through trading contacts, or perhaps through communication between the early Celtic Church and Christian communities in Egypt and Syria, while the Irish believe that it was their invention. Early Welsh literature is notably reticent in references to the harp and crwth, which is surprising in view of their later popularity. One might assume, therefore, that these instruments were not indigenous to Wales and may have arrived only during the ninth and tenth centuries. Yet we have the evidence of the Welsh Laws codified by Hywel Dda about AD 950; they illustrate the high regard for the poets and musiciansthe pencerdd (the chief bard), the bardd teulu (the house or court poet), and the minstrels. The function and status of the courtiers were catalogued, and the bardd teulu was designated his place next to the court judge. He was to receive his harp from his king or ruler; he was to sing his first song to God, and his second to the king. Other songs could be sung to the queenprivately if she so desired, so as not to disturb the rest of the court. Each pencerdd was to be provided with an instrument by the kinga harp for one, a crwth for another, and pipes for a third. Because the Laws were not actually written down in manuscript until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, more than 300 years after their conception by Hywel Dda and his advisers, certain doubts do exist that many items might have been changed to conform with later customs, implements and instruments. The famous lines: Wyf bardd ac wyf delynor Wyf pibydd ac wyf crythor (I am a bard and I am a harper, I am a piper and I am a crowther) are not by the early poet, Taliesin, who flourished during the sixth century and composed much poetry in the old Welsh North, between Carlisle and Strathclyde, but are from the much later poems, the Taliesin Romances, found in manuscripts written during the thirteenth century by Welsh monks intent on noting for posterity stories and poetry that had until then been sustained by oral tradition. I should emphasize that any doubt that exists is about the nature of the early harp in Wales: was it a frame-harp or a crwth? We know that musical instruments were always popular among the Welsh and their Celtic forbears. Diodorus Siculus, quoting the evidence of the earlier Posidonius of Apamea, wrote as early as the first century BC and described the bards among the Celts of Gaul: They have poets whom they call bards, who sing songs of eulogy and of satire, accompanying themselves on instruments
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very like the lyre friend and foe submit to the song of the bard. Professor J.J.Tierney writing on The Celtic Ethnography of Posidonius adds: The Bards, the companions of the chieftains, accompany them in war as well as in peace. They pronounce their praises before the whole assembly and before each of the chieftains in turn as they listen they are called Bards, poets who deliver their eulogies in song. In AD 60 the Roman leader, Suetonius, believed that the he had to destroy the Welsh druids of Mona (Anglesey) because of their spiritual influence; initially, his soldiers were petrified with fear on the banks of the Menai Straits at the sight of these, apparently, sacred priests and their followers; eventually, their officers forced them across the Straits and, according to Tacitus, all the druids were annihilated. At the turn of the sixth century the poet Aneirin tells that many a minstrel entertained at the court of Mynyddog Mwynfawr at Dineidyn (modern Edinburgh) before the battle of Catraeth. Maelgwn Gwynedd, King of Gwynedd earlier in the sixth century, patronized bards and musicians to the disgust of the narrow-minded priest and author, Gildas. There is a delightful story that King Maelgwn mischievously called upon his poets and musicians to wade across the River Conwy; the poets were none the worse, but the musicians were dismayed with their ruined, water-sodden harps and crwths; the tale is recalled by the poet lorwerth Beli circa 1320:
The Foelas crwth Pan ddaethant i dir terfyn môr ar drai Dimai nis talai'r telynorion Cystal y prydai'r Prydyddion â chynt Er a nofiesynt helynt haelion. (When they reached dry land, not a ha'penny would he pay the harpers; the poets composed as well as ever in spite of their pains.) Here, again, we have a description seven centuries after the events took place. We must not, therefore, automatically assume that the musicians played harps. Because of the lack of specific verbal and pictorial evidence on the history of the harp in Wales the musicologist and scientific researcher will, no doubt, insist that the harp came from England; three famous authorities, Curt Sachs, Otto Andersson and F.W. Galpin claim this. In his remarkable volume, The Bowed Harp Andersson observes on the theory that the frame-harp was invented by the
Celts and first became known in the British Isles: Mr. Galpin demonstrated the untenability of this view, after which one might have expected the subject to be dropped. Yet, in view of the circumstantial evidence of the early poets, of the Laws of Hywel Dda, and of the stories in the Mabinogion, we, in Wales, find it difficult to accept that the harp was not known in our land from time immemorial. In Menestrellorum Multitude, subtitled Minstrels at a Royal Feast, Dr Constance Bullock-Davies has shown conclusively that the harp was popular in England until the death of Edward I, for she gives a vivid account of the magnificent feast held in London in 1306 in honour of the knighting
page_5
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of the Prince of Wales (soon to be Edward II) when scores of minstrels from the royal and baronial households were in attendance. From the bleak parchments of the payrolls of the Public Record Office she skilfully reconstructs the activities, functions, status and remuneration of harpists, crowthers, trumpeters, organists and others. Here is her list of minstrels mentioned in the payrolls on Whitsunday 1306: Trumpeters
19Guitarists
1
Taborersa
6Organists
2
Nakerersb
1Campanistsh
1
Estivoursc
2Acrobats
1
Boy Minstrels
5Fencers
2
Harpers
26Reges Haraldorumi
6
Vielle-playersd
13Heralds
4
Crowthers
9Sergeants-at Arms
1
Geige-playerse
3Grooms
3
Psaltery-playersf
2Waferersi
5
Lutenists
1Watchmenk
4
Citole-playersg
1Messengers
1
a Tabor: fairly small, two-skin drum played with wooden sticks. Ideal for beating time for dancing or for accompanying jugglers and acrobats. b Nakerer: played small kettle-drums strung on the back of a groom. c Estive: a form of small bagpipe. d Vielle: medieval precursor of the violplayed with a bow. e Geige-players: Two German string-players had been employed by Edward I for seven years to play a bowed instrument halfway between a vielle and a violin. f Psaltery: an early stringed instrument like the dulcimer (or a harp played flat on the knees), generally of triangular shape with sound-box under the strings. Played with finger-nails or plectrum. g Citole: or Citterna wire string instrument, not unlike the lute, but with a flat back. In Shakespeare's time they might be found in barbers' shops for the use of waiting customers. h Campanists: players of hand-bells or bells strung on a frame. i Reges Haraldorum: the King's personal heralds and trumpeters. j Waferers: although they could practise as minstrels their primary duty was to make and serve wafers to the king himself. The wafers were made of flour, sugar and eggs and cooked in baking-irons. k Watchmen: they had to make regular inspections of the palace in search of wrong-doers or of fires. They also called or piped the hours when necessary.
The harpers outnumber all other groups of instrumentalists. Their eminence was still unassailed. Dr Bullock-Davies observes:
No doubt this was due to conservatism, because the harp was the national instrument of the English, but its own nature, of course, contributed most to its long-lasting popularity. Much of its appeal lay
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in its simplicity and plangency, for the early harp was totally unlike its modern, concert descendant. It was easily portable, small, usually about two feet in height and possessing anything from six to a dozen strings.Up to the beginning of the fourteenth century it held pride of place in the royal household, but after Edward I died subsequent Wardrobe books provide a silent testimony to the beginning of its decline. After 1307 there are no entries which refer to a group of King's Harpers as there regularly used to be. Edward II followed the newer fashion. During his reign one can trace the change which was gradually coming over the musical world (pp.27/8). The newer music was played by bowed instruments like the vielle, the crowd (crwth), and the geige or primitive fiddle. Under Edward I all minstrels remained on duty for varying periods of time; the string-players, including the harpers, would play at mealtimes, and they would entertain the king, queen, princes, princesses, nobles and guestssometimes in their private rooms, and, at night, the harper's gentle strains might soothe a bad sleeper or a sick personage. They played a major part in all Court functions and festivities, and, with the organist, they might provide music for church services. They also went to war with the king both home and abroad. Whether minstrels took part in the fighting is doubtful. Dr Bullock-Davies tells us that in 1300 Nicholas Ie Blond, then King's Harper, travelled with Edward I from London to Caerlaverock; the itinerary can be traced in wages paid to him on the journey from 14 April to 30 August; through St Albans, Dunstable, Stamford, York, Carlisle, Caerlaverock, and later, after the siege, on to Kirkcudbright and Dumfries. Altogether he received £10.2s.7d., which in our money today would be equivalent to about £3,000. As a mark of genuine appreciation of the minstrels' skill they might also be given gratuities or largesse, and when they grew old or were no longer able to work, they were sent to some wealthy abbey or prosperous minor monastery in which to end their days. Irish and Welsh methods of playing. The development of harps in Ireland was quite separate from that in Wales. The Irish used a heavy wooden harp with brass strings, whilst the Welsh favoured a more delicate, lighter instrument with strings of horsehair and, later on, gut (made from the intestines of sheep). Nowadays harpists generally play with just the tips of their fingers, but, in former times, both the Irish and Welsh harpers used nails as well as fingertips on the strings resulting in a bright, clear, almost percussive sound. The Welsh custom was to play with four fingersthe little finger was too short to reach the strings, and the harpist, Robert ap Huw, around 1613, shows in his music manuscript (to which I shall return) that he used only thumb and three fingers. The fourteenth-century poet, lolo Goch, satirizes the newfangled harp covered in leather and with gut strings (he hated its curved shape and
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its raucous tone), and he praises the old wooden harp with strings of horse-hair; he also mentions the use of eight fingers (see D.R.Johnston, Gwaith lolo GochThe Poetry of lolo Goch). It is likely that Irish harpers fingered similarly, for in her book, The Irish Harp (page 49), Joan Rimmer mentions an ode to Nicholas Dall Pierse, a blind Kerry harper (15611653) containing a reference to the vigour of eight fingers. The Welsh and Irish harpers both held the harp on the left shoulder, and played the higher treble strings with the left hand and the lower strings with the rightcontrary to the rest of Europe. I would suggest that the custom would follow automatically from playing the earlier crwth, when the right hand plucked the strings to the player's right, and the left hand, with greater dexterity (as on a lute or guitar), altered the pitch of the strings on the finger-board; so the whole relation of the crwth would be to the left of the player, hence, the same physical attitude towards the harp. Bards and harpers of the Middle Ages It might be appropriate at this point to mention that in the Welsh language the word canu can mean singing or composing poetry. Cerdd can mean a poem, song, art of poetry, music, or musical instrument. Further, canu cerdd has the meaning of composing a poem or singing a song. The ancient meaning of cerdd was craft (Geiriadur Prifysgol CymruDictionary of the University of Wales). Then again, we do not play instruments, we sing them: canu telyn (harp), canu piano, canu ffidil, canu organ, etc. and the poets will say canu cywydd (one of the major metrical forms of Welsh poetry since the fourteenth century), canu awdl (ode)even canu soned when they have composed these poems. How, then, do we interpret the lines of Dafydd ap Gwilym, the most distinguished and famous of the Welsh poets of the fourteenth century who, obviously, played the harp? In one poem he claims that he is so unhappy that he cannot raise his arms to play: Ni chân fy neufraich ennyd (Nor sing/play my two arms awhile..) And elsewhere: Poed anolo fo ei fin A'i gywydd a'i ddeg ewin. (However worthless his lips [speech/song] with his cywydd and his ten fingernails.) and again: Ni chân bardd yma i hardd hin Gywydd gyda'i ddeg ewin.
(No bard here may sing of fine weather a cywydd with his ten finger nails.)
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Did Dafydd really use ten fingers, or is he speaking metaphorically? Did he sing his poetry to the harp, or did he declaim to harp accompaniment? The bards composed in their heads and only later would their poems be noted in manuscripts. Often the bard would have with him a harper and a datgeiniad, one who would sing or declaim his odes. When the poet died the datgeiniaid, would continue to perform and pass on the poetry to other datgeiniaid, and when the poems were noted down by scribes there would be various alternative readings according to the skill and memory of the datgeiniaid. It must be remembered that all these poems were performed before an audience; the patrons for whom they were written displayed an enthusiasm for Welsh verse, and the bard was held in great esteem, for he was, virtually, the historian and genealogist of his society. Gwyn Thomas, poet and scholar of today, maintains that many of the poems (cywyddau) are unintelligible without the rapport of the bard (or his datgeiniad) with his audience, especially bearing in mind the use of interruptive phrases, sangiadau, which were a decorative feature of the cywydd. They can be awkward to read and assimilate, yet, when sung, the music can accomodate them readily. The late Saunders Lewis, distinguished poet and scholar extraordinaire, drew attention to the similarities between the sangiad style and the Tropus (or Trope)interruptive cadences in medieval Latin liturgical music. At the death of a patron an elegy would be called for during which the bard would enunciate in verse the forbears of the deceased. In a Eulogy to the Bishop of St Asaph and his court in 1397, lolo Goch (1320-98) would mention the members and officers of the court, and they, as his audience, would relish his observations and his amusing asides. This cywydd is full of fun and energy; it is a virtuoso display from a mature and experienced, old bard. His poetry was not meant to be read in private but to be listened to and savoured. He appears to have been on intimate terms with the Bishop for he occasionally teases him and pulls his leg. Obviously, Bishop leuan Trefor (John Trevor) held him in great affection. All the company would react with knowing amusement throughout, and, especially, at his final couplet, impudent and waggish, when he implies that he will be rewarded by the Bishop with gold! How sad that there is no description of how these bards performed. There is a much later record by George Owen Harry, Vicar of Cemais, Pembrokeshire, in his Well-sprynge of True Nobility, about 1605:
the bard must have his epitaph ready within a month of the burial: against which day the chiefest of the family and kindred of the deceased would be present, and the chiefest gentlemen of the countrey would be assembled together to heare and judge of the same, in whose hearing the same epitaph must be openly, and with a loud and clear voice, recited.
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The Statute of Gruffudd ap Cynan, drawn up at the 1523 Eisteddfod at Caerwys. The statute laid down rules and regulations for the function and craft of poets and musicians. But by this time the art of the bard had deteriorated: much differinge from those of ancient time by reason of the ignorance and unskilfulnesse of the authors thereof. There is no mention of harpers or datgeiniaidmerely a recitation! A musical term that has changed its meaning over the years is cerdd dantmusic for stringsharp or crwth; during the nineteenth century it became synonymous with canu penillionthe art of setting poetry to the traditional melodies played on the harp. The term cerdd dafod (literally, the craft, or music of the tongue) has remained constant throughout its historypoetry in the strict alliterative metres.
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There has always been a strong tradition that there was intercourse between the Irish and Welsh bards and musicians around the year 1100, brought about by Gruffudd ap Cynan, King of Gwynedd, whose mother was Irish. In a History of Cambria published by David Powell in 1584 we read: There are three sorts of minstrels in Wales: 1 The first sort named Beirdd. 2 The second sort of them are plaiers upon instruments, chiefly the harp and crowth, whose musike for the most part came to Wales with the said Gruffudd ap Cynan, who being on the one side an Irishman by his mother and grandmother, and also born in Ireland, brought over with him out of that countrie divers cunning musicians into Wales, who devised in a manner all the instrumental musike that is now here used, as appeareth as well by the books written of the same, as also by the names of the tunes and measures used among them to this daie. 3 The third sort are Atkaneiaidthe singers of songs. The Celtic scholar, Professor J. Caerwyn Williams, notes that there was an Irish presence in Gwynedd and, especially, Anglesey, even before Gruffudd ap Cynan's time; the Irish, the Danes and Scandinavians of Ireland helped him in both invasions to regain his kingdom (see Beirdd y Tywysogion, Llên Cymru XI 1/2 1970 and, in English, The Poets of the Welsh Princes). Professor Williams adds that it is reasonable to assume that Gruffudd ap Cynan considered himself not just as a king who had led his people successfully but also as one who promoted religion, learning and culture, emulating, perhaps, the example of the celebrated King Brian Boru of Ireland (c.AD 9401014). He shows that this was a fruitful time in Welsh literature for it coincided with the golden age of medieval Welsh prose, the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, Culhwch and Olwen, Lludd and Llefelys, Breuddwyd Macsen, Breuddwyd Rhonabwy, and of works which bore French influence, the Three Romances (Peredur, Owain and Geraint), and also the chronicles of the Welsh abbeys. Writing earlier in the twentieth century Professor T. Gwynn Jones observed that he could not deny the validity of the tradition that Gruffudd ap Cynan had brought poets and musicians with him from Ireland; although this is not substantiated in the Hanes Gruffudd ap Cynan (History of Gruffudd ap Cynan) written shortly after his reign; the tradition was so strong that the rules and regulations dealing with the function and craft of the poets and musicians drawn up for the 1523 Eisteddfod at Caerwys were named The Statute of Gruffudd ap Cynan so as to give historic, royal significance to the occasion. But Professor Caerwyn Williams does not concur: although Gruffudd ap Cynan could have influenced the Welsh bardic order during his reign, there is no evidence that he did, and very little likelihood that he could have imposed Irish practices on the Welsh bards, even had he tried. The Hanes tells that his chief harper, a pencerdd named Gellan, died in battle, in the retreat from Aberlleiniog in
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1094. Yet it is apparent that there were striking similarities in the art and the custom of the Welsh and Irish bards of this period especially in the names of the musical measures, which we shall discuss later on, which appear closer to Irish than to Welsh. The eisteddfod tradition For those who are only vaguely familiar with Wales I should explain that Eisteddfod [Eias in eye; steddas in tether; fodas in vod or odd], a word which originally meant a session or assembly of poets and musicians, is derived from the Welsh verb eistedd, to sit. It has evolved to denote a competitive festival devoted to the arts. The earliest that can be traced, according to the Chronicle of the Princes (Brut y Tywysogion), was held at Christmas at Cardigan in 1176 under the patronage of Lord Rhys ap Gruffudd: Lord Rhys held a special feast in the Castle of Aberteifi; he instituted two contests between the bards and the poets, and the other between the harpers, crowthers and pipers. The victors in both competitions were to receive chairs and gifts. The harpist from the court of Lord Rhys won the instrumental contest, and poets from Gwynedd (north Wales) won the bardic prizes. There are several references to an eisteddfod held at Carmarthen about 1450 or '51 under the patronage of Gruffudd ap Nicolas; the winning bard was Dafydd ab Edmwnd who had classified the rules of versification and had them confirmed at this eisteddfod. The silver harp was won by Cynwrig, a harper from Treffynnon (Holywell) and the silver tongue for the best datgeiniad by Rhys Bwting (or Bwtling, according to the poet, Guto'r Glyn c.1415-93), from nearby Prestatyn. The next important eisteddfodau were at Caerwys in 1523 and 1567. Thereafter the tradition degenerated until it was rekindled at the end of the eighteenth century by the London-based Gwyneddigion Society, when literary men gathered in taverns for disputation and entertainment in verse and harp music. During the early nineteenth century the eisteddfod was revived by a group of offeiriaid llengar (literary clerics) and the Cymreigyddion Society, and, in the 1860s, culminated with the formation of the National Eisteddfod Society. Large and small eisteddfodau have flourished ever since, stimulating cultural and artistic life in Wales.t The seventeenth-century manuscript of Robert ap Huw David Powell mentions books of music; these would have been manuscripts, but alas, only one book has survived of the old Welsh harp music, that of Robert ap Huw, of Bodwigan, Llanddeusant, Anglesey, (grandson of the poet, Siôn Brwynog) which he probably wrote in 1613. Some of it
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was copied from the notebook of an earlier harper, William Penllyn, who graduated as a pencerdd, master musician, at the famous Caerwys Eisteddfod in 1567. It appears that Robert ap Huw was at some time a court harpist to James I. The poet Huw Machno describes him, certainly before 1623: Gwr od [=odiaethol] yn dwyn gair ydwyd A gwas y breninteg wyd. Gwr addwyn, doeth, gwreiddwych, Ag i ras Siams, gwr sy wych, A'i gerddor mewn rhagorddysg A ddeil gerdd ddofn, ddi-lwgr ddysg. (An excellent man thou art, a servant of the Kingthou art fair; a gentle person, wise, of handsome pedigree, and to his Grace James, a fine man; preeminent as his musician, upholding great music, incorruptible art.) There is no official mention of him in King James's Accounts, but minstrels were often employed at court in other capacities or as musicians of other courtiers. Robert ap Huw died in 1665, at the ripe old age of eighty-five, and in his will there was a bequest to his godson of his harp. The old man was extremely concerned that the harp should be cared for: Item: he left & bequeathed to his Godsonne Robt Edwards during his life his best Harpe, uppon this Condicion that the said Robert Edwards shall not take from of the said harpe The Kings Armes, which is in Silver fixed thereupon but in case he the said Robert Edward will take it away, or will suffer any body els soe to doe, then his will & meaning was, that the said Harpe should be taken from the sd. Robt. Edward, & should be to the use of the said Testator's right heire.
Robert ap Huw's manuscript has caused great interest among musicians ever since it was brought to light by the antiquarian Lewis Morris during the eighteenth century. He, also, was born and brought up in Anglesey, only thirty years after the death of ap Huw, yet the music was quite incomprehensible to the cultured, oracular, Lewis Morris. It was written in a strange tablature, and the music was the product of a different age. It may have been obsolete even when ap Huw copied it in 1613. The curious tablature utilized the first seven letters of the alphabet: a b c d e f g. The lowest note used is the C of the bass clef (second space), and highest the E above the treble stave. This makes a scale of twenty-four strings, although, according to contemporary poems, harps had about thirty strings. No harps survive from this age, but there is a small model, about nine inches high, in silver in the possession of the Mostyn family. It is, of course, a silversmith's representation and not a replica. The present Lord Mostyn considers that it was made before the first Eisteddfod held at Caerwys in
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1523, and it was awarded in competition to the best harper of the time. (The Mostyn family were among the most prominent of the Eisteddfod patrons.) Though the silversmith provided only eight strings, rather than the usual thirty, it gives a clear representation of the shape of the harp during the early sixteenth century. There is a similar harp of the same period, pictured with a crwth, on a highly decorated bedhead in Cotehele House in Cornwall, brought there by the widow of Sir Griffith ap Rhys when she married Sir Piers Edgcumbe in 1532. An inscription on it proclaims the excellent workmanship of its maker, Harry ap Griffith. Unfortunately, some of the carving below the harper's hand is damaged, and the hand and bow of the crowther have fallen off. The crwth has five strings, and the fine craftsman has not managed to carve the required number of strings on the harpthe expected twenty-four to thirty.
The Mostyn silver harp model awarded to the best harper at the first Eisteddfod held at Caerwys, 1523. Many scholars have attempted to transcribe Robert ap Huw's notation an octave lowerat the Guidonian pitch, but I believe that the bass chords, sometimes of four notes, would be too low to have any clarity, and the occasional overlapping of the two hands would be impracticable. Played at the lower pitch the music sounds dense and dull. It is also unlikely that the Welsh harpists would be concerned with the convention of using Guido's pitch. There were five different keys or tunings in use: Cras gywair, Bragod gywair, Lleddf gywair, Gogywair and Isgywair. Nobody has yet defined satisfactorily what these scales were, and, consequently, this has caused great speculation as to how the music should sound. Nor can we be sure about the rhythms of the pieces, so that any transcriber is bound to take some liberties in his interpretation. The Welsh poets had their strict rules and regulations, and they wrote complicated books, gramadegau'r penceirddiad, poetry grammars, which all aspiring poets had to master before passing on to higher grades. The musicians emulated with their musical grammars and methods for the instruction of would-be harpers. One might expect, therefore, that these manuscripts would reveal how the music should be interpreted; alas, this is not so. The chief musicians, the penceirddiaid, were astute and crafty, for they would write down only some of the regulations so that it would be necessary for the pupil to be instructed personally by the pencerdd. This custom was prevalent elsewhere; while discussing A Manual of Lute-Playing published in France in 1570, the famous author, Marin Mersenne (15881648), observes that they have thought
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harpers and singers. A comparable development can be traced in Welsh poetry of this period when new free-verse forms came to be used in Wales, and during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries most of the poets wrote in the free ballad-metre lyrics which were to be sung to popular English tunes like Crimson Velvet, Greensleeves, Toll Bell. This movement was stimulated by cultured itinerant drovers who translated and brought back to Wales the English songs, and composed original songs and ballads which they disseminated either as broadsheets or through publication. Lewis Morris writes in 1762: I do not remember to have seen anything in the shape of a song until the merry reign of Charles II, about which time song-writing began to sprout in imitation of the English and French; and all good substantial Cywydds and Awdlau [Odes] about that time hid their heads. However, his opinions must not be accepted at face value; there was still much writing in the strict metres which Morris might not have been aware of, but, certainly, the professional bards and musicians had ceased to exist with the disappearance of their natural patrons, the Welsh gentry. A closer look at ap Huw's music Let us now examine the ap Huw manuscript in more detail. After Lewis Morris came upon it around 1738 he had it bound for one shilling and sixpence, and it was circulated among many musicians of the time who were mystified and intrigued by it. It then passed on to the library of the Welsh School in London, and finally came to rest at the British Museum where it is catalogued as BM Additional MS 14,905. In 1936 the University of Wales Press published a facsimile edition to make the manuscript available for universal study, and copies of this could, no doubt, be borrowed from many Welsh libraries. You would need to ask for it under its title Musica neu Beroriaeth given to it by Lewis Morris. At first sight the lettering is difficult to decipher until you become accustomed to the symbols used around 1600. However, transcribed into modern lettering it becomes more legible. The two hands are separated by a horizontal line with the bass chords below, and the treble above the line. The angular strokes above the treble (/) indicate that the three notes must be struck not as a chord but as individual notes beginning from the bottom. If the strokes were written in the opposite direction (\) then the notes would be played from the top downwards. I have transcribed the manuscript into more conventional music in Illustration BB. But we will have to pass through another stage before discovering the correct notes. In the music grammars or treatises already mentioned it is stated that these particular pieces, the Clymau Cytgerdd, from pages 2334 in the manuscript should be played in the Cras gywair. This tuning is given as a
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diagram on p. 108 of ap Huw's manuscript. On the left are the strings, while on the right the tuning of those strings is illustrated: the B strings must all be tuned down to A, and the F strings down to E. This gives us a pentatonic scale of five notesa scale very common in primitive music and in folk music throughout the world. (You will produce a pentatonic scale on the piano if you play just the black notes.) Illustrations C and CC show the Cras gywair tuning. Now we need to transcribe BB so that all the F strings sound E and the B strings sound A, resulting in the transcription of the Clymau Cytgerdd on pages 2024. This element of re-tuning the harp strings, what is technically called scordatura, has not been utilized by earlier interpreters of ap Huw's music, although the device is apparent in the table of scales on p.108 of the manuscript. Marin Mersenne refers to a similar proceedure in France and Italy: certain strings must not be re-tuned, whereas all the others may be raised or lowered. He gives a scale of twenty-four strings and indicates eight notes which may not be varied, and these he calls the principal strings. In the Welsh musical grammars, and there are many of them, copied by scribes during the sixteenth century, we read: This is the Classification of String Music [meaning harp or crwth] . there are eight Principal Strings. Elsewhere we read: There are seven notes, and of the seven only four may be changed in pitch, and the others may not. (The writer of this treatise has confined himself to a scale of one octave. We shall discover that the strings C, D, and G are the notes which may not be changed or varied.) Now we come to my transcription of the Clymau Cytgerdd. In an elegy to the harper, Dafydd Maenan, who died Easter 1567, the poet, Wiliam Cynwal, in his sadness complains: Canodd y clymau, cwynynt, Cryf angerdd, ar gytgerdd gynt. (He played the clymau, all mourn [with] strong emotion, cytgerdd in his day.) Note the use here of the interruptive phrase, the sangiad. These clymau cytgerdd, therefore, were part of the repertoire of reputable harpers, not just the studies of young learners. lolo Goch, in a poem around 1397, enjoys listening to: Cytgerdd ddiddan, lân, lonydd (entertaining cytgerdd, pure, calm). The music is in the metre or measure of Mac y mwn hir, shown as: 1111 0000 1010 1111 0000 1011. These indicate the sequence of the chords to be usedthe 1 shows what we would call the tonic chord (but in second inversion); this would be called the cyweirdant, while the 0 chord would be called tyniad, but with the scordatura, it gives an unexpected chord of (from the lower notes) A,D,E, but no more extraordinary than what was printedB,D,F. I have added barlines, which may not tally with ap Huw's, and I have ignored without comment what I have considered to be his mistakes
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or omissions. Section 1 is called a cainc (literally a branch), which is followed by twenty-three variants with virtually the same harmonies for each cainc or variant, and forming a complete cwlwm (literally knot). Though the second variant appears simple and calm, the final cadence reveals two discords in the treblethe D and E together both times; but we should become used to this sound for the D and E, an octave lower, are already present in each tyniad chord. In my interpretation I have stretched some of these cadences with an extra beat; I cannot see how all those notes in the treble can be accommodated in so short a space! In the third variant the hands overlap, and I have indicated a sliding thumb over two stringsdescribed as a hanner crafiad (a half-scrape) in ap Huw's notes on p.35 of the manuscript. Elsewhere, this half-scrape might be with the back of the second or third fingernail, and, similarly, with the double-scrape (crafiad dwbl). In the second bar I have shown F flat (where I have written E natural earlier) just to illustrate that the harper would be playing different strings, whereas on a keyboard the same effect is not possible because only one note is available. I should point out that the several strings tuned in unison (E and F flat, and the two A's) give rise to the intriguing effect of echoing strings, which enhance the sound, even when, on paper, there are so many repetitive notes. In variant 5 the rhythm changes: the previous 4/2 time becomes 12/4 time; in other words, the simple quadruple changes to compound quadruple time. Variant 6 is not written out, but the instruction to play it states: The sixth to be played like the fifth, but raising the upper thumb by two stringsi.e. the upper thumb plays a third higher, giving treble E instead of C, and treble F instead of D (but sounding E). Similar instructions are given for later variants. Variants 12 and 13 use the device of crychu y fawd a shake of the thumb, which is a quick thumb trill on one string with the naila device not found in modern harp technique. It appears that harpists nowadays prefer to keep their nails very short. I have transcribed it as a trill or tremolando of four notes (but later on just three notes), but there might be more notes according to the skill and virtuosity of the harper. It should be understood that the technique of the harpists at the time of Robert ap Huw, and of William Penllyn, from whose book pages 23 to 34 were copied (these Clymau Cytgerdd), was quite different from present-day methods. The players used their nails, like lutenists and guitarists, and fast-repeating notes were considered to be an attractive embellishment of their style. This brilliant-sounding medieval nail-technique survives in the playing of South American folk and popular harpists; the harp was brought to them centuries ago by Spanish explorers and missionaries.
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Variants 18 to 24 have the treble in triplets; these, for the sake of clarity, I have written in common time. It is possible that they may also be faster as we approach the end of the cwlwm. They end abruptly; I wonder if they added a final chord of C major? Second inversion, of course! Thus we have twenty-four variants over a set pattern of chords. In this cwlwm the metre or measure was Mac y mwn hir. There are twenty-three further clymau (plural of cwlwm) from pp.28 to 34 of the manuscript, though only a few of the variants are shown. Their names and their chord progressions were: Macy mwn hir
1111 0000 1010 1111 0000 1011
Mac y mwn byr
1100 1111
Corffiniwr
1100 1011 1100 1011
Corsgoloff
1101 1001 011
Rhiniart
1001 1100 11
Cor Aldan
1110 1001 0001
Tresi Heli
1000 1110 0010 11
Wnsach
1111 0001
Corditulach
1001 1000 1001 11
Cor Finfaen
1011 0111 0110 11
Cor Wrcoc
1001 0110 11
Carsi
1000 1011 1000 1011
Brath yn ysgol
1011 1011 1011 1011 1011 1011
Fflamgwr gwrgan
1011 1011 0011 0011
Calchan
1100 1111 01
Brit odidog
0010 0010 1101 1101
Trwsgwl mawr
0000 1111 0000 1011
Tytyr bach
0011 0011
Mac y mynfaen
0011 0000 1100 1111
Toddf
0110 0011
Hattyr
0010 1100 1011
Mac y delgi
0111 011
Alban hyfaidd
1011 0100 0100 1011
Alfarch
0000 0000 1111 1111
I must hasten to add that the crwth-player noted his chords contrary to the harpist: the cyweirdant for the harpist is
marked 1, but for the crowther 0, and similarly the harpist's tyniad was marked 0, and 1 by the crythor. Peniarth MS 155, copied from a manuscript of Gruffudd Hiraethog, refers to this: Tyniad yn rhol y krythor yw kyweirdant yn rhol y telynior (Tyniad in the rule of the crowther is cyweirdant in the rule of the harper). The original manuscript was written, perhaps, around 1530, by Gruffudd especially for Richard Mostyn, the president of the first Caerwys Eisteddfod of 1523. It appears that Gruffudd Hiraethog would have been too young to have taken part in this eisteddfod and had died before that of 1567. It has often been observed that the titles of these measures are strange to Welsh eyes and ears; they are spelt variously in many manuscripts, and
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It has often been observed that the titles of these measures are strange to Welsh eyes and ears; they are spelt variously in many manuscripts, and lead one to believe that there must have been some Irish inflence at the time of Gruffudd ap Cynan in 1100. Hardly any two manuscripts agree on the spellings of these names, thus emphasizing that the art was normally transmitted by word of mouth and came to be written down only during the sixteenth century. It is curious that ap Huw has bungled badly in his copying of the first cwlwm; we have just studied the cwlwm in the Mac y mwn hir metre, yet, before each variant ap Huw has written the name of the other metres Corffiniwr, Corsgoloff etc., with their chord symbols, which, of course, do not fit those particular variants. Fortunately, this confusion does not persist, and his second cwlwm, Mac y mwn byr, follows on page 28 of the manuscript. This, and the following cwlwm in the Mac y delgi metre, are written out in full, but all the other twenty-one metres show only the first cainc. At the end of the Clymau Cytgerdd he writes: Terfyn y pedwar mesur ar hugain, yr un gainc ar bob mesur gan mwya. Mi briciais yn gyntaf Mac mwn hir, a Mac mwn byr, a Mac y delgi, a phedair cainc ar hugain ymhob un ohonynt, ac wedi hynny, y pedwar mesur ar hugain ar un gainc, ond newidio'r mesur fel y gwelwch. (The end of the twenty-four measures, mostly the same cainc on each measure. I wrote first Mac mwn hir, and Mac mwn byr, and Mac y delgi, and twenty-four ceinciau in each of them, and after that, the twentyfour measures on one cainc, but changing the measure, as you can see.) Because he used just one melody (cainc) throughout, the Clymau Cytgerdd appear monotonous, but they show the type of variant used; for instance, variants 9, 16, and 24 will have similar pattern, shape and decoration in whichever measure they are played. And if a crwth-player (crowther) plays with the harpist, then the leader will proclaim that he is going to play in a particular measure and the other will know which chords are appropriate. There are inconsistencies and aberrations in the manuscript which suggest that ap Huw himself did not pass through the demanding bardic school of study. He may have been copying from an older manuscript which he did not fully comprehend, although, in one of his poems, in an englyn which is written in his own hand (BM.14898), he claims that he was a master of music and that he had learnt all the music required of a pencerdd:
Prif geinciau pynciau y pencerddmi a'i gwn, Mi ganaf fy nghytgerdd; Dysgais golofnau dwysgerdd, Dysgais bedair cadair cerdd.
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(I know all the principal ceinciau of a pencerdd; I will perform my cytgerdd; I have learnt the profound colofnau, and I have learnt the four chairs of music.) Ceinciau=melodies. Pencerdd=chief musician. Colofnau (columns) and cadeiriau (chairs) are extended pieces of music of which, alas, we have no examplespossibly akin to the Awdl in poetry, an extended poem utilizing several metres. Undoubtedly, he was the last of the harpers to have played this ancient harp music of medieval times, for there is no trace of this style in later Welsh music. The manuscript contains almost a hundred pages (pages 1 to 14 are missing), with about thirty pieces of varying length called, Caniad, Gosteg, Profiad, Pwnc, but there are scores of names of other pieces also, both here and in many other sixteenth century manuscripts, and all those pieces of music have vanished without trace. On pages 33-4. I show a list of ornaments that appear in on page 35 of ap Huw's manuscript. No absolute indication of rhythm, duration and metre can be understood with certainty. Those who played this music played from memory and were taught by the penceirddiaid, the masters, without the aid of books. Likewise with poetry: the earliest bardic grammars were written during the fourteenth century, and it is likely that the musicians followed suit many generations later. Perhaps amateurs, well-off gentlemen of the age, or clerics, coaxed the harpers to devise a system of musical notation, so that they, too, could learn more of their highly secret craft and discipline. On page 106 Robert ap Huw gives the names and titles of pieces he had written elsewhere: And these I have pricked in another bookthis, of course, was written in Welsh, but he uses the Elizabethan term for writing or making a mark: pricioto prick. Sadly, only the one manuscript survives, though, in his will he bequeathed his books to his son, Henry Hughes. Robert ap Huw copied the Clymau Cytgerdd, pages 24 to 34, from the book of an earlier harper, William Penllyn, who graduated at the Caerwys Eisteddfod of 1567 as Pencerdd ac Athro (chief musician and teacher). The word cytgerdd, namely, cyd + cerdd (together + music), suggests performing together, and it is reasonable to presume that the harpist and the crwthplayer joined forces, for the chords and length of each piece are specified beforehand. The students would have to adhere strictly to the rules, but later, as fully graduated penceirddiaid, they might improvise, compose more freely, and extend the rules. Those who wished to pursue the harp in medieval times had to learn to play and recognize a specific number of these compositions before passing to a higher gradejust as in the bardic shools of poetry. This training was spread over many years, and poets and musicians often taught their own sons e.g. leuan Delynor followed by his son Edward, Siôn ap Rhys followed by Dafydd Llwyd, and, possibly, William Penllyn by Ieuan Penllyn and
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Hywel Llwyd or Hwlcyn Llwyd by Robert Llwydall mentioned at the Caerwys Eisteddfod of 1567. The most perplexing of all the problems of Robert ap Huw's manuscript is the question of keys and scales. So far, we have discussed only the Cras gywair, which, according to the diagram on page 108 of Musica, was a pentatonic scale. The music treatises state firmly that there were only five warranted scales to be used, namely, Crasgywair, Bragod gywair, Lleddf gywair, Gogywair and Isgywair. Yet from these five may be made any number of scales by treating them modally and starting the key-note from a different position, in the Cras gywair, as shown. The Cras gywair, then, gives five modal pentatonic scales. I have added the sol-fa equivalents; to readers of sol-fa they reflect very clearly the modal modal qualities of scales, and this subtlety must have been important in medieval timesso important, in fact, that one harper was drummed out of the profession by his fellows for his arrogance in daring to play before them in keys or scales that were forbidden by their laws of music! Robert ap Huw gives a diagram for tuning Lleddf gywair Gwyddyl, which, according to one treatise, is the same as Lleddf gywair. I hesitate to translate these purely musical terms into English, for they can lead would-be interpreters along wrong paths. Moreover, words have a habit of changing meaning over centuries. In John Davies's Dictionarum Duplex of 1632, and in Thomas Jones's Dictionary of 1688, lleddf is given as awry, oblique, askew, warped, while much later it came to mean sad and minor (as in minor key). Robert ap Huw has supplied two diagrams for Lleddf gywair Gwyddyl: on p.108: g a b c d e ghexatonic on p.109: g b b c d e gpentatonic I would choose the pentatonic as the more likely tuning, for he has added sharp signs below the two Bs to emphasize their being changed from A and B flat to B naturals. (Sharp signs (#) were formerly used to show a sharpening from flat to natural.) Sad to say, there is no piece in the Lleddf gywair in ap Huw's manuscript as far as we can tell, so we cannot verify and test the tuning. According to one treatise, in Peniarth 77, written by Sir Thomas Wiliems in 1576, the most common tuning was the Cras gywair. From a list of 130 pieces, seventy-one are in the Cras gywair, forty-three in the Bragod gywair, and sixteen in the Lleddf gywair. We do not have a contemporary account of these, but we know from the beautiful manuscript of John Jones, Gellilyfdy, written in 1605, that the Gogywair has a flattened third above the keynote. There is a manuscript of 1676 at the National Library of Wales in the hand of Gwilym Puw, one-time royalist soldier with Charles I, but by that year a recusant priest, which contains a drawing of a Welsh harp and the instructions on how to tune it. Ann Griffiths and Andre Schaefer discussed it in Welsh Music Vol.4 No.2. (1974/5). Gwilym Puw's draughtsmanship leaves much to be desired, for all the strings should lead into the
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Drawing of a Welsh harp by Gwilym Puw, 1676. neck of the harp rather than into the pillar, and his instructions for tuning the harp must be treated with cautionafter all, the old Welsh music had been superseded long before. Elsewhere, I have seen the Cras gywair called Bras gywair, but never Braidd gywair, as he calls it. Following his instructions it comes out as: g a a c d d ewhich is close! You will recall that ap Huw showed it as: g a a c d e e. Gwilym Puw's tuning for the Bragod gywair is: g a bb c d eb f, but I prefer to agree with the late Professor Thurston Dart that this was a scale of F major, though the tonality in the music, as we shall see, is a Dorian scale on the keynote G. For Gogywair Gwilym Puw gives: g a bb c d e f#. This matches the 1605 manuscript of John Jones, Gellilyfdy, who adds: 'Whichever note is chosen as keynotethe third above must be flattened'. I find that in the ap Huw MS the pieces in Gogywair have the
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