Glories of Bardic Music

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19803, 19 May 1934, Page 12

Glories of Bardic Music

ANCIENT THEMES ON THE HARP

Early in March Mr Arnold Dolmetsch | performed some of the Harp Music of j the Celtic Bards at his recital, London, Back Through the Centuries The music is stated to date from before the eleventh century, at which period it was codified, although the oldest existing manuscript was made in the time of Charles I. Unlike all other recorded European music before the end of the sixteenth century, this consists of a melody supported by a purely vertical harmony. The melodic line appeals immediately to the modern ear and it is rich in chromatic colour and dramatic effect. The harmony is firmly tonal, but, in addition to the usual chords, every sort of combination of notes is used, often as unorthodox as in our very modern composers; yet the most unusual chord is unfailingly resolved, sometimes through a complex ornament, showing that the whole structure was based on a strictly logical tradition. It is obvious that the existence of even a few bars of such music from that distant date would be sufficient to upset all accepted ideas of musical “development”; apart from this, there is the more valuable aspect, that the pieces so far heard have a dateless beauty that makes their recovery a matter of importance to all lovers of music. •Musicians of Wales The present manuscript was made by a Welsh harper, Robert ab Huw, of Anglesey, but some pieces came, he states, from William Pennllyn, who is recorded as chief bard in 1568. Lewis Morris made elaborate notes about this manuscript and published an account, with his idea of some of the tunes, in 1742, under the title of “Antient British Music.” Though it is now clear that he had not mastered the interpretation of the tablature, we owe Morris a great debt for his preservation of this and for his copies of other old manuscripts relating to this music. The question of the date remains to be examined. The numerous references in old writers to Bardic music cannot be dismissed with Burney’s arrogant contempt. Passages in Ammianus Marcellinus, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Monmouth, and many others, as well as the detailed, if not very clear, the detailed, if not very clear, accounts by Giraldus, attest the existence of something exceptional. There are other manuscripts in the British Museum dealing with this subject, and during the last century archaeological study appears to have agreed in regarding the present recension as repre- ;

i I senting a corpus of established musi< f ! resulting from the great reforming , congress of bards held by Gruffydd ai Cynan in 1040. The ensuing statutes codified in 1079 and in 1136, have beer 1 preserved, and laws of music by Prince 1 Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, of 1085, are also 3 known. Moreover, even earlier lawe 3 are called for evidence. The seventh--1 century Cadwallader, chat last British 3 king whose exit ennobles the closing 5 pages of the Galfridian historia, refers L —at all events by name—to one of the 3 very pieces that Mr Dolmetsch has ir ' his programme. 3 The interpretation of the tablature 3 has been a matter of difficulty, and probably it is only Mr Dolmetsch’s unique faculty for getting under the ' skin of such mysteries that has revealed it now. The result, so unlike everything else that he has given us, is the best proof of its correctness. In view of the date of the surviving material it may be well ter note that the harmonies would be unthinkable to the school of “Le Nuove Musiche” and that the melodic line has no affinity with the chromaticism of the madrigalists who followed Gesueldo. Other Harps with Souls But the implications of this music may go very much farther. That it had common ground with the Irish harp music seems undoubted, though its independence is attested by early rules that segregate two “keys” and certain tunes as Irish. The close connexion between all the Celtic peoples in Ireland, Britain, and Armorica is well known: they had a common Church which differed from that of England, since it was based on an earlier conversion • from sources farther east than Rome. The tablature of the Irish harp music, as preserved in the sixteenth-century Beaufort manuscript, is, however, quite different from the Welsh notation.but, like the Welsh, this manuscript is admitted to represent music of a date much anterior. The Irish archaeologist Edward Ledwich (in an addendum to J. C. Walker’s “Memoirs of the Irish Bards,” published in 1786) traced a resemblance between the Irish notation and that of the early Greeks. .Now, at a recent meeting of the Hellenic Society Mr E. Clements produced some of those earliest Greek hymns which are preserved by inscriptions. From that distance of time something quite unpalatable to European taste of to-day might have been forgiven, but actually the “Hymn of Nemesis” and the “Invocation to Kalliope” appealed instantly: they might have come from a modern platform.