The Robert Ap Huw Manuscript an Exploration
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THE ROBERT AP HUW MANUSCRIPT AN EXPLORATION OF ITS POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS 8 VERSE PETER GREENHILL 1995 CONTENTS I METHODOLOGY 1 II REPERTORY 6 III RESUMÉ OF THE MUSIC RECONSTRUCTED 17 IV TECHNICAL MATCHING 24 V VERSE METRICS 32 - Syllable Count and Length 33 - Structural Rhyme 37 - Cross-linking 38 - Tonal Accent 39 - Stress Accent 41 - Cynghanedd Accent 47 - Cynghanedd Types 54 - Stanzaic Division 72 - Individual Metres 77 VI EVALUATION 95 VII MODES OF VOCAL DELIVERY 103 VIII PERCUSSION 114 IX OTHER VERSE 119 APPENDIX – Example Settings of Poems 1 I. METHODOLOGY In introducing the subject of the poetry of the Gaelic-speaking filid, John Purser has written:- Their poetry developed an arcane syllabic style, with complex systems of rhyme, assonance and alliteration, which has come in for ill-placed criticism in that the delivery of this poetry was musical. Since the music is either lost or has been substantially ignored, attention has focussed largely on poetic technique, and the overall artistic effect in the context of its function has yet to be fairly assessed.1 Much the same could be said of the current position in respect of the medieval Welsh poetry. A reconstruction, however partial, of the musical aspects of this poetry can enable us to move towards an assessment and appreciation of it, and this has been one of my principal aims. The process of reconstructing is by definition an operation of synthesis, and because the methodology of synthesis is not as well established as that of analysis, I will begin here by describing in detail the kinds of methods and procedures I have used, and which I hold to be essential if reconstruction is to proceed substantially beyond speculation or artistic creativity. My more immediate purpose has been to take advantage of the opportunity afforded by the texts and grammars of poetry to validate interpretation of the nature of the instrumental music. Both arts have suffered from the loss of the understanding of performance techniques, but of course this has been more devastating to the instrumental music which, as art, is far more incomplete just sitting on the page. 1 Purser, John: Scotland's Music, (Edinburgh, 1992), p. 71. 2 Insofar as the modern penillion tradition, when it has been applied to the medieval texts, could be viewed as an attempt to recover these musical aspects, it will have been applied without informed use of the material on the original music. One attempt at reconstruction independent of the penillion tradition was made by J. Glyn Davies2 in 1911 when he suggested a rhythmic model for the performance of the cywydd deuair hirion, but he too was not in a position to apply the material on the original music. Having arrived at a reconstruction of the music text of the MS., and some understanding of the principles of composition and how these were implemented across a large corpus of the repertory, several aspects of the performance of the poetry can be addressed:- 1)identification of possible parts of the accompaniment repertory. 2)identification of possible parts of the vocal repertory that were accompanied. 3)identification of possible ways in which the two above would have been matched at the levels of the syllable, line, stanza and entire piece, i.e. as regards rhythm and metre. 4)identification of possible ways in which melodic matching may have been achieved. Both the music and the poetry3 are extremely large corpora which are highly specific in their detail (although not highly variegated), and their metres are extremely complex and sophisticated. These factors 2 This will be discussed in detail in Chapter III below. 3 By poetry here is meant the strict-metre poetry that was performed from the period of gogynfeirdd composition until the time that traditional performance with accompaniment, either of stringed instruments or the staff, lapsed. The date of this, following Caerwys 1567 has not been established. Poetry in the free metres and the poetry of the cynfeirdd will be discussed briefly in Chapter IX. 3 result in a great barrage of criteria which would need to be met in order to achieve a successful match between any parts of both. Hence the existence of the poetry texts provides the ideal opportunity for testing the viability of any proposition concerning the music, in two stages:- 1) If the music was like such in some aspect, then is there any way in which the poetry technically could have been performed which could be matched to this aspect? If not then there would be uncomfortable metrical overflows and residues appearing in either the music or the verse (either universally or in occasional instances). This stage can be broken down into a series of predictions about the poetry that are made by the model of the music, and it is a simple operation to test whether the poetry conforms to each of these. 2) Is a matching of such an aspect which is technically possible actually viable in terms of a) the poetry and b) the overall artistic impact of the music and poetry combined? It would be impossible to judge these if we had no access to the aesthetics of the culture, but of course we do have quite good access, including a rich assortment of descriptive material specifically on the music and poetry, and copious evidence of the great esteem in which they were held and the prestige that they could confer. In short we should expect the result to be really impressive in terms of the musical pinnacles of sophisticated cultures. Realistically, I think that an incorrect proposition concerning the contours of the music would not pass these tests :- that any proposition that passes them will be the correct one. But as with all testing, the sequence in which procedures are performed is vitally important for the methodology to be effective, else circular tautologies result. Here the range of possible solutions to the music have been isolated without 4 reference to the need for some of it to accompany the poetry.4 'Offering up' this model of the music to the poetry has to be a subsequent exercise, so that settings of the poetry are determined essentially by the contours of the music not the poetry, and at this stage the model of the music must not be modified. At this point settings of the combined music and poetry are tested as regards technical possibility. Then, only subsequently, it is valid to modify the settings of the poetry to incorporate non-essential characteristics they may have had, in order to approach the second stage of testing regarding overall aesthetic impact. Finally, only after this, is it valid to work in the opposite direction, back from the combined settings to modify any characteristics of the music which may contain some latitude in their interpretation (tempo is the main instance of this). Here I will work through these stages, beginning with a discussion of repertory, a resumé of the basic scheme of the music as reconstructed, an examination of the basic technical possibility of matching, a long series of sections incorporating into the match all the metrical characteristics of the poetry, and examinations of possible modes of delivery, of the rôle of percussion and of the significance of verse lying outside this Welsh tradition. Most of what follows concerns rhythm and metre, because it is in these areas that the validity of extrapolating from the instrumental music to the poetry (and in the reverse direction) is strongest. Central to this is the fundamental rhythmic scheme of the digital unit of music metre, which is derived from the analysis of the music text described in Part 5: RHYTHM of this work. The derivation itself was predicated on the basis of 4 I did not begin to study the poetry in relation to the music until a full year after I had finally finished the reconstruction of the music. 5 selection of the most compact scheme which can consistently be demonstrated to be possible in relation to virtually the entire music text. 6 II. REPERTORY ACCOMPANIMENT REPERTORY It is argued in Part 7: REPERTORY that each of the different forms of the instrumental music may have had a particular purpose to which it was put, and in some cases several different purposes. It may have been the case that the accompaniment repertory of vocalists was entirely separate from that of the professional instrumentalists, but this is improbable in view of the Statute literature reference to the situation where a datgeiniad pen pastwn could only perform with the permission of an instrumentalist, if there was one present. Presumably if permission was denied, the instrumentalist would provide stringed accompaniment for the vocalist who would dispense with the staff. So it would seem that instrumentalists had in their repertory accompaniment music which they would be able to provide for vocalists. This collaborative music may have been the same music that the vocalist used for self-accompaniment, or it, or part of it, may have been more complex of course. So the possibilities are that part of the instrumental repertory was used as self- accompaniment and part used as collaborative accompaniment. It is also possible that no examples of this part or these parts of the repertory are in the MS., and also that they were not even catalogued. But each form in the repertory that we are aware of needs careful examination. The details of each form in this respect are examined in the REPERTORY part, but I will summarize this here. A case can be made out for each of the forms, excepting the profiad, as accompaniment, on the basis of internal evidence from the music text or external evidence (particularly the text of poems), and usually both.