Music in Welsh Culture Before 1650

A Study of the Principal Sources

Sally Harper, University of Bangor, UK

Music in Wales has long been a neglected area. Scholars Contents: Introduction:the sources of Welsh music in have been deterred both by the need for a knowledge of context; Part I The Sources and Practice of Medieval Cerdd the , and by the fact that an oral tradition Dant: : a Welsh bardic craft in context; in Wales persisted far later than in other parts of Britain, Mastering the bardic crafts: oral and written sources; resulting in a limited number of sources with conventional and in early medieval Wales; The players of Cerdd notation. Sally Harper provides the first serious study of Dant and their social code; Gathering the documentation Welsh music before 1650 and draws on a wide range of of Cerdd Dant; Historical and theoretical sources of sources in Welsh, Latin and English to illuminate early Cerdd Dant musical practice. This book challenges and refutes two ; The Robert ap Huw manuscript and other widely held assumptions - that music in Wales before 1650 Welsh tablature. Part II The Latin Liturgy, its Chant and is impoverished and elusive, and that the extant sources are Embellishment: Sources for the medieval Welsh liturgy: an too obscure and fragmentary to warrant serious study. overview; The early Welsh Clas institutions; Anglo-Norman liturgical reform; Shaping a new liturgy: the adoption of Harper demonstrates that there is a far wider body of Sarum Use in Wales; Sources with music I: the Penpont source material than is generally realized, comprising Antiphoner; Sources with music II: the Bangor Pontifical; liturgical manuscripts, archival materials, chronicles and Late medieval evidence I: the institutions; Late medieval retrospective histories, inventories of pieces and players, evidence II: musical practice. Part III Welsh Music in an vernacular poetry and treatises. This book examines three English Milieu c.1550–1650: Mirroring England: cultural cerdd dant principal areas: the unique tradition of (liter- imitation and infiltration; Domestic and popular music- ally ‘the music of the string’) for harp and crwth; the Latin making I: the context; Domestic and popular music- liturgy in Wales and its embellishment, and ‘Anglicised’ sa- cred and secular materials from c.1580, which show Welsh making II: the repertory; A Welsh translation of John Case’s music mirroring English practice. Apologia Musices; The post-Reformation church I: parish and people; The post-Reformation church II: cathedral and Taken together, the primary material presented in this household chapel. Appendix of liturgical manuscripts; book bears witness to a flourishing and distinctive musical Bibliography; Indexes. tradition of considerable cultural significance, aspects of which have an important impact on wider musical practice Includes 61 b&w illustrations beyond Wales.

Sample pages for published titles are available to view online at: www.ashgate.com

To order, please visit: www.ashgate.com May 2007 All online orders receive a discount 462 pages Hardback Alternatively, contact our distributor: 978-0-7546-5263-2 Bookpoint Ltd, Ashgate Publishing Direct Sales, £60.00 130 Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4SB, UK Tel: +44 (0)1235 827730 Fax: +44 (0)1235 400454 Email: [email protected]