I was playing at a school Chapel this morning; sadly, St. David’s Day was unmentioned, but I didn’t let it pass: Vaughan Williams’s Prelude on Rhosymedre before, and an improvisation on Men of Harlech as afters.
I sometimes ponder how much of my musical instinct comes from my Welsh genes: my maternal grandfather’s father came from Montgomeryshire and my mother has often told me how they both would ‘naturally sing in harmony’. I feel harmony is probably my strongest musical instinct too; I often improvise on rising and falling chromatic scale.
[caption id="attachment_936" align="alignnone" width="261"]
My Great Grandfather: Albert Joseph Owen
b.30th July 1884, Rock House, Trelystan; d.1965[/caption]
Of all hymn tunes, Cwm Rhondda is just about the best known and most lustily sung. I recall with some profound echo within the singing of this hymn at my Great Aunt Dorothy’s funeral a few years ago. Not only were my siblings and I giving it our lustiest 4-part harmony, but there was everyone else too: for years Great Aunt Dorothy played the piano for a Male Voice choir, and they had turned out in force. At the end, the Priest gently rested her hand on the coffin and said with a sense of joy: ‘Oh Dorothy! Can you hear us? The singing’s amazing!’
The fulcrum of Cwm Rhondda is, of course that dominant 7th, the one that all Welsh men linger over, stretching out that inevitable need for fulfilment until everyone has felt the pull and can then savour the arrival in the promised land of the tonic. What a glorious, thrilling sound to grow up with; what an inspiring example to have the men around you creating this for you with nothing more than their combined voices. How this tradition should be sustained and valued.
Hapus dydd Dewi Sant!
