Book contents
- A History of Welsh Music
- A History of Welsh Music
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Music Examples
- Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Maps
- Chapter 1 Music in Welsh History
- Chapter 2 Words for Music
- Chapter 3 Music in Worship before 1650
- Chapter 4 Secular Music before 1650
- Chapter 5 The Eisteddfod Tradition
- Chapter 6 Women and Welsh Folk Song
- Chapter 7 Instrumental Traditions after 1650
- Chapter 8 The Celtic Revival
- Chapter 9 Musical Communications in the Long Nineteenth Century
- Chapter 10 Nonconformists and Their Music
- Chapter 11 Professionalisation in the Twentieth Century
- Chapter 12 Composing Cymru
- Chapter 13 Traditions and Interventions
- Chapter 14 New Traditions
- Chapter 15 Singing Welshness
- Chapter 16 Postscript
- Book part
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 4 - Secular Music before 1650
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 September 2022
- A History of Welsh Music
- A History of Welsh Music
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Music Examples
- Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Maps
- Chapter 1 Music in Welsh History
- Chapter 2 Words for Music
- Chapter 3 Music in Worship before 1650
- Chapter 4 Secular Music before 1650
- Chapter 5 The Eisteddfod Tradition
- Chapter 6 Women and Welsh Folk Song
- Chapter 7 Instrumental Traditions after 1650
- Chapter 8 The Celtic Revival
- Chapter 9 Musical Communications in the Long Nineteenth Century
- Chapter 10 Nonconformists and Their Music
- Chapter 11 Professionalisation in the Twentieth Century
- Chapter 12 Composing Cymru
- Chapter 13 Traditions and Interventions
- Chapter 14 New Traditions
- Chapter 15 Singing Welshness
- Chapter 16 Postscript
- Book part
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The dominant genre of secular music in medieval Wales was cerdd dant (literally ‘string craft’), a highly distinctive repertory played on the harp or crwth. Its delivery relied on highly trained professional instrumentalists, who worked in close partnership with Welsh strict-metre poets: both crafts were an intrinsic part of Welsh medieval ‘high culture’, linked to an exclusive bardic order. Though largely transmitted orally, some thirty items from the repertory were entabulated by the Anglesey harper Robert ap Huw c.1613. Cerdd dant largely retained its status until the 1560s, when the fashion for acquiring an English education gradually brought about a sea change in musical taste, effected by the importation of English tunes, texts, instruments and books. Some of the Welsh nobility nevertheless retained a loyalty to the practitioners of the traditional bardic crafts well into the seventeenth century, resulting in a mixed economy in some households, where vernacular music and poetry might rub shoulders with the latest English-style entertainments.
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- A History of Welsh Music , pp. 78 - 99Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022