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.

The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw a revival of interest in Welsh language and culture, and the chapter addresses this as it was reflected in music. The period saw flourishing activity from scholars and musicians in collecting, publishing and performing Welsh ‘traditional’ music, supported by newly formed Welsh and London-Welsh cultural societies. A number of important publications sought to capture Welsh music and present it to a wider public - particularly a fashionable London public - notably, Blind Parry’s Antient British Music (1742) and Edward Jones’s Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards (1784); while a more direct reflection of the Welsh oral tradition is found in the work of collectors such as Iolo Morganwg, John Jenkins ‘Ifor Ceri’ and Maria Jane Williams. Amidst this activity, two apparently contradictory but in fact related ideas were being pursued, sometimes simultaneously: an idea of the place of music in the deep antiquity of Welsh culture, and an idea of music as an expression of Welsh identity in modern Britain.

Though its origins lie in the Middle Ages and the practices of household bards and musicians of the nobility, the modern eisteddfod tradition developed from the late eighteenth century as an essentially literary movement and part of the romantic movement that has been termed the Celtic revival. Music developed as part of the eisteddfod at local and national levels, becoming a major and eventually primary presence. The emphasis was on vocal music both solo and choral, and alongside its role in detecting and curating Welsh traditional music the eisteddfod introduced the classical concert to Welsh audiences. Eisteddfodau were always competitive events and from the later nineteenth century, choral contests helped to engender popular interest in choral singing as a practice representative of Welshness. The chapter describes the development of eisteddfodau and explains their importance in various stages of Welsh history. It also examines what were often perceived as the negative effects of eisteddfod competition and the conflict it created between meeting popular demand and the achievement of higher musical standards among the population.