Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

Times and the suggestion from Mr Osian Ellis, reproduced there, that a small music pavilion would be a great help. It would indeed! And Mr Ellis's notable success as an exporter and promoter of Welsh material to the English market should stimulate other Welsh musicians to take a little more pride and interest in exportable native material, if only for economic reasons. It is strange that Cerdd Dant, better known to music dictionaries as penillion-singing, for long the vehicle for virtuosity in improvisation, should now, when its following is so numerous, have suppressed the extempore performer almost entirely. Cymdeithas Cerdd Dant mem- bership has risen to 850 from 351 in seven years, and some excellent expositors of its skills are to be found. But whereas, at one time, by a kind of knock-out competition, calling for instant wedding of differ- ent poetic metres to successive airs on the harp, extemporisation of a counter-melody was the ultimate test, to-day all competitors sing counter-melodies which are prepared and learned by them before hand and sung by rote. Cymdeithas Cerdd Dant, having so successfully won adherents to this apparently unique attention to the wedding of music and verse, must surely now concern itself with ways and means to develop the greater facility where extemporisation can add profoundly to the wealth of attraction Welsh men and women appear to have re-discovered in this form of music. For Eisteddfod music it is high time that advantage be taken of the opportunities now available as a result of the elevation of the Welsh language to its proper place in a Welsh festival. Past subservience to the English language went far to stultify Welsh musical expression at the Eisteddfod. The tremendous influence of English tastes and habits has now been modified but we still await a positive attitude which will seize upon music from all and every country, if it is at all amenable to necessary adaptation. Local music Committees need to have at their disposal a flow of works ready for selection as test-pieces or for Concert-performance. However enterprising they may be, time does not permit either the necessary research or the subsequent adaptation for them to launch ex- peditions into the remoter realms. Only the Eisteddfod Council can initiate such a venture and that body has the right to expect ready co-operation from any institution or organisation which professes to serve Wales and its people.