Music: Eisteddfod

As far back as records go the Welsh have been a singing people, rating a good voice next to royal blood, competing valiantly in song festivals, regarding music and poetry as national sports. Roman Poseidonius of Apamea noted in the second Century B.C., that the inhabitants of Wales “have poets whom they call bards, who sing songs of eulogy and of satire, accompanying themselves on instruments very like the lyre.” Even hard-headed Julius Caesar, with his general’s ear for music, mentioned in his Gallic War that the Druidic warriors “learn by heart a great number of verses.” Scholars have long puzzled over Welsh manuscripts of the 12th Century, trying to decipher lines and circles that meant chords to Cambrian harpists. The Welsh apparently invented harmony, structural basis of all modern European music, dressed their tunes in accompaniments when the countrymen of Bach and Palestrina still took their melody barbarously naked.

Last week the walls of Manhattan’s famed Carnegie Hall rang to the strong strains of Welsh folk-music. Most of the performing Cymry were born in Wales, now live in the U. S. The solemn, intense, long-skulled choristers of Cleveland’s Cambrian Male Choir sang ancient Celtic hymns. New York’s Welsh Women’s Chorus, in scarlet capes and topper-like hats, proved that a language that looks shy on vowels need not sound unmusical.

Mostyn Thomas, fervent, explosive baritone, raised the rafters with his lusty solos.

The predominantly Welsh audience followed feverishly, with pouncing applause.

There are 60,205 native Welsh in the U. S.; 87,482 U. S. Welsh of pure or mixed parentage. The majority have settled in industrial regions, nearly half in the smaller towns of Pennsylvania, many more in neighboring Ohio, West Virginia and New York. Many are mill workers, weavers, miners. Most of them sing. Put four or more together and you have a chorus dedicated to the ancient music and tongue of Cambria. Put two or more choruses together, egg them into competition, and you have what is known as an eisteddfod.

An eisteddfod (pronounced “eye-steth-fod”) causes more stir in Wales than a heavyweight championship fight in the U. S. Wales’ great annual eisteddfod is held in August, attracts every Welshman’s attention, brings many Welsh-Americans across the Atlantic. Last August’s eisteddfodtook place at Machynlleth where Owain Glyn Dwr (Owen Glendower) becamePrince of Wales in 1403. A specially built auditorium, accommodating about 12,000, houses each eisteddfod. Poets, orators, artists and singers compete. Audiences sit tensely, yell their applause. The winning team earns its town a place in history.

First U. S. eisteddfod was in Carbondale, Pa., in 1850. Now they are held in many U. S. towns. The largest one in Warren, Ohio, every May, is seven years old, attracts Welsh from Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, the rural and mining areas of Ohio and West Virginia. Smaller eisteddfods are held, usually on New Year’s Day, in such Pennsylvania industrial centres as Wilkes-Barre. Plymouth. Kingston, Allentown, and in Philadelphia. New York and Los Angeles.