Music: Street Cleaner’s Mass

In Tonypandy, Wales, 200 members of the Mid-Rhondda Choral Society gave first performance to a Christmas mass. It was composed by Edwin Gardner, local street cleaner, who, despite no technical knowledge of music, took inspiration from the noises of the street, worked out melodies on a wheezy home organ and turned out a mass that last week made him hero of the Rhondda coal district.