minstrel: Ap Huw and Welsh Harp Music

[hrjones at socrates.berkeley.edu]

On Thu, 29 Oct 1998, Greg Lindahl wrote:

> > seedanen [one of the few possibly Welsh names -- this is probably
> > "Sidanen", i.e., "the silken one", a Welsh nickname for Elizabeth I]
> 
> "Dargason, or Sedony" is what this is in 1651 Playford. Also note this
> bit in my music article which comes from W. Bruce Olson:
> 
> | W. B. Olson also points out a ballad in manuscript
> | <a href="olson.html#darg1">"Flee stately Juno Samos fro"</a> to be sung to
> | the tune of "Welshe Syddanen", which he identifies as Dargason.
> | This MS is in the Folger Shakespeare Library MS V.a. 198.
> | Rollins finds a similar title in Analytical Index # 249. A longer
> | version c. 1604-10 is MS V.a. 399.

Interesting -- particularly given that Dargason bears certain similarities
to the Ap Huw music. (Although I've heard more variable arrangements, it's
basically a two-chord tune with the "melody" being more a repeated pattern
based on the chord than an independent line.)

> > The interesting
> > thing is that this list is clearly a different genre than the Ap Huw
> > music, so we know (or at least can have confidence) that at least two
> > significantly different types of music were being played by Welsh harpers
> > ca. 1600.
> 
> I thought that the Ap Huw music itself was in 2 sections, the older
> section (Wiliam Penllyn) with the chord progressions and little
> melody, and the newer section which has the theme-and-variations
> melodies? Aren't the newer tunes similar in style to the Egnlish
> stuff?

I'm thinking of revising my above statement after ruminating on Dargason
for a bit. As an over-general statement, I think if you took the Playford
tunes that musicians always complain about as "boring", they're going to
lie on the structural scale close to the Ap Huw tunes.

Here I'm going to have to confess that I'm not as intimately familiar with
the music itself -- both in terms of learning the pieces and of reading up
on all the background -- as I should be. To me, there appear to be three
general groupings in the music: the "24 measures", the "Gosteg"s, and the
other named tunes (generally including either the word "caniad" or
"profiad" in the title, but I haven't figured out if there's a systematic
difference between the two). Of these, those named "Gosteg" (probably best
translated "processional", although that's a functional rather than
literal translation) feel the most "melodic" to me, in the sense of having
a "melody line" that goes beyond repeated patterns on the chords. Some of
the other "named tunes" lean towards this style as well, others lean more
towards the "24 measures" style. But one interpretation is that the "24
measures" style was _intended_ as accompaniment to unrecorded tunes,
rather than being the full tunes themselves.

Tangwystyl

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