Art of Music

Peter Lord took a degree in Fine Art at Reading University in 1970. He was a visiting fellow at the Yale Center for British Art in 1994, and subsequently research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies from 1996-2003. From 2007-10 he was research fellow at CREW, Swansea University. He has published and broadcast extensively on the visual culture of Wales in both Welsh and English languages, and curated major exhibitions for national institutions. Between 1998 and 2003 he published the three volumes of The Visual Culture of Wales , which is regarded as the authoritative text on the subject. In 2013 an autobiography, Relationships with Pictures was published by Parthian Books. It was followed by The Tradition: a New History of Welsh Art 1400-1990 , which in 2017 was Wales Non-fiction Book of the Year. His most recent publication, Looking Out: Welsh Painting, Social Class and International Context , was also published by Parthian.Rhian Davies studied at Aberystwyth, Oxford and Bangor Universities and through Visiting Fellowships to the Lilly Library, IndianaUniversity at Bloomington, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin, and the National Library of Australia in Canberra. Her programming, publications and documentaries have restored several composers to the repertoire, and her pictorial biography of Morfydd Owen, Never So Pure a Sight , continues to inspire performances worldwide, notably Nocturne for orchestra at the BBC Proms. Dr Davies' pioneering research was recognised with an Honorary Fellowship from Bangor University in 2019.

Writing the history of any branch of art is a challenge, but to examine two such branches and their interaction over a span of several hundred years demands rare skill and judgement. Fortunately, this volume displays both. It brings together two experienced authors who are established authorities in their fields: Peter Lord, who has done so much to enlighten us about the artistic tradition in Wales, and Rhian Davies, whose research on Welsh music has likewise added considerably to our knowledge and understanding. Together they set out to trace the evolution of the concept of Wales as a musical nation as reflected in its art. The result is a very satisfying and thought-provoking survey.Some of us have shown a tendency to trace the idea of the musical nation back to the vigorous choral culture of nineteenth-century Wales, and no further. This book shows that the iconography of Welsh music can be traced from the Middle Ages onward, in the wooden bosses in church roofs which depict instrumentalists, and although the evidence for the early period is scant, it is well used here. From the eighteenth century onward, the development of portraiture shows us not only how harpers and other musicians were depicted but also how that portrayal gave to the world an image of Welsh life and of those who made music. In the late eighteenth century the passion for antiquities was expressed in the publication of collections of Welsh melodies by the blind harper John Parry, Edward Jones (Bardd y Brenin), and John Parry, (Bardd Alaw). We have been used to concentrating on the musical content of these volumes, with little regard for their now discredited claims about the antiquity of Welsh music; but the frontispieces of such volumes, depicting Gray’s ‘Bard’ and penillion singing in a rural setting, are here shown to reflect subtle changes in the relation of Wales to the rest of Britain and an evolving perception of Welsh musical life.That perception was transformed in the nineteenth century with the rapid growth of eisteddfodau as large-scale music festivals and the emergence of mass-produced images which ensured the dissemination of the musical brand. Wales was widely perceived as a country that loved to sing and be seen singing. In the twentieth century the brand was confirmed by images transferred in films like Proud Valley and How Green was my Valley and television extravaganzas; but not only in such images, as the authors make subtle connections with striking works of twentieth-century art, notably Evan Walters’s moving 'Bydd Myrdd o Ryfeddodau' of 1926 and the paintings of Ceri Richards. Robert Burns once famously asked for the gift ‘to see ourselves as others see us’. What this remarkable study shows is that how we portray ourselves in a complex and ever-changing world is just as important. Meticulously researched, beautifully illustrated and sumptuously produced, this is a book which will instruct and delight in equal measure.