Welsh Journals

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Benjamin Parry, Music Publisher RHIDIAN GRIFFITHS During the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth, musical activity in Wales reached a new peak. The eisteddfod, at local and national levels, developed as a musical as well as literary festival, choral and congregational singing thrived, and a generation of native Welsh composers grew up, with Joseph Parry as a king among them. This musical activity inspired much printed music produced by these composers, who saw an opportunity to meet the needs of the musical population and also to secure for themselves a share of immortality by getting their names into print on a piece of music. As a result a number of publishing houses were established which undertook the publishing of Welsh music to supply the wants of the eisteddfod and the cymanfa ganu (the congregational hymn-singing festival which became a feature of Nonconformist worship in Wales). These houses were in the main printing shops, and music was only one aspect of their activity; but several of them made a regular and valuable contribution to the musical life of their time. One of these publishers was Benjamin Parry. Although usually associated with Swansea, and although Swansea is the address invariably found on his output, Parry was not a southerner. He was born in Holywell, Flintshire, in 1835 or 1836, and probably learnt the craft of printing there. He knew the printer William Morris, who printed the church newspaper Y Cymro ('the Welshman') at Holy- well from 1851 to 1854, and could have been apprenticed to him.2 As a young man, certainly before 1857, Parry turned his face westward and emigrated to the United States, where he printed the north American Welsh newspaper, Y Drych ('the looking-glass'), between about 1857 and 1860. No doubt he found this experience valuable: Y Drych enjoyed a wide circulation, and its aim was 'to reflect the Welsh mind', by is- suing advertisements for Welsh books which appeared in the old country and the new. The paper's offices sold books imported from Wales, and