Welsh Journals

The Country beyond the Stars and the new Daniel Jones Symphony No 5 KENNETH LOVELAND HE WAS THE MOST obvious choral society conductor I had ever seen hovering watchfully on the fringe of a national eisteddfod, and he followed me purposefully down the road and into the pub I was using as a refuge from the rain of Ebbw Vale and a particularly grim after- noon's competitions. About him there was all the opportunism of a man who has waited for a long time to make a point, and now has his quarry cornered. 'Welsh composers!' he snorted-an unexpected opening gambit but one that was enough to send a flood of light streaming into my speculation about what his hobby horse was going to be. 'It's all right for you to write about Welsh composers and their successes; all right for you to talk about Cheltenham and the Festival Hall. When are they going to write something my choir can sing?' He looked hopefully at the barmaid and added: 'They want to pack up writing string quartets and write for Welsh voices. Composers! He was right and yet he was wrong. I did not tell him so because long hours spent in a national eisteddfod press room is inclined to sap your verbal strength; you steal away from the eisteddfod field to escape from argument, not to begin it. So I didn't tell him that Wales has a more virile and productive school of composers than at any time in her musical history-something which I firmly believe-and I didn't tell him either that one of the troubles was that most Welsh choirs are so slow to accept new ideas that rising young composers are shy of writing for them. We talked of other things. Yet. he was right. Welsh composers, in their pre-occupation with the world of the symphony and the sonata, the trio and the string quartet, have drifted further and further away from the choral tradition which is so rich a part of Welsh musical history. Yet. he was wrong. What we need is not for our composers to turn back from the successes they have achieved in the field of orchestral