Welsh Journals

0 CAN IT BE THAT EVERMORE SHE SLEEPS? MORFYDD OWEN (1891-1918): A CENTENARY LECTURE by RHIAN DAVIES, M.A.* Wales has never come to terms with the loss of Morfydd Owen: not just musical Wales, but Wales as a whole. Those who met her never forgot her, and we glean from their reminiscences the impression of a beautiful, brilliantly talented and charismatic creature, as full of fire, foible and frivolity as of sensibility and sorrowfulness. This piquant combination of the mercurial and the melancholic in Morfydd has fuelled her mystique and made her a figure of mythical proportions within our culture. Her legend is still further enhanced, of course, by the fact that Morfydd died so suddenly and so young. Nothing fascinates us more than the death in youth of gilded youth, particularly when the meteor we watch bum out is one of creative genius. Despite the mythological status which Morfydd Owen has attained within our society, ample evidence survives to prove that hers was no transient talent: the allure of her premature death has not impaired our critical judgement in this instance, as can so often be the case. An assessment of her legacy still acknowledges her as the most versatile musical talent Wales ever produced: an exceptional practical musician, whether as mezzo-soprano, pianist or accompanist; a pioneering ethnomusicologist; and a composer of distinction, individuality and fertility, who, by the age of twenty-six, had completed over one hundred and fifty compositions across the genres. How perfectly timed, too, was her entrance. Morfydd Owen burst on to the Welsh musical scene just at that crucial, transitional, turn- of-the-century moment when composers were struggling to loose the stranglehold of an all-pervasive Germanic influence; stagger through An illustrated lecture given to the Society at University College London, 23 October 1991. Chairman: Kenneth Bowen. Jayne Davies, B.A., accompanied at the piano.