A History of Welsh Music

Trevor Herbert · Martin V. Clarke · Helen Barlow

Sep 2022 · Cambridge University Press

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From early medieval bards to the bands of the 'Cool Cymru' era, this book looks at Welsh musical practices and traditions, the forces that have influenced and directed them, and the ways in which the idea of Wales as a 'musical nation' has been formed and embedded in popular consciousness in Wales and beyond. Beginning with early medieval descriptions of musical life in Wales, the book provides both an overarching study of Welsh music history and detailed consideration of the ideas, beliefs, practices and institutions that shaped it. Topics include the eisteddfod, the church and the chapel, the influence of the Welsh language and Welsh cultural traditions, the scholarship of the Celtic Revival and the folk song movement, the impacts of industrialization and digitization, and exposure to broader trends in popular culture, including commercial popular music and sport.

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Trevor Herbert has written extensively on the cultural history of instrumental music, especially brass instruments in various periods and social contexts, and co-edited the award-winning Cambridge Encyclopedia of Brass Instruments (2018). He has also written on the cultural history of music in Wales. He was co-editor of the seven-volume Welsh History and its Sources series.

Martin V. Clarke has published widely on the relationships between music, theology and religious practice, including the monograph British Methodist Hymnody: Theology, Heritage, and Experience (2018) and the edited collection Music and Theology in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2012). He was a co-investigator on the AHRC-funded Listening Experience Database project.

Helen Barlow researches around the intersections between history, music, literature and visual art. As a member of the Listening Experience Database project, she investigated the history of ordinary people's experiences of music. Her publications include Music and the British Military in the Long Nineteenth Century (2013), co-written with Trevor Herbert.