David Wynne (composer)

Christened David William Thomas, he was born at Nantmoch Uchaf farm in Penderyn, a village near Hirwaun, the son of a shepherd named Philip Thomas and his wife Elizabeth.[1] The following year, the family moved to Llanfabon, near Cilfynydd, where he attended the local school until the age of 12. For the next two years he worked at a local grocer's shop,[1] then at the age of 14 he went down the pit at the Albion Colliery, Cilfynydd, where one of Britain's worst mining disasters had occurred in 1894.[2] He continued to work there until the age of 25, even after beginning lessons with a local music teacher and organist, Tom Llewellyn Jenkins, himself a minor composer.[3] In 1925 he was awarded a Glamorgan Scholarship to University College, Cardiff, becoming a pupil of Professor David Evans[4] and John Morgan Lloyd; he obtained a B.Mus. degree in 1928.[1] From there he proceeded to the University of Bristol, where he spent a year in teacher training. In 1929 he was appointed Head of Music at Lewis School Pengam, a grammar school for boys, becoming the first full-time secondary school music teacher in Wales.[1] His students at Pengam included composers Robert Smith and Mervyn Burtch.[5] In 1933, he married Eirwen Evans and they settled in Maesycwmmer. In 1938 the University of Wales awarded him a D.Mus. In 1944 he was awarded the Clements Memorial Prize for his First String Quartet, and this effectively launched his career as a leading composer; thereafter he received regular commissions.[6] At the same time, he began using the name David Wynne for professional purposes. He retired from school teaching in 1960. From 1961 to 1971 he taught composition at Cardiff College of Music and Drama (now the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama),[7] and from 1970 to 1979 in the Department of Music at Cardiff University. In 1983, he died suddenly at his home in Pencoed, whilst working on his Fourth Symphony.[8]

Wynne's first symphony, written in 1952, was never performed. His second, in 1956, was only the second work ever commissioned by the Welsh Music Guild.[9] One of his best-known orchestral works, the Third Symphony, was written in 1963 for the Caerffili Festival, and inspired by Caerphilly Castle,[10] its structure based on the castle's concentric design; it was premièred by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Michael Tippett.[9] His gentler and more lyrical side emerged in his Fantasia for Piano and Orchestra, which Martin Jones premiered with the Cardiff University Orchestra in 1972.

One of Wynne's earliest successes as a composer was his String Quartet No.1 in February, 1945. It won the A. J. Clements Composition Prize and brought him into contact with Michael Tippett, who remained a friend and supporter. It was the first of five quartets, spanning the years 1944 to 1980. There were also many sonatas including four solo piano sonatas (1947 rev. 1952, 1956, 1966 and 1966). Eiluned Davies premiered the Piano Sonata No 2 in 1957.[11]

The Welsh language had an influence on his composition that was both subtle and profound. The speech rhythms of Welsh poetry permeate his instrumental music, its melodic inflections often consciously influenced by the hwyl of the Welsh preachers that he heard in his youth. Many of his vocal works are settings of early and mediaeval Welsh poetry for which he seems to have had an especial affinity. In Owain ab Urien, a cantata for male voice choir with brass and percussion,[12] he set some of the earliest Welsh poetry, written in the 6th century. This work was also commissioned by the Welsh Music Guild, whose president at the time was Sir Michael Tippett, in memory of its founder, John Edwards;[13] and first performed at the Festival Hall in London in 1967 by the Pendyrus Male Voice Choir under its late director Glynne Jones and the Philip Jones brass ensemble. It was performed again by Risca Male Voice Choir in 2000, as part of Wynne's centenary celebrations.[14]

The David Wynne and Eirwen Thomas Memorial Award was launched in 2006, in association with the Welsh Music Guild, under the terms of David Wynne's will, to advance the careers of student composers, the first recipient being Gareth Churchill.[9]

See also Welsh Music Library

• Welsh Music/Cerddoriaeth Cymru, Vol./Cyf. 7 No. 4 (Summer/Hâf 1983) pp/tt.35 – 43
• "Centenary Tribute" – Welsh Music/Cerddoriaeth Cymru Vol/Cyf 10 No. 5 Winter 2000/01
• "Composers of Wales – David Wynne", Ninnau Vol 33 No.5, 2008 p17
• Seventh Catalogue of Contemporary Welsh Music, Compiled by Robert Smith : The Guild for the Promotion of Welsh Music (1981)
• Composers of Wales (3): David Wynne by Richard Elfyn Jones. University of Wales Press (1979).ISBN 9780708307144

• Welsh Music Information Centre