Professor Nalini Ghuman (Mills College at Northeastern University)
In this talk, I introduce my research into English musicians’ connections with Cymru/Wales, an area of study I have found to be as marginalised as it is exciting. Through music analysis and readings of diaries and correspondence, I examine the bearing of multiple Welsh factors – people, environment/landscape, folk song, language, mythology – on compositions by such composers as Edward Elgar, Peter Warlock, and Joseph Holbrooke. Focusing on the collaborations of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst with leading folk singer Dora Herbert Jones and their folksong arrangements made for the Gregynog choir, I demonstrate the vital role of bicultural listening in the reconstitution of twentieth-century British music history.