Cylchgronau Cymru

Welsh Music History: An Introduction JOHN HARPER Welsh Music History is to be the journal of the newly-established Centre for Advanced Welsh Music Studies, part of The Welsh Music Institute being developed at the University of Wales, Bangor. The first two volumes will include papers given at the Centre's inaugural conference held in September 1994. These are wide-ranging in both content and historical approach. The third will be dominated by writings by Peter Crossley-Holland, and the fourth by papers related to issues associated with the early seventeenth-century Robert ap Huw manuscript discussed at the second conference in July 1995. The purpose is to publish an annual journal of musicology taking musicology in a very broad sense to include music history, music historiography, music analysis and ethnomusicology. Within the broad purpose there are three specific objectives: the study of Welsh music; the study of music in Wales; and the study of music through the medium of the Welsh language. There is ambivalence within and between these objectives. Welsh music is not confined to music of the Welsh within Wales: many significant Welsh men and women have lived and worked outside Wales, foreigners have made import- ant contributions within Wales, and Welsh culture and music exists in foreign 'colonies', notably Patagonia. The second objective, the study of music in Wales, includes both research undertaken within Wales, and the study of musical activity in Wales. The particularly close links between Welsh literature and music will result in some interdisciplinary contributions. The most sensitive and crucial feature is embodied in the third objective: the study of music through the medium of Welsh. The continuing vitality of Welsh culture and identity is inseparable from the active use of the Welsh language for study and communication. There is an implicit conflict of interests here: writing about music in Welsh strengthens Welsh culture and Welsh language, but at the same