Cylchgronau Cymru

The Robert ap Huw Composers PETER CROSSLEY-HOLLAND The twin issues of identifying and dating the composers of the music copied into the Robert ap Huw manuscript have been much obscured by Lewis Morris's claims for its almost fabulous antiquity, and the unproductive counterblast of scepticism. This summary seeks to re- view the existing material on a strictly systematic basis and to seek fresh evidence. Adequate interpretation of the manuscript is dependent upon see- ing it in its wider environment, and assessing the significance of the period when Robert ap Huw was copying in relation to Welsh musical history as a whole. There are two essential methodological prerequisites: first, the collation of primary sources such as tune lists, pedagogic texts and theoretical treatises; second, the exploration of information from related disciplines, including history, genealogy and literature (especially poetry). Over three dozen manuscripts have been consulted, the majority containing passages which relate direct- ly to cerdd dant. Many claim to be copies of much earlier sources, although only two were actually written earlier than the sixteenth century.2 Of the names found within or beside the titles of the thirty-one pieces in the Robert ap Huw manuscript,3 nine appear to represent a composer attribution. Table 1 lists these nine names and the fourteen pieces to which they are attached (see pp. 194-205 for all tables and figures). The seventeen remaining pieces (listed in Table 2) bear no obvious composer attribution, although the title may still include a name (as, for instance, no. 29, 'Caniad marwnad Ifan ap y Gof', which is a lament on the composer rather than a piece written by him). While Robert ap Huw appears to have copied the manuscript in or around 1613, several of the composers date from a much earlier period. Six of the nine also appear in a document of critical importance, the 'Gwysaney list', copied over half a century earlier in