Four Welsh Hymn Tunes:
Three Baroque Settings
for Organ

Rondo on Cwm Rhondda   and Ton-y-Botel
Trio on Bryn Calfaria  
Prelude on Hyfrydol

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Click on the link below to download a PDF booklet
available 11/2023
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   FMPWelshHymnTunes3BaroqueSettingsOrg2024  

Notes

Rondo on John Hughes’ Cwm Rhondda and Thomas John Williams’ Ton-y-Botel is set in a late Baroque keyboard idiom. The first tune takes its name from the river valley and city of Rhondda; it was written between 1905 and 1907. Ton-y-Botel ('Tune in a bottle'), also called Ebenezer in some collections, was extracted from an anthem by Williams, first published as a hymn tune in 1890. In both settings, the source melodies appear in the soprano voice, and in each a rhythmic reorientation has displaced the original beat pattern by shifting the meter from quadruple to triple. This keyboard rondeau for manuals offers some of the aspects of a pièce de clavecin: its rounded structure (A-B-A) is emphasized by a contrasting change of key and  mood, moving from B-flat major to G-minor for the second tune, where dancing triplet figures animate the appearance of Ton-y-Botel. The returning statement of Cwm  Rhondda  can  be  abbreviated, without  repeats.

Trio on Bryn Calfaria draws on a Welsh hymn tune by William Owen that was first published in 1886; it was sub-sequently included in The English Hymnal (1906) with the text, "Lord, enthroned in heavenly splendour." Following the pattern of Welsh melodies represented in this collection, the harmonic language and structures are set in a latter Baroque keyboard idiom, in this instance limning a tightly imitative trio that presents its fugue-like subject in original and mirrored forms. The hymn tune’s cantus firmus melody appears in the soprano register.

The Welsh hymn tune, Hyfrydol (i.e. ‘lovely’), was composed by Rowland Huw Pritchard (1811-1887); it was first featured in the composer’s handbook of children’s songs, Cyfaill y Cantorion ("The Singers' Friend"), published in 1844. The melody has subsequently been paired with several other hymn texts, notably Charles Wesley’s “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” and “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus.” This elaborate setting for organ, with an augmented cantus firmus treatment of the melody in the pedal (sounding in tenor range), was modeled after similar large scale Baroque chorale preludes based on familiar hymn tunes issuing from church music traditions of 17th and 18th Century Europe.

N.B. These compositions were assigned to — and copyrighted by — Concordia Publishing House, and released in 1997; the copyright was reassigned to the author in 2007. The score has undergone subsequent minor revisions for this new version.

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