Morfydd Owen 1891-1918
Morfydd’s London circle also included D. H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, and the Freudian psychoanalyst Ernest Jones whom she married in 1917. She died of delayed chloroform poisoning following an appendectomy that was carried out in the home of her parents-in-law at Oystermouth, Swansea: a tragic end to a pioneering career that continues to intrigue and inspire. Morfydd’s compositions had already been published by Boosey and Chappell and performed at the Proms and Wigmore Hall, and her obituaries rightly lamented ‘a refined and beautiful talent’ and ‘an incalculable loss’ to Welsh and British music. (© Dr Rhian Davies, 2020)
Morfydd Owen was a composer, pianist and mezzo-soprano who studied at Cardiff University (1909-12) and the Royal Academy of Music (1912-17). Her major scores are Nocturne (1913) and Morfa Rhuddlan (1914) for full orchestra, the cantata Pro Patria (1915) and the Threnody for strings (1916). 250 surviving manuscripts also include choral and chamber music, songs to English, Welsh and French texts, and transcriptions and arrangements of Welsh and Russian folk tunes.
Born into a musical and religious family in Treforest, Glamorgan, Morfydd began composing at the age of six. Through Charing Cross Chapel, she met leading members of London Welsh society such as David Lloyd George and Ruth Lewis who advanced her career through concert invitations and commissions.
Morfydd provided the accompaniments for Lady Lewis’ Folk-Songs Collected in Flintshire and the Vale of Clwyd (1914) and gained a University of Wales Fellowship to consider how the music of Russia, Norway and Finland might influence the development of Welsh composition, although the First World War frustrated her intention to visit St Petersburg.
He prayeth best who loveth best
Written in 1916 whilst Owen was studying composition, and latterly singing, at the Royal Academy of Music, this is a setting of a stanza from near the end of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It was initially published in Selected Songs, a four-volume Memorial Edition of Morfydd Owen’s compositions issued by the Anglo-French Music Company in 1923.
At the time of writing, Owen had become interested in collecting, transcribing and adding piano accompaniments to Welsh folksong, the influence of which can been seen here. Exact repetition of the melody, a limited vocal range of an octave, subtle changes of metre to suit the words, and the final rocking motif are all hallmarks of a folksong style that was prevalentamongst composers from the early twentieth century. Although broadly diatonic, in the characterful key of G flat major, Owen’s enjoyment of added-note chords provides a harmonic palate that adds extra colour, making this piece deceptively simple. (Olivia Sparkhall)
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