Ar hyn of bryd mae'r cynnwys hwn ar gael yn Saesneg yn unig.
Ar hyn of bryd mae'r cynnwys hwn ar gael yn Saesneg yn unig.
Ar hyn of bryd mae'r cynnwys hwn ar gael yn Saesneg yn unig.
hyrwyddo a dathlu cerddoriaeth Cymru
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Composer of the Month profile by Geraint Lewis
Dilys Elwyn-Edwards 1918-2012
Born in Dolgellau on 19 August 1918, Dilys Roberts grew up in a musical household and was educated at the distinguished Dr Williams’s School for Girls in the town. She started to compose at an early age and won the Turle Scholarship to Girton College, Cambridge followed by the Joseph Parry Scholarship to Cardiff University.
When she returned triumphantly from Cambridge she was greeted on the flag-festooned platform at Dolgellau (her father was the station-master) by massed bands and choirs celebrating her achievement. But in the event she chose to go to Cardiff and was always proud of following in the footsteps of Morfydd Owen and Grace Williams under their teacher, Professor David Evans, in the city’s Music Department. The course of her life would then be shaped by two decisive encounters there: meeting her future husband David Elwyn-Edwards, a theology student, and encountering the music of Herbert Howells while singing in the University chamber choir.
After graduation, and in wartime, she returned to teach at her old school in Dolgellau but a new chapter opened in 1947 when she won a prestigious scholarship to study composition at the Royal College of Music in London (RCM) with none other than her hero Herbert Howells. She also married David, becoming Dilys Elwyn-Edwards, her memorable professional name thereafter.
Howells proved to be the ideal teacher for Dilys and he nurtured her innate sense of lyricism and vocal contour. He also encouraged her to set some of his own favourite poets including Walter de la Mare, Fiona Mcleod and Blake. During her RCM years with Howells, where she also studied piano with Kathleen McQuitty, Dilys lived in Oxford where her husband studied at Mansfield College – she had organ lessons at Christ Church Cathedral with Thomas Armstrong and heard several of her compositions performed at the Holywell Music Rooms.
In due course, Dilys followed Elwyn as he took roles within the Presbyterian Church of Wales settling eventually in Caernarfon in the 1950s where they lived for the rest of their married life together. While Elwyn was a much-loved minister at the famous Castle Square Church until his retirement in 1986, Dilys taught at local schools until she was appointed a piano tutor, first at Bangor’s Normal College and then from the early 1970s at the Music Department of Bangor University while William Mathias was Professor. Following her own retirement as a teacher in 1986 she enjoyed an Indian summer of composition receiving many commissions for choral works and songs.
Dilys remained friendly with Herbert Howells until his death in 1983 and she always regarded him as her leading mentor. After her return to North Wales she increasingly valued the support, advice and encouragement of Grace Williams and William Mathias and she enjoyed working with many singers – Patricia Kern, Kenneth Bowen, Helen Field, Bryn Terfel and Rebecca Evans among others. She also enjoyed many decades as a valued adjudicator at National Eisteddfodau throughout Wales where her reputation as one of Wales’s finest song-writers consolidated her fame. When Elwyn died in 2003 Dilys stopped composing and she died at a home in Llanberis on 13 January 2012 aged 93.
SELECTED WORKS
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Composer and writer Geraint Lewis is musical executor to the estate of Dilys Elwyn-Edwards.