Composer of the Month feature by Frank Bott

Joseph Parry - Hymn Tune Writer

Parry’s family were devout annibynnwyr – literally independents but the Welsh equivalent of Congregationalists – and Parry was brought up in that tradition.  When he met and married his wife, who spoke little Welsh, he moved to her American Presbyterians church and, when he and his family returned to Wales, they became Congregationalists.  He remained a devout nonconformist throughout his life.

Hymn tunes were important to Parry.  The first of his compositions that survives is the hymn tune with which he won first prize at the Fairhaven (Vermont) Christmas Eisteddfod in 1860, and he went on to write some 400 tunes – estimates vary. This was hymn tune writing on a heroic scale.  Not even John Bacchus Dykes, the most prolific of nineteenth-century Anglican hymn tune writers, managed more than 300, albeit in a life some nine years shorter.  Inevitably, many of the tunes written by both are deservedly forgotten and one could wish that they had been more self critical.  Nevertheless, Parry, like Dykes, wrote a number of fine tunes that remained popular right through the twentieth century and are still widely sung today.  ‘Caneuon Ffydd’ (‘Songs of Faith’), the Welsh hymnal published in 2001 and edited by a committee drawn from all the major Protestant denominations in Wales, includes eleven tunes by Parry – the only composer with more original tunes (as opposed to arrangements) in the book is J. Ambrose Lloyd, while there are ten of J.B. Dykes’ tunes.

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The first of Parry’s hymn tunes to appear in a major collection was ‘Llangristiolus’, a tune we shall be singing this evening.  In 1859, Ieuan Gwyllt had published a collection of hymn tunes entitled ‘Llyfr Tonau Cynulleidfaol’ (‘A Book of Congregational Tunes’).  Ieuan Gwyllt had a sophisticated if somewhat austere musical taste – at least until his last years when his religious enthusiasm, fired by the 1874 Sankey and Moody crusade, overcame his musical scruples and caused him to espouse Sankey’s music.  In ‘Llyfr Tonau Cynulleidfaol’, he sought to wean Welsh congregations away from the meretricious music that was then widely used in services, by making more suitable music readily available.  The book was an instant success and some 30,000 copies were sold in the first three years after publication.  An appendix was produced in 1870 and Parry was invited to contribute a tune.  The result was ‘Llangristiolus’.  It is said to have been written in a garden at Llangristiolus in Anglesey on 29 August 1869, that is, just before Parry started at the Royal Academy, and it shows how far his style had developed from the time of his success at the Fairhaven Eisteddfod.  The melody, the part writing and the harmony are satisfying without being memorable.  What is remarkable about it is its competence but apart from the use of the minor key – much less common in English hymn tunes than in Welsh ones – there is nothing here, good or bad, that could not have been written by J.B. Dykes or S.S. Wesley.

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From 1881 to 1888 Parry was the organist at Ebenezer Congregationalist Chapel in Swansea and for much of this period he set himself the task of writing a hymn tune every Sunday.  Towards the end of this period, he resolved to produce a book of his own hymn tunes. It was to be printed as a series of six parts, each containing some 18 tunes, each with one or more possible sets of words, and one or two chants or congregational anthems.  It was (and is) common practice for each denomination to produce each year a separate booklet (usually known as a ‘detholiad ‘or selection) of the hymns to be sung at all its ‘cymanfaoedd canu’ in a district.  Most, if not, all of the tunes in the booklet would be sung at each ‘cymanfa’.  Each part of Parry’s hymn book was just the right size to be used as such a ‘detholiad’ and there is at least one recorded instance of this being done.  Since the sections were sold at one shilling for versions in staff notation and sixpence for the sol-fa version (equivalent to £24 or £12 respectively in 2017), the profit to Parry, who sold them direct, was considerable.

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The first part appeared under the title ‘Llyfr Tonau Genedlaethol Cymreig gan Dr. Parry’ (‘A Book of Welsh National Tunes by Dr. Parry’), and is shown as published by D. M. Parry (i.e. his son, Mendy), 23 Plymouth Road, Penarth. The title page of the second part describes it as ‘Llyfr Tonau Cynulleidfaol Cenedlaethol [sic] Cymru (fel cydymaith i lyfr emynau cenedlaethol Mr Gee) gan Dr. Joseph Parry, Coleg Cerddorol Cymru, Abertawe’ (‘A Book of National Congregational Tunes of Wales’ [as a companion to the book of national hymns by Mr Gee] by Dr Joseph Parry, Music College of Wales, Swansea’). It is stated that the booklet is available from all booksellers and from J. Parry and Son, Blodwen House, Swansea. Both parts are undated, although the date of composition of each tune is shown. It seems clear that Part 2 must have been published – or, at least, printed – before Part 1. Both parts, however, were presumably published around the time, in 1887, that Parry moved from Swansea to Cardiff and this is consistent with the dates on the tunes themselves. Most of the tunes in Part 1 dated from the first half of the 1880s but there are two from 1887; most of the tunes in Part 2 date from 1887 but a few are earlier, including one from 1873.

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Given the number of hymn tunes he was writing and his habitual lack of self-criticism, one would expect the tunes in these booklets to be little more than routine exercises. This is far from being the case. Two of the tunes, ‘Dinbych’ in Part 1 and ‘Sirioldeb’ in Part 2, are among Parry’s finest.

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‘Dinbych’ is dated 22 May 1881.  John Wesley’s fine translation of Paul Gerhardt’s 1656 hymn ‘Befiehl du, deine Wege’ (‘Commit thou all thy griefs’), one of the great hymns of Lutheranism, was set to a modified version of this tune in ‘Songs of Praise’, a collection of hymns and canticles intended for the use of schools, particularly public schools; the book was strongly Anglican in tone and set high musical standards.  The same modified version was also selected for inclusion in The Methodist Hymn-Book of 1933, where Charles Wesley’s hymn of death and judgement, ‘Thou judge of quick and dead’ is set to it.  ‘Dinbych’ is perhaps the closest that Parry (or any other British composer) came to matching Bach’s settings of German chorales. Another tune by Parry that has gained popularity in the Anglican church is the tune known, perversely, as ‘Merthyr Tydfil’ in England and ‘Dies Irae’ in Wales.  All three of these tunes are in the minor and have served to reinforce the stereotype of Welsh hymn tunes as being sombre tunes in the minor.  All three are in ‘Caneuon Ffydd’ and we shall be singing each of them in the ‘Cymanfa’.

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While the success of ‘Dinbych’ is attested by its popularity in the musically sophisticated, if somewhat austere, world of the Anglican church and English public school, the success of ‘Sirioldeb’ is largely confined to Wales, because its rhythms do not make it suitable for singing English words. The words usually sung to it, although not the ones in Parry’s book, are by Eifion Wyn (Eliseus Williams, 1867-1926); the first verse runs as follows:

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‘Un fendith dyro im,
Ni cheisiaf ddim ond hynny,
Cael gras i’th garu di tra fwy’,
Cael mwy o ras i’th garu.’
‘One blessing bring to me.
I look for nothing more than that;
The grace to love thee while I live,
And still more grace to love thee.’

The tune reflects the unstressed syllables at the end of the second and fourth lines of the Welsh by giving a full bar melisma to the stressed, penultimate syllable.

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‘Sirioldeb’ is in the major and the tunes in the hymn book contradict the general impression that all Parry’s hymn tunes are in the minor; a good third of the tunes, including some of the best, are in the major.  ‘Moliant’ (Praise), for example, is a good tune in the major in the tradition of such fine eighteenth-century English tunes as St Stephen.  We shall be singing it this evening.

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But the most widely known of Parry’s tunes is ‘Aberystwyth’.  It is this tune that made known the name of its composer and the name of the small Welsh coastal town where he was living when he wrote it, not only in Welsh-speaking communities everywhere but also throughout the English-speaking world. 

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There is some uncertainty about when exactly ‘Aberystwyth’ was written.  In his sketchy autobiography, never a dependable source of evidence because it was written late in his life, when his memory was unreliable, Parry says that it was written ‘about 1876’.  However, when he published the tune in the third part of his hymn book, in 1888, he gives the date of composition as 3 July 1877 and sets it to the words ‘Yma griddfan ar y llawr’ by Dyfed, words that we shall sing tonight.  The tune first appeared in print in 1879, in the collection ‘Ail Lyfr Tonau ac Emynau’ (Second Book of Tunes and Hymns), edited by Tanymarian.  The words that were set to ‘Aberystwyth’ were ‘Beth sydd imi yn y byd?’ (‘What is there for me in the world?’) by  Morgan Rhys, a hymn with which the tune continues to be associated in Wales to this day.

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The former English Congregational Church in Portland Street, Aberystwyth, now  a doctor’s practice, carries a plaque,  with the words:

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‘Cymdeithas Ddinesig Aberystwyth - Eglwys Gynulleidfaol Saesneg oedd yr adeilad hwn a godwyd yn 1866.  Yma canwyd yr emyn-dôn ‘Aberystwyth’ o waith Joseph Parry yn gyhoeddus ar yr organ am y tro cyntaf yn 1879.’

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‘Aberystwyth Civic Society - The hymn tune ‘Aberystwyth’ composed by Joseph Parry was first played in public in 1879 on the organ in this former English Congregational Church built in 1866.’

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The Civic Society is unable to say what evidence there is for the date of 1879 on the plaque.

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A press report  in the Aberystwyth Observer tells us that on Sunday 27 August 1876, Parry opened the new organ, built by John Stringer of Hanley, in the English Congregational Church that now carries the plaque.  It is tempting to suppose that the date on the plaque is wrong and that Aberystwyth was written for, and first performed on this occasion  While this is plausible and consistent with the date given in the autobiography, we have, alas, no evidence.

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How did ‘Aberystwyth’ come to attain its worldwide status as one of greatest of Welsh hymn tunes? 

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It was a long time before English-speaking congregations had the opportunity to appreciate Welsh hymn tunes.  The first edition of ‘Hymns Ancient and Modern’, published in 1861, contains no tune that can in any sense be described as Welsh.  Oddly, the collection contains a hymn tune called ‘Aberystwith’ [sic], written by Rev. Sir Frederick Ouseley  specifically for ‘Hymns Ancient and Modern’.  It bears no relationship whatsoever to Parry’s tune; while competently written, it is unremarkable and seems to have been rapidly forgotten. Charles Wesley’s hymn ‘Jesu, lover of my soul’, with which ‘Aberystwyth’ is nowadays so firmly associated, is included in the hymnal but is set to J B Dykes’ tune ‘Hollingside’, which was written specifically for the book.  For many years, the two tunes were to compete for recognition as the standard tune for the hymn and it was not until the 1950s that Aberystwyth finally attained that status.

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‘Aberystwyth’ appears in the Baptist Church Hymnal of 1900, probably its first appearance in an English book, and it is set to ‘Jesu, lover of my soul’.  It also appears in the Methodist Hymn Book of 1904, a hymn book produced jointly by the Wesleyan Methodists and the Methodist New Connexion; there it was set to Charles Wesley’s words ‘Sinners, turn, why will ye die?’   Despite Parry’s adherence to the Congregational Church, the ‘Congregational Church Hymnal’ published in 1905 by the Congregational Union of England and Wales, which contains close on 700 tunes, contains no tune that is recognisably Welsh.  However, when the English Hymnal was published a year later, under the musical editorship of Vaughan Williams, it included some 20 Welsh tunes, including Aberystwyth.  Vaughan Williams (a lifelong agnostic!) had a particular fondness for Welsh hymn tunes; in 1920, he wrote three preludes for organ based on the three Welsh hymn tunes Bryn Calfaria, Rhosymedre and Hyfrydol.  The English Hymnal rapidly became known as the best of the English hymn books, both because of the fine literary taste shown in the selection of the hymns and because of the breadth and taste shown by Vaughan Williams in selecting and arranging the tunes.  It seems likely that it was the influence of the English Hymnal that led English-speaking congregations to appreciate Welsh tunes, Aberystwyth in particular.  Aberystwyth was included in the 1916 edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern, later renamed as the standard edition.  When Songs of Praise, a hymn book intended primarily for schools, with a strong Anglican, public school leaning, was published, in 1925, the influence of Vaughan Williams was again apparent and Aberystwyth was included along with a good selection of other fine Welsh tunes, including Parry’s Dinbych and Dies Irae (known, somewhat perversely, as Merthyr Tydfil in English to avoid confusion with another tune called Dies Irae).  The enlarged 1931 edition of Songs of Praise also included Parry’s ‘St Joseph’.  Following the union of the Wesleyan Methodists, the Primitive Methodists and the United Methodists, in 1932, a new Methodist hymn book was published in 1933 and included Parry’s Aberystwyth, Dinbych and Dies Irae, as well as a number of other Welsh tunes.

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There are many fine Welsh hymn tunes and, while Aberystwyth is good, it is not immediately obvious why it, along with Blaenwern, Hyfrydol and Cwm Rhondda, should have become so much more popular with English-speaking congregations than tunes such as Bryn Calfaria or Llangloffan, which have found their way into many English language hymn books but never attained the same popularity.  Perhaps the reason is that these three tunes have become associated with particularly fine and popular English words – Aberystwyth with ‘Jesu, lover of my soul’, Blaenwern with ‘Love divine, all loves excelling’ (both hymns by Charles Wesley) and Cwm Rhondda with ‘Guide me, O thou great Jehovah’ (the only translation of a Welsh hymn into English to become at all well known).

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There are many misstatements and myths about Parry, and the World Wide Web has done much to perpetuate them; one of them concerns Aberystwyth.  In recent years it has often been stated that the tune of “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrica”, the anthem of the African National Congress, which forms part of the national anthem of South Africa and has been used by several other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, is based on Aberystwyth.  Some BBC web pages make much of the claim.  However, if one listens to recordings of the anthem or looks at the printed music, very little resemblance is discernible.  Moreover, the metre of “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” is 9.10.9.6.7.8.6.7, making it more or less impossible to sing the words to a 7.7.7.7D tune such as Aberystwyth.  The most that can be said is that is that if the first phrase of Aberystwyth is transposed into the major there is a faint resemblance to part of the first phrase of ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’.

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The words of “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrica” were written by Enoch Sontonga, a young schoolteacher and choral conductor, in 1897, when he was teaching in a Methodist mission school near Johannesburg.  It is quite likely that the tune had reached South Africa by then and that Sontonga was familiar with it; certainly it appeared in a Welsh hymn book published by the Welsh church in Cape Town in 1905, the year Sontonga died.   Sontonga may even have mentioned the tune in some other context.  I have not however been able to find any references to Aberystwyth as the basis of “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrica” that predate the World Wide Web.  The source of the myth remains a mystery.

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It is clear that Vaughan Williams thought highly of Aberystwyth.  When the Welsh composer Arwel Hughes (1909-1988) was a pupil of VW at the Royal College of Music, VW told him that he would have been proud to have composed it.  Another distinguished and discriminating critic, Dr Percy Young, wrote In his book A History of British Music (Ernest Benn Ltd, London 1967), “As, however, the last named [Aberystwyth] is the noblest work of its kind composed by a British musician, Parry achieved more than many whose reputations were, and sometimes are, said to stand higher.”

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Tributes such as these confirm Joseph Parry’s status as one of the finest of British hymn tune writers.  Writing good hymn tunes is a specialised skill and one which he possessed in abundance. 

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Frank Bott (1940-2023) was a mathematician, a computer scientist, a polymath, a linguist, a family man, a generous host, and a pillar of community life in Aberystwyth. A number of his articles about the life and work of Joseph Parry are available to read at josephparry.org.