Rhodri Davies
Telyn Wrachïod
AMGEN 009 CD (2024)
Excellent solo CD by this most inventive and truly original of players. It seems Rhodri Davies is always reinventing his own music, exploring new directions in a very meaningful and personal way, never content to allow himself to fester and rot in the box labelled “improvised music”, and who can blame him – especially when that once-radical musical form has been increasingly corrupted and expanded to the point where it can mean almost anything in any context.
What he’s doing here is playing an ‘Urquhart Bray Harp’, made by the specialist harp-makers Ardival, whose website describes it as “typical of those used across Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries”, instantly confirming the lineage and history of this venerable musical instrument. Matter of fact, it might even go as far back to the 14th century, was the harp of choice to any self-respecting Renaissance player, and was known to have been used in Wales well into the 19th century, a fact which I am certain guided Rhodri’s decision, well-informed as he is of his country’s sense of identity, and rightly proud of it too. The instrument is equipped with “bray pins”, wooden pegs which barely touch the strings, but cause a very distinctive buzzing sound when the strings are played. Indeed this buzz or natural drone is what gives rise to the “bray” name – they bray like donkeys. Speaking of historical knowledge, Rhodri Davies also supplies one quote from Ossian Ellis, published in his book The Story Of The Harp in Wales, confirming the detail that the bray pins can be adjusted and pushed as needed when the buzzing effect is required, and further that such a harp could generate a percussive noise when the occasion called for dancing.
So much for the technical aspects of the Telyn Wrachïod, and the history of it. On these 12 gorgeous tracks of beautiful music, we can immediately hear how the musician has already learned all the subtleties and resonances he can produce by depressing his bray pins, and the assurance with which he does so is typical of this strong-willed and innovative player. After all, he’s been “preparing” his harp in a John Cage like manner in an improvisation context for many years, plus made bold use of detunings and the e-bow. To a non-music scholar like myself, much of this album resembles traditional folk tunes; each tune tends to stay in one key, and employs scales which sound ancient in origin. But it’s also very unusual folk music, as if being invented in real time by a primitive futurist who managed to make his way back to our Celtic origins, yet still found musical forms that could express the contours of the modern mind. It takes a special kind of genius to compress such rich statements into short tunes of three minutes in length (on average), but that is exactly what has taken place here, all in the space of a single recording session in August 2023.
Hints of what he can do when he sets off down a road like this have been vouchsafed before, especially in his uncanny performances in the group Hen Ogledd (with Richard Dawson, himself one who could be characterised as embodying a strain of “wild folk” that cannot be easily contained). But neither has Davies forsaken his other musical skills, as indicated on ‘Cildraeth Sienco’; it’s an improvisation, but based on a composition by Angharad Jenkins (reminding us also that Rhodri is no stranger to modern minimalism and has played with Apartment House), and uses alternative tunings as prescribed by Robert ap Huw in his manuscript of 1613. This seminal figure compiled this text in the late medieval period, bringing together transcriptions of music written between 1340 and 1500, and it’s now reckoned as a highly important primary source for understanding Welsh music.
Summa: beautiful folk-inflected music, flawlessly played, the product of what I expect was a period of intense scholarship and research, informed by history and national identity, yet still managing to incorporate many modernist precepts within its frame. How many living artists can claim such integrity, and such a comprehensive sweep within their statement, and manage to embody it all in the music they compose and play? The result is a near-perfect masterpiece; unequivocal recommendation. From 2nd April 2024.
Further reading:
Bill Taylor: Interpreting the Robert ap Huw MS.