Gospel of Philip Blog

I also have a blog on the Gospel of Philip at http://gospelofphilip.blogspot.com/

I'm finishing work on The Gospel of Philip Annotated & Explained for Skylight Paths, and then going on holiday to San Francisco with my family. (Though I think 'vacation' is an accurate and useful word, I still prefer to use 'holiday' which is less accurate.) In April I hope to revamp the website and add a lot of material to it. Until then,

Pob Hwyl

The Chieftains Live

Just to be even-handed, and to show that I love the losing Irish, one of whom is my wife, Tessa, I wanted to point out the recently released CD, The Chieftains: Live from Dublin: A Tribute to Derek Bell. Derek Bell is the Chieftain's late harpist. There's quite a variety of material on the live album, with quite a number of guest stars, and on one or two tracks they are joined by my wife's cousin, Frankie Lane, on guitar. Frankie played at our family party in Dublin last year.

Grand Slam

A truly Celtic occasion as Wales beat Ireland to win the Grand Slam yesterday. All those years of shattered hopes finally swept away, and I haven't actually seen a single minute of the this year's 6 nations. I did manage to listen to it on Radio Wales via the Internet though.

This is rugby if no one has realised yet.

Canu Pwnc

Even though I grew up in Wales (albeit in Anglicised Penarth) and as an adult became very interested in traditional Welsh culture, I had never come across canu'r pwnc until my wife bought me a copy of The Rough Guide to Wales CD. The CD is a compilation of a wide variety of Welsh folk music, though not of Welsh music in a broader sense since it lacks any cerdd dant or male voice choirs. Canu'r pwnc is "a very ancient form of choral singing that... occurs in Pembrokeshire and western Carmarthenshire. 'Canu'r pwnc' is the chanting of scriptural text and usually takes place around Whitsuntide. The rhythmic structure and harmonisation sounds startling to modern ears, and yet this form of declamatory singing is very common and well-known throughout the region. The singing can last continually for an entire weekend, with people from different villages taking up the baton after a period to keep up the momentum."

The selection on the Rough guide CD was recorded in Maenclochog in Preseli in 1967. They seem to be singing the genealogy from the beginning of Matthew or Luke. The singing sounds like the most pagan thing you ever heard. Canu'r Pwnc literally means 'singing (bible) study.' The people from Capel Rhywilym are prbably Welsh Baptists. But surely they were picking up on a style of singing that goes back at least to medieval times.

There's an piece of Canu Pwnc on the BBC website, as part of a 1967 BBC Wales broadcast on Carmarthenshire. You might want to close your eyes when you listen to it for the first time, since the mysterious chant contrasts badly with the angelic schoolchildren in shirts and ties who are singing it on this clip ({if I remember rightly.) The link is http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/walesonair/database/pembrokeshire.shtml

There's an interesting article on voice by Mike Pearson here: http://www.theatre-wales.co.uk/critical/critical_detail.asp?criticalID=98

He mentions Canu Pwnc: "Lampeter-based archaeologist Michael Shanks has written, 'Archaeology is about some very basic and mundane things: grubbing around in decayed garbage, recovering traces of things and processes which go largely unnoticed today - what happens to broken bits of pot, to things that get lost, abandoned buildings, rotted fences, microbial action. A creeping, mouldering under-side of things'.(2) Archaeology leads equally to thoughts of ruin, decay, putrefaction and of aging, erosion, wearing...Which is perhaps why I found as much in the struggles of the canu pwnc group from Rhydwilym chanting John 1:1 - 'Why do you move from a minor third to major third in your chant?', asked the Vietnamese musicologist. 'Because we can't sing in tune', replied the aged choir--as in the practised harmonies of the equally aged Bulgarian 'Grannies' of Bistritsa'."

Many of the traditional forms of singing give an impressions of great age simply because the singers are of great age! This is often true of Irish sean-nos singing too. Still, this is a comic moment, a Vietnamese musicologist over in Wales being fascinated by an unusual musical transition that turns out to simply be singing out of tune.

The Celts by Frank Delaney

Over the last couple of weeks I've been watching the 1987 BBC series The Celts by Frank Delaney. I remember seeing a couple of episodes of it when I was at university in Swansea when it originally came out. Parts of it look very dated and silly (such as an '80s goth disco and the Enya videos), but in general it's a generous survey of Celtic culture and history. The material ranges from the archeological discoveries at Hallstadt and La Tene to the culture of the modern Celtic countries. Wales gets a good look in, probably second only to Ireland. The late Gwyn A. Williams lets loose of some fiery opinions, but I probably found Barry Cunliffe to be the most appearing of the scholars on show. I particularly enjoyed seeing some Cerdd Dant, or penillion singing, which is a Welsh form of singing a poem in the strict metres as a counterpoint to a folk melody. At its best, Cerdd Dant is a complex and lilting form of song, and is a mainstay of eisteddfodau. The late Derek Bell, the Chieftain's harpist, played a little example of a counterpoint to Llwyn Onn (Ashgrove) on his harp in introduction to the example of penillion singing, and described it as perhaps the most developed example of singing to the harp. But then Frank Delaney went on to say that penillion singing in Wales "survives, but only as an artform." What does it mean if you say that an artform only survives as an artform?

I would recommend the series to anyone interested in the Celts, as long as you have the stomach to sit through some of the truly dreadful 1980s music videos. Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000WN10E/thegospeoftho-20

A while ago I posted some information on English language translations of some of Saunders Lewis' plays. Sion Eirian, who translated both Siwan and Blodeuwedd, contacted me with the following information and corrections concerning the radio adaptation of Siwan:
"It was titled "The Royal Bed" and it actually starred Susan Fleetwood as Siwan and Hywel Bennett as Llewelyn. Oddly enough Susan Fleetwood and Sian Phillips have a similar quality, certainly on radio. Susan, who was an excellent actress herself, with a fine pedigree in RSC and National Theatre productions, died some years back, while still relatively young. She was too (a tangential claim to fame) the sister of Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac, and had been over a long period the partner of the director Sebastian Graham Jones who sadly died last year."

Sion writes in both Welsh and English, and he won the Crown at the National Eisteddfod many years ago. (The Crown is the prize for the best poem not in the strict metres.) I met him in Aberystwyth many years ago, after the ATC performance of Woman of Flowers directed by Ceri Sherlock.

March 1, 2005, St. David's Day

You can send a St. David's Day e-card from here: http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/ecards/stdavids/
I believe Dewi used to send them himself in the sixth century. He preferred the one with Tom Jones and a daffodil.

I'm wearing a daffodil. Eating leeks tonight. In California.