Welsh Journals

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tell us more of his inner feelings. For now we must rest content with what Sinclair, Fenn and Poole-Hughes himself have vouchsafed to give us. J.R.G. Enid Bird, The Organists and Organs of the Welsh Cathedrals in the 20th Century, (By the author 1993, 36 pp. illus. £ 6 inc. p.&p. Available from 16 Miller Avenue, Sandal, Wakefield WF2 7DJ) Enid Bird has done a major service to all interested in this field: firstly by her production in 1990 of the work 20th Century English Cathedral Organists, and now just three years later, The Organists and Organs of the Welsh Cathedrals in the 20th Century. These works contain brief but valuable biographical studies painstakingly assembled using many sources, including newspaper reports, articles and obituaries. In this latest publication, Enid Bird has also included short articles on the music and organs at each of the Welsh Cathedrals. The value of such a collection is very great, for the influence of the local Cathedral organists in Wales (as in England) has always been significant, not only in terms of the music in the Cathedral itself, but also in the way in which local music-making has been fostered. This applies to the conductorship of local choral societies, the tuition of countless numbers of local organists and instrumentalists generally and in the occasional production of compositions. All these things are features which have become part of the warp and weft of the localities concerned. One thinks of the numbers of pupils who were taught by Dr. H.C.L. Stocks at St. Asaph; those who subsequently carried his old-fashioned and disciplined approach out to the music of the churches and chapels of Flintshire, Montgomeryshire and beyond. There are those who will have used his Variations on 'YDelyn Aur' for their work for the A.T.C.L. and other diplomas, years ago. Others gratefully remember Kenneth Turner who was at Llandaff from 1952 to 1957 (the dates are wrong in the list). 'One of nature's gentlemen' he most certainly was, as well as a painstaking teacher and a fine Christian man. Search around, and you will still find copies