THE ROBERT AP HUW MANUSCRIPT

AN EXPLORATION OF ITS POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

TUNING

PETER GREENHILL

2000
 THE ROBERT AP HUW MANUSCRIPT

AN EXPLORATION OF ITS POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

TUNING

Introduction 1
I The Early Literature Relating to Tuning 3
- string names 5
II Modern Interpretations of Tuning 15
III The Terminology of Inflection 23
IV Multiple Tunings 27
- the arguments for 'cywair' as an indicator of
retuning the telyn 29
- 'cywair' is rarely specified in the music text 33
- 'cywair' is rarely specified in other sources 33
- 'Caniad San Silin' 35
- profiadau and formulae 36
- the existence of other possibilities for the term 37
- the crwth 39
- the early treatises on cerdd dant 40
- subsequent practice 41
- the multiplicity of 'cywair' terms 43
- the diagrams on pp. 108-9 44
- conclusions on multiple tunings 50
V Tuning the Telyn 53
- review of the evidence from the text 53
- avoidance of the tritone 58
- avoidance of semitonal intervals 59
VI Modality 61
- summary of the modalities of the pieces in the text 64
VII Pitch 68
VIII The Method of Tuning 70
IX Intonation 74
- irregular temperaments 77
- mean-tone temperaments 81
- the cyweiriau revisited 84
- intonation and terminology 90
- intonation and theory 92
- summary 94
X Crwth tunings 97
XI Conclusion 105
Bibliography 110
 1

INTRODUCTION

Knowledge of the exact tuning of the telyn for each piece in the tablature is an
essential prerequisite for reconstructing the music accurately. In so far as the
solutions to tuning proposed by interpreters have been tentative, this has been one
of the major areas of uncertainty in reconstruction. One possible route at the present
time would be to attempt to compare and evaluate the arguments that have been
put forward by the many contributors involved concerning those pieces in the text
for which tunings have been proposed, in the hope that some reconciliations might
be arrived at. The literature on tuning has grown to quite large proportions in recent
times, and yet areas of partial agreement are so few that it seems there can only be
the remotest prospect of a real consensus being achieved.
What I do believe contributors would agree on at the present time is that the
subject of tuning is dogged by a critical shortage of information in the primary
sources, and that any interpreter is forced by this shortage into examining a very
wide range of possibilities for each of the pieces of information in the early
documents. This leads to complex arguments about tunings, tunings which
themselves are believed to have been very complex. It might seem that all this
complexity is inevitable in view of the apparent shortage of clear evidence.
However, I do not propose here to attempt to further develop or assess the
relative merits of the lines of argument that have
 2

already been presented by all the contributors. Instead I shall argue at length for the
need to re-examine the information provided by the primary sources, and for the
need to place upon them the absolute minimum of interpretive construction. This
amounts to a reappraisal of what level of complexity in tuning we should expect the
primary sources to be indicating. For - as I hope to demonstrate - we really only
have good reason to anticipate a simple tuning scheme. Elaborate interpretive
constructions only appear necessary when we are determined that we should
anticipate very complex tuning arrangements, and I intend to question the basis
upon which our anticipations have been formed. It may be edifying to think that
cerdd dant was extremely advanced in regard to key, that it was well ahead of its
time in terms of development elsewhere, but we need to be on our guard against
reading too much into the early sources.
I will present the evidence that the early sources are already sufficient in
themselves after all, that the tuning for each piece in the music text is
unambiguously indicated, and that there is no obstacle whatsoever relating to
tonality which prevents us from reconstructing these pieces of music with
confidence. On the basis of the evidence available at the present time I believe the
arguments to be presented are conclusive.

Throughout, the term 'tuning' will be used to refer to tuning sets in general,
whether they involve the inflecting of notes - as in a change of key - or the
reassignment of notes to strings as in scordatura tunings. Microtonal tempering
adjustments will be treated as a separate issue.
 3

I. THE EARLY LITERATURE RELATING TO TUNING

Firstly, let us examine the early literature on music to see what it does and does not
express concerning tuning the telyn. The Welsh literature on the technicalities of
music is sparse. It divides very simply into two categories: regional and
cosmopolitan. The regional literature is couched in terms that are unique to Wales,
using terms mainly in the Welsh language but also ones of ultimately Latin origin,
and relates primarily to cerdd dant. The cosmopolitan literature is couched in terms
that are common to Europe as a whole, and the majority of the musical terms used
are Latin. They relate directly to plainchant (which of course was practiced in Wales -
as 'y cân araf' in contrast to 'cerdd dafod'), but occasionally it appears that a
reconciliation was being effected - or at least attempted - between these Latin terms
and Welsh terms, some of which are familiar from the regional literature.
Any other division of the literature would need to be speculative and could be
misleading (since for example some but probably not all of the cosmopolitan
literature originated outside Wales, despite both classes being written in Welsh).
These two categories of material are somewhat intermingled in the documents but in
general each passage is clearly of the one class or the other.
The cosmopolitan expositions are generally immediately comprehensible because
they tend to be based on practices and
 4

indeed on writings that are familiar. The regional expositions are not immediately
comprehensible, so the easiest route to understanding the technicalities of cerdd
dant would be through the cosmopolitan ones in so far as they relate closely and
reliably to cerdd dant as well as to plainchant. But this is not at all certain. Hence the
regional expositions do have to be addressed in tandem with all available sources. It
is a complex situation.
What very little literature there is which makes any expressed reference to tuning
is mainly of the cosmopolitan category, and it is initially unclear how much of this
actually does relate - even secondarily - to cerdd dant. For example, Aberystwyth MS
Peniarth 147 (1566), p. 197 contrasts the notation of plainsong and pricksong, and
then lists the names of the notes in the Guidonian gamut of hexachords, which of
course implies the use of both B-flat and B-natural. But a knowledge of plainsong by
a Welsh writer does not mean that cerdd dant employed both these notes.
Unfortunately, and perhaps tellingly, there appears to be no account of tuning the
telyn which definitely originates from deep within the eisteddfod cerdd dant tradition.
We have no exposition on tuning from anyone with the credentials of a Wiliam
Penllyn, nor even a record of there having been such an exposition. One possible
explanation for this absence could be that it was felt that the tablature was
sufficiently clear that the tuning of the telyn did not require separate exposition.
Most of what can be gleaned concerning tuning is from
 5

sources which are sufficiently late to be of debatable relevance to the music text in
the Robert ap Huw MS. These occur mainly in the context of the names of the telyn
strings.

STRING-NAMES

We could expect each of the strings of the telyn not just to have been denoted by
alphabetical symbols and octave marks - as they are in the music text of the MS -
but to have borne names as well. Several sources touch on tuning of the telyn.
Cardiff Library MS Hafod 24 (John Jones Gellilyfdy 1605-10): 810 describes the
lowering by half a note of a string two strings above one named y cyweirdant - very
possibly the string from which one begins tuning the telyn - to form y gogywair,
which is one of the five principal or warranted cyweiriau of cerdd dant. Lacking as it
does more detail, we cannot be strictly sure of the tuning this passage is indicating,
but it must be fairly safe to conclude that it is the diatonic scale of all natural notes
apart from the inclusion of B-flat. Since the tablature divides each octave series of
letter symbols in such a way that G is the lowest string in the octave, we can well
imagine that G was where one began the tuning cycle and that the G-string may
have been named y cyweirdant. G is of course the most fundamental note in the
Guidonian gamut, and just as B - two notes above the G - was the only note that
was subject to being flattened in the Hexachordal system, the simplest interpretation
of this passage is that it is this flattening of the B-string that is being
 6

referred to. If so, and if the passage is reliable in terms of the eisteddfod tradition,
then B-flat would have had some significance in cerdd dant. This should be borne in
mind later, when we come to consider the tablature in detail.
Cardiff Library MS Hafod 3 (by harpist Robert Peilin c.1613-c.1617) pp. 235-8
refers in passing to the inflection of both B and F strings, in an essay which is
primarily about the theory of plainsong and the gamut. Although he was described in
1605 as a pencerdd in a flattering poem (by Edwart ap Raff), we cannot at this stage
be sure that he had graduated as such because there is a worrying lack of evidence
that the institutions of examination had continued well beyond the Caerwys
eisteddfod of 1567/8. We cannot assume that Peilin himself played the old cerdd
dant of the eisteddfod tradition, but he does employ several cerdd dant terms.
Several more points need to be made that bear on Peilin's relationship to the
eisteddfod tradition.
1) His name appears in Bangor MS Gwyneddon 4, p. 133, on the list of musicians
present at Lleweni over Christmas of 1595, in the company of other gwŷr wrth
gerdd, some of whom are descendants of those at Caerwys 1567/8. But the long list
of pieces performed there is of all popular tunes which were very definitely not
drawn from the traditional repertory of cerdd dant. It is unlikely that both types of
music were performed at Lleweni, and so it would seem that these families of
musicians had switched in recent decades from the traditional music to
accommodate the modern tastes of their patrons. Certainly the
 7

patrons of Tomos ap Richard (who was, in the years following, a musical partner of
Peilin), had cosmopolitan tastes.
2) It appears that for much of his career Peilin was part of a band of musicians.
The instruments involved included another telyn, a crwth - probably a crwth trithant
- and a pibgorn. A consort of this sort is never indicated or implied within the
eisteddfod tradition. Specifically the crwth trithant and the pibgorn were excluded
from the formal proceedings at Caerwys, as if even as early as 1567/8 the tradition
was under threat from below, by a popular music or a folk music. It is really
unimaginable that the cerdd dant repertory - much of its subtle character requires a
gentle delivery and keen attention from the audience - could be successfully played
on the telyn and on a pibgorn together. The pibgorn is relatively very loud and
penetrating, and quite raucous in tone.
3) Several poems refer to Peilin as a 'pencerdd'. Robert ap Huw, Peilin's
contemporary, uses the same title in relation to his own repertory. However, one
wonders whether the use of 'pencerdd' in these instances was merely a formula for
an accomplished musician, and should not be taken in the strict, literal sense of
indicating the holder of a formal degree. If, as seems to have been the case, the
institutions of formal examination for the degree had ceased, one could imagine that
both harpists might have accrued the title by virtue of having performed at the
English Court, which fact was certainly taken to confer great prestige upon them
both. Robert ap Huw's understanding of traditional cerdd dant was poor
(demonstrated by
 8

his authorship of the rhythmic signs he added to the music text of the manuscript -
see Part 4 of this work, pp. 28-32) and it may well have been that Peilin knew as
little or even less about it, despite his 'pencerdd' epithet.
Nevertheless, there appears to be a core element of tradition in Peilin's writing.
Uniquely, he supplies convincingly idiosyncratic names for individual harpstrings, and
these are very important indeed since they imply the tuning of the telyn. Names are
provided for seven harpstrings - those lying within each octave - which reveal an
obvious alphabetical mnemonic which I bring out by underlinings here, along with
translations and correspondences:
gowirdant =G
a chrassdant = arid harsh =A
#ragodant (using the diesis for the b) = B-natural
ne breiniol gowirdant = freed = B-flat
C gywirdant =C
dylordant = ? dull =D
eglurdant = bright =E
ffrwythlleddfdant = fruitful soft =F
ne breiniol ddyrchafaeldant = freed raised = F-sharp
The modifications to the tunings of the B and F strings are of course exactly those
that we should expect to find in the mainstream of European practice in the early
seventeenth century: the modification of B is familiar from the system of
hexachords, and the modification of F from musica falsa. But because this treatise is
primarily on the theory of the European mainstream,
 9

we have to consider how applicable these 'mainsteam' tunings would have been to
the cerdd dant tradition in Wales.
Amongst these names there is a core of cerdd dant terminology - 'cras' and
'bragod' are two terms which have certainly been drawn from the cerdd dant
tradition. In fact the whole collection of string names seems to comprise an accretion
of different layers, drawn from different systems for naming strings. 'Cras' and
'bragod' relate to cyweiriau. 'Gowirdant' and 'C gywirdant' seem to be drawn from a
system in which strings were named from their letter-names, suffixed by
'cyweirdant'. 'Dylordant', 'eglurdant' and 'ffrwthleddfdant' have obviously been so
named from the outset to establish a mnemonic connection with their letter-names,
and they may well be the result of late didactics rather than early practice; they
might be the inventions of Peilin.
In contrast, those names which have been forced into the logic of the mnemonic
must surely have been drawn from traditional practice. 'gowirdant' is forced, with the
artificial mutation from 'cowirdant'; 'a chrassdant' is forced by the addition of the
conjunction 'a'; and the natural sign, the diesis, is forced onto 'bragodant'. These
names will have been authentic, and they may well have been drawn from the cerdd
dant tradition. In turn this implies that the modifications to B and F could have also
been authentic drawings from the tradition and not merely from the European
tradition.
At this point it is important to stress that what is indicated here in regard to
tunings is clear and familiar for us
 10

to understand. Note that only two strings may undergo modification, that the
sophistication of the tuning here does not extend beyond this, and that the list might
have some applicability to the tablature of the Robert ap Huw MS. because of the
two points of similarity in vocabulary: 'cras' and 'bragod' - two of the five warranted
cyweiriau of the cerdd dant tradition.
'Cyweirdant' is another term shared with tradition. It is used three times in this
passage, in two different ways. In 'gowirdant' (= the G cyweirdant) and 'C gywirdant'
the word implies an emphasis on the notes G and C, as if these notes were
significant or fundamental in gamut formation or scale formation, and Hafod 24 has
already indicated G as 'y cyweirdant'. In 'breiniol gowirdant' the word is perhaps
used more casually, as a general word for 'string' when considered from the point-of-
view of pitch.
These uses are to be contrasted carefully with the use of the same term in other
contexts. It is fairly clear that the use in Hafod 24 of 'y cyweirdant' refers to a single
string from which one begins tuning, the same concept used later by Gwilym Puw for
his 'sette string'.
The closest equivalent to the multiple use of the term here by Peilin is found in
Aberystwyth MS Panton 56 (f.4v), where 'cyweirdannau cryfion' are explained as the
starting notes for each of the seven individual hexachords. It is of course noteworthy
that five of the hexachords begin on either G or C, and so the naming of these two
strings by Peilin receives some confirmation here. We will return to Hafod 3 in the
next chapter.
 11

Panton 56, an eighteenth-century collation (c.1758-85) of mainly earlier

material, refers to the inflection of B in a plainsong context, and it also associates
the three types of Guidonian hexachords (denoted by corruptions of their Latin
names) with some cerdd dant terms, thus: 'Begwri' (the context suggests this is
from 'B Durum'), 'Beiniol' (from 'B molle') and 'Proprgrawnt' (from 'properground',
evidently English for 'proprechant'), with tro'r tant, gogywair and bragod gywair
respectively. Each of the three types of hexachord has its own 'cyweirdant', and
these can be inferred to be G, F and C respectively, with one set string for each
starting-point of the three types of Guidonian hexachord. Thus, if the treatise is
correct, of the cerdd dant terms here tro'r tant would involve B-natural, gogywair
would involve B-flat and bragod gywair would involve neither.
It should be stressed that the original author of this treatise was primarily
writing on the theory of plainchant, often unreliably, and not cerdd dant. The use of
cerdd dant terms here rather appears as if he had encountered some Welsh musical
terms and was anxious to provide a reconciliation between them and the Latin terms
for the hexachords, or to provide some Welsh terms rather than borrowings at least.
The reconciliation may have been retrospective, with the author pressing the cerdd
dant terms into a service they were not designed for. Nevertheless the association
drawn here between gogywair and B-flat does accord with Hafod 24, despite the fact
that Hafod 3 p. 235 associates y gogywair with sharpening a string - dyrchafael y
dant - a term
 12

Peilin uses for the raising of B-flat to B natural. Perhaps it is wise not to give much
credence to Peilin's details, since this identification of dyrchafaeldant is not supported
by his list of harpstrings, where the term 'bragodant' is used for B-natural, and
'breiniol dyrchafaeldant' is reserved for what appears to be F-sharp, not B-natural.
Whether it is Jones or Peilin - or indeed neither of them - that is correct about the
gogywair, it is evident that there was some disagreement then (as there is today)
over which was the radical pitch of B and which was the 'modified' pitch. We will see
later that the tablature itself was unequivocally decided on this matter.
Not to be confused with any of these conceptions of 'cyweirdant' is the use of the
term in chordal, harmonic contexts. The literature on cerdd dant generally uses the
term in contrast to 'tyniad', and Aberystwyth MS Peniarth 62 (post 1582):18 refers
to a set of seven cyweirdannau - presumably within each octave - of which three are
principal or special, and four (cynnwys dannau - contained i.e. damped strings) are
weak, in the sense of whether they are to be sustained ('played through until it dies
away') or stopped ('measured in whatever way you like') respectively. The three
principal cyweirdannau here may be those termed main, trebl and byrdwn which
made up an individual 'cyweirdant cryf' as described in Peniarth 147 p. 196 and
Panton 56 p. 12, but more certainly they may be identified with the components of
the triad (when one brings the music text into account).
Evidently the term 'cyweirdant' was used for a whole range
 13

of purposes, but in relation to tuning it seems that out of all the above uses,
referring to the G string as 'y cyweirdant' was the most relevant.
Taking stock of what little has been gleaned from these manuscripts concerning
tuning, a tuning scale emerges comprised of all natural notes apart from the
alternative tuning of B-flat and F-sharp. Indeed it is very conceivable that harp-
tuning was no more complex than that required to accommodate modal music and
that the scales it produced were no more complex than those of plainsong.
We have every reason, then, to take the tunings within Peilin's list of harpstring
names at face value. It would seem to indicate that the period to which it relates
(which may possibly have been after the demise of the cerdd dant tradition) was a
stage of evolution at which there was a diatonic tuning which allows for modifications
to the B string and the F string and which remained diatonic, with no duplicating of
notes. The word used for these inflections is 'breiniol' (not 'cyweiriol', 'tyniadol' or
'lleddf' as some have suggested). This is to say that the scale of the Welsh harp at
this time appears to have been in keeping with the rest of what we know of the
history of music, that it was not exotic or bizarre.
At this point it is helpful to review the position. We have one source that relates
to two inflections, and two that relate to one inflection. This is straightforward
enough for us to imagine that the tablature should not present insuperable problems
in respect of note-identification. Not insuperable, that
 14

is, were it not for the issue that in the modern, interpretive literature it has generally
been considered that the music text contains multiple tunings; that each specific
cywair comprised a different tuning. This view is challenged at length later, but first
a chapter is required on modern interpretations of tuning which have centred on the
concept of 'cywair'.
 15

II. MODERN INTERPRETATIONS OF TUNING

In the preceding chapter, we have seen that certain notes or strings have
occasionally been associated with various cyweiriau. This fact has not, thus far, really
complicated the situation regarding tuning in the early literature that we have so far
considered. But as we come to the more modern literature it is clear that
contributors have felt themselves under pressure to provide a Welsh terminology for
the keys emergent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, not just Welsh
terms for the ancient hexachords.
As we have seen in the case of the word 'cyweirdant', 'cywair' can be put to a
variety of uses. Undoubtedly it and its verb 'cyweirio' have been used from early
times to describe the setting of individual strings and the initial tuning of the telyn.
'Cywair' presents itself as a suitable candidate and in modern times it has become
the word for key, with the retunings they entail, but we need to examine very
carefully when this came about.
In 1676 Gwilym Puw used the word in the sense of tuning arrangements or sets.
In his notebook, NLW 4710 B, are diagrams of tuning instructions (in English) for
three tuning sets, termed 'Y Bragod Gywair', 'Y Gogywair' and 'Y Braidd Gywair', or
'The Ordinarie Sette', 'The Siarpe Sette' and 'The Flat Sette' in English. The
instructions commence from a particular 'sette string', the pitch of which is not given
but which, if it relates
 16

to earlier practice, may be the G cyweirdant. The tunings are hard to implement with
certainty because the pitch of the set string is not specified and because at points
the tunings appear to be musically improbable, but they are sufficiently different
from one another to imply that more than one flat and one sharp are involved. If the
set string is G, then B is flat in y gogywair which accords with Hafod 24 and Panton
56 but not Hafod 3.
Note that the link here with the cerdd dant traditional terms is confined to just
the bragod gywair and the gogywair, so this account does not directly address the
cyweiriau as they were used in the early tradition, in which there were five
warranted cyweiriau. In fact it is the English terms which are cohesive here - it is
they that are commensurate with one another, not the Welsh ones. This makes one
wonder if what Puw was actually attempting to describe was simply the raising of F
and the flattening of B, as described in Hafod 3, and the three diatonic keys
involved.
Most interestingly here, close parallels to just such a system of three keys are
supplied by the set of Irish terms reported by Bunting for the harp in Ireland:
'fuigheall-mor' - great (in the sense of augmented by the sharpening) sound - for the
key (D major) derived from the raising of a string; 'fuigheall-beg' - little (in the
sense of diminished) sound - for the key (C major) derived from the flattening of a
string; and 'uan fuigheall' - single sound - for the tuning (G major) upon which these
inflections are made. These terms are semantically
 17

(if not strictly musically) commensurate with Puw's terms. The three English terms
used by Gwilym Puw - 'the siarpe sette', 'the flatte sette' and 'the ordinarie sette' -
are not translations of the Welsh terms they accompany and are the obvious English
counterparts to the Irish terms. If indeed they be so, Puw has misapplied them to his
illustration of harp-tuning.
Whatever be the case regarding Puw's tunings, we can compare Bunting's with
Peilin's thus: 1) an ordinary or uan (single) set, Bunting: G major, Peilin: C major; 2)
a flat or beag (diminished) set, Bunting: C major, Peilin: F major; 3) a sharp or mor
(augmented) set, Bunting: D major, Peilin: G major. These are the ways in which the
available tunings in each source, Irish and Welsh, would have been organised
according to the Irish terms of Bunting and the English terms of Puw.
All three systems - Welsh (as in Hafod 3), Irish (as in Bunting) and English (as
inferred from Puw's English names) - indicate the same simple stage in the early
development of what was later to become the concept of key. But at this stage the
terminology was not that of keys but of inflected notes (and as with the Irish practice
described by Bunting there would no doubt have been modal uses of each of these
tunings not confined to the Ionian, major mode but including such as the Æolian and
the Dorian).
The doubts discussed here concerning the validity of extrapolating back from
Puw's tunings to the old cerdd dant throw uncertainty again onto the concept that a
'cywair' was a tuning set in the old tradition. Whilst 'cywair' has been used at
 18

various times for a wide variety of purposes in the field of adjusting, correcting and
perfecting pitch, in fact really it appears to have been an omnipurpose word within
the field of tonality and harmony. But this very flexibility prohibits any initial
certainty that its specific use in the context of the well-known group of individually-
named and warranted cyweiriau (as bragodgywair, isgywair etc) denoted specific
tuning sets (amongst multiple tunings) on the telyn within the cerdd dant eisteddfod
tradition.
Nevertheless, nearly all modern contributors have been convinced that the
original cyweiriau did involve different tunings for each, and the existence of five
principal cyweiriau and of the many others we have references to means that a great
deal of retuning is supposed to have been normal in this early tradition. Although
contributors have often not cited their sources, it is my impression that the majority
of contributors have directly or indirectly drawn from Hafod 24 and particularly from
Hafod 3 when assigning particular tunings to the warranted cyweiriau.
To understand the broad thrust of modern interpretations, it is necessary to
consider a further passage in Hafod 3 (pp. 237-8) - in itself a passage very
insignificant as regards tuning - following the list of harpstring names discussed
before. The manuscript continues, providing the names of seven 'principal' cyweiriau
which appear to be derived from the names for the strings. The passage does not
specify what the concept of 'cywair' which was being developed here actually was,
but because
 19

the names follow the string names so closely then the meaning of 'cywair' here
certainly includes the musical tone produced by a string. The names are:
G gywair
kras gywair
#ragod gywair (using the natural sign for b)
isgywair
dylod gywair
eglurgywair
ffrwythleddf gywair
It seems that Robert Peilin may have been attempting to force a reconciliation
here between the string names and the five warranted cyweiriau of the eisteddfod
tradition, hence the substitution of 'isgywair' for 'C gywir'. We can say this is forced
since 'is' and 'ec' (the Welsh word for the letter C) are not very similar at all, and
Peilin comments on the substitution, claiming unconvincingly that 'C gywir' is the
correct name, that 'isgywair' is mistaken. The name 'isgywair' is of course very well-
attested in the early literature.
With the addition of 'isgywair', Peilin may have thought that he had accounted for
all the five warranted cyweiriau, reading 'G gywir' perhaps as an abbreviation of
'gogywair' and reading 'ffrwythleddf gywair' perhaps as an expansion of 'lleddf
gywair'. But notwithstanding the clumsiness of this reconciliation, it is clear that to
Peilin at least a 'cywair' was associated with the tone of a particular string. Perhaps
the tone also provided a melodic final, in which case a 'cywair' in
 20

this concept would constitute a scalar mode as well as a particular tone. It is likely
that this is what Peilin had in mind here, because a note heading the list ('pedair
yma fflat ynt d E f g') will refer to a single flat - no doubt the B-flat he describes in
other passages - existing within scales which were - presumably - either hexatonic or
diatonic modes beginning on these notes.
It remains uncertain to what extent Peilin had a correct understanding of the
concept of cywair as used in the eisteddfod tradition. Nevertheless, what is clear
about this passage is that there is no indication whatsoever that a major scale should
be erected in turn on each of the seven notes of the octave. Such a modern
approach would conflict with the very limited inflecting detailed in the earlier passage
on the string names and would be out of keeping with the period. Yet many modern
contributors appear to have interpreted this passage in just such a way, with all the
retuning that this entails, without presenting any rationale for adopting that
interpretation.
It should not be necessary here to reconstruct all the detail of the elaborations
that modern writers seem to have projected onto this earlier evidence. I will point
out that some of the earlier interpreters in particular (Edward Jones, John Thomas
etc) had a tendency to present their scales as if they were privy to a contemporary
and commonplace musical tradition which used these terms in these ways. Yet we
have no real evidence of such a tradition, and I think that the evidence from
amongst the first erstwhile interpreters of the tablature - John
 21

Jones of Jesus College Oxford, William Jones and John Parry Ddall (see Ellis 1973 p.
83, Rees & Harper pp. 59-63) - makes it plain that in the late eighteenth century oral
tradition could give no insight into the cyweiriau.
Instead we are presented with what are clearly reinterpretations of Peilin's
cyweiriau as keys, by Edward Jones (p. 29), Owen Pughe, John Thomas (p. 1214),
Silvan Evans. The particular key imposed on each of Peilin's cyweiriau in turn is:
G gywair: this name dropped in favour of a new term: 'breiniol gywair', in which
Peilin's term for inflected strings is applied instead to 'cywair'; with the
interpretation: the key of G.
Kras gywair: term retained; reinterpreted as the key of A (G by Thomas),
regarded as a sharp key.
#ragod gywair: term normalised as 'bragod gywair'; reinterpreted as the key of
B, regarded as a mixed or minor key.
Isgywair: term retained; reinterpreted as the key of C, regarded as a low key.
Dylod gywair: term retained; reinterpreted as the key of D.
Eglurgywair: term retained; reinterpreted as the key of E.
Ffrwythleddf gywair: term contracted to 'lleddf gywair'; reinterpreted as the key
of F, regarded as an oblique flat key.
For the gogywair, not included in Peilin's list of cyweiriau, the tuning instructions
in Hafod 24 are drawn on, with Edward Jones identifying (probably arbitrarily) y
cyweirdant as C to produce a C scale with one flat on E, the later writers following his
lead.
In these ways what amounts to a mythology was created by
 22

these early writers, a mythology that has been largely disguised as contemporary
tradition for later interpreters, by virtue of the absence of reference to Hafod 3 as a
source and by dictionaries presenting the terms as if they were in current usage with
these particular meanings. Later interpreters have varied in the extent to which they
have fallen prey to this cywair mythology: Travis (p. 32) refers to the
misinterpretation and misapplication of cywair terms in the eighteenth century; Ellis
(1973, p. 82) refers to the 'unreliable guesses' of Edward Jones and Iolo Morganwg
(who worked with Owen Pughe); Polin (p. 52) considered it possible that Edward
Jones derived his opinions from the 'unintelligibility' of Hafod 3. But all modern
interpreters seem to have accepted that a change of cywair entails a retuning of the
telyn, apart from Gwynn Williams (1932 p. 34) who considered it possible that the
cyweiriau were nothing more than modes upon a single fundamental scale (although
by 1962 it appears he had changed position).
 23

III. THE TERMINOLOGY OF INFLECTION

It will have been noticed that the early literature supplies a Welsh vocabulary for the
inflecting of strings. Although it is a small vocabulary, it appears to be sufficient for
the purpose. This fact calls into question the need felt by modern contributors to
resort to interpreting the 'cywair' vocabulary as designed for the same purpose.
Because the terms involved have been rather passed over in the modern literature, it
is essential to investigate them here, particularly in relation to the cerdd dant
tradition. There are three terms used.
a) 'Dyrchafael y tant' - to raise the string. This is certainly an authentic cerdd
dant term because it occurs in the repertory lists, in the title of just one piece:
cwlwm newydd ar ddyrchafel y tant (see Miles, p. 669, item 127). This implies the
existence of a normal tuning, but one that could be departed from - very rarely
indeed - to create a composition a special feature of which was the sharpening of a
note. Working from Hafod 3 p. 235 (discussed above) this would be the sharpening
of B-flat to B-natural, but working from Hafod 3 pp. 236-7 (the string list also
discussed above) it might just refer to the raising of F-natural to F-sharp. There are
no known associations between this tuning and the pieces in the MS text, so
probably the tablature indicates B-flat and/or F-natural throughout.
b) 'Tro tant'. This term is of immediate relevance to the cerdd dant tradition and
the music text. It occurs in a note to
 24

one piece in the text: Caniad San Silin, and in the title of another: Caniad Tro Tant,
as well as in several titles not in the text. As we have seen, the term was used in
Panton 56 as the Welsh name for the B Durum hexachord, and if that manuscript is
correct, it would refer to B-natural.
c) 'Breiniol'. This term is used in the list of harpstrings discussed before to denote
the 'freed' status of an inflected string irrespective of whether that be the lowering of
B-natural to B-flat or the raising of F-natural to F-sharp.
Actually one wonders - given that we have an apparent set of three terms - with
'dyrchafael y tant' used for the raising of a string, and 'breiniol' used both for the
raising of this string and for the lowering of another, if 'tro tant' (turned string) was
not the term for the lowering of that other string - that is to say the lowering of the
B string to B-flat, the operation described in Hafod 24. This would imply that Panton
56 is incorrect, which is a possibility. Howsoever one wishes to conclude on that,
there is certainly no need here to suppose that at the most more than two strings
could be inflected.
Further, we already have available in this distinct set of three very descriptive
terms all the vocabulary necessary to accommodate the simple tuning system that
allows for the inflection of one or two notes at the most. As we have seen,
'dyrchafael' and 'tro tant' were in practical use, not just occurring in theoretical
expositions. There is a sufficiency here that causes one to seriously doubt that the
individual cyweiriau terms were used for the same sort of purpose as the tuning
 25

arrangements that we have been considering here; could the multitude of cyweiriau
describe something of a higher order of complexity than tuning?
It must be worth pondering at this stage in the development of our ideas if the
cyweiriau might be more obscure to us than has hitherto been supposed. None of the
'dyrchafaeldant'/'tro tant'/'breiniol' group - let us call it the 'inflection group' of terms
- are ever prefixed by 'cywair' in the early literature. And the terms for the cyweiriau
do not employ the terms for raising, lowering or inflecting strings, which of course
would be a very odd fact if the cyweiriau did involve retuning.
But notwithstanding this, as we have seen there are instances, two short
passages in the later literature, where an equivalence of some sort or another is
expressed or implied between parts of the cyweiriau group and of the
'dyrchafaeldant'/'tro tant'/'breiniol' group:-
1) Panton 56 f.14r as discussed before: 'a Begwri ai tynha ef megis tro'r tant a
Beiniol megis gogywair, proprgrawnt megis bragod gywair'.
2) Note to Caniad San Silin (71.5): 'ar dro tant ne ar is gower mae yn oreu' - on
tro tant or on is gywair it is best.
I personally remain unconvinced of the accuracy of these passages. In particular
I think that Panton 56 is very muddled. Although an association of b-molle with
gogywair accords with the reconciliation discussed before of harpstring names with
the passage in Hafod 24, why in Panton 56 are the three types of Guidonian
hexachords associated with a ragbag of cerdd dant
 26

terms, made up out of only two of the five warranted cyweiriau together with tro'r
tant which is a term of a different category from the cyweiriau? It seems improbable.
Before this passage, the author of Panton 56 has already confounded the types of
hexachord with the parts of three-part singing, and as he was not reliable in his
understanding of the hexachordal system, it is hard to have much confidence in his
reconciliation of that with parts of the cerdd dant system.
I do hold that the distinction that has been drawn here between the two groups
of terms:- the inflection group and the cywair system - is a very important and
useful one. It calls into question the reliability of these two passages. My impression
is that the cyweiriau system was peculiar to cerdd dant, very central to cerdd dant,
and that it was extremely complex; whereas the inflection system is apparently
identical with that of the mainstream of music in Europe and may have been adopted
at a relatively late date (witness the low incidence of its terms in the Welsh
tradition). The earliest reference on the Continent to retuning the harp is that by
Martin Agricola in 1529, where the tuning given for a 26-stringed harp is of all
natural notes except that the B strings might be tuned to B-flat.
 27

IV. MULTIPLE TUNINGS

Although the modern literature on the subject of tuning in the old cerdd dant
tradition gives the appearance that it is an established fact that the telyn was
retuned in order to play different pieces, the true situation is actually not clearcut.
There has been a general assumption that retuning took place, and there has
certainly been much argument concerning how this could have been implemented,
but arguments have not been advanced to establish that retuning did take place. Yet
such reasoning is necessary, because the prima facie evidence of the tablature
simply lacks indication of retuning.
Indeed the whole subject of cerdd dant is so obscure (the majority of its
technical terms are not fully understood) that we must take great care to avoid
making assumptions where possible, and that the onus is placed strongly upon each
contributor to demonstrate and validate any hypothesis he/she may put forward
which departs from the prima facie evidence of the tablature itself, because the
tablature is a very large, detailed, cohesive and potentially coherent sample. I
maintain that the tablature itself constitutes the best and largest body of evidence on
cerdd dant that we have, and that it should generally be given preference over other
sources, as a matter of correct method.
Concerning tuning, the overwhelmingly direct fact is that the tablature uses the
same alphabetical symbols for each of the sixty-four pieces in the text. Also it can be
argued that the
 28

tablature was designed to be intelligible, self-contained and even fluently sight-read.

So one would expect that the tablature itself should contain modifications to these
alphabetical symbols if they referred to different notes in different parts of the text,
and yet there are no such modifications.
Robert ap Huw himself at least did have the means at his disposal to modify the
symbols - on p. 109 whilst illustrating y lleddf gower gwyddel he twice used a
combination of two symbols indicative of B-natural: the B-quadratum symbol, that is
'square' b (related to the 'h' of other tablatures and notations, with the diesis symbol
'#' below - the symbol for natural. This combination is in clear contrast to the
rounded, solitary b of the music text itself - the B-rotundum symbol. Every B in the
music text itself is a B-rotundum, and neither it nor any other letter is modified in
any way. The best evidence there could be of retuning is simply not there.
Why is it not there? Had there been an oversight of crippling proportions or is
indication of retuning simply unrequired?
It may have been that the author of the text would not have used modifications
because it would have been a cumbersome procedure. A verbal direction, naming the
tuning, would have sufficed. But in the majority of pieces there is no verbal direction
which could relate to retuning. On rare occasions the word 'cywair' is used in
different ways, and it is these instances that writers have believed or assumed relate
to retuning the telyn between pieces; I repeat that it is not that
 29

they have argued this.

Because this has not actually been argued before, I set out the two arguments
that can be made.
1) The word was used in the sense of tuning-up stringed instruments such as the
telyn and crwth (e.g. in 'Y 24 Campau'), although it was also used for many
purposes, some unconnected to music. Therefore, if the telyn was retuned between
different pieces, it would have been an appropriate term to use, although as
discussed before it is very odd that the 'cywair' terminology does not use the words
for sharpening, flattening and inflecting in general. A more appropriate term than
'cywair' would have been the loan-word 'cliff' (from 'clef') which was in currency to
judge from Hafod 3 and Panton 56, where it was used to describe the letter name of
a note. Also these manuscripts do not use 'cywair' but 'cyfnewid' to describe a shift
from one hexachord to another.
It should be added here that it appears that the primary meaning of 'cyweirio'
was the initial tuning-up of stringed instruments in general, distinct from the word
for stopping strings on fingerboards. Compare two 'Statute' passages relating to the
datgeiniad (quoted by Robert Griffith p. 40):
'efe a ddyly wybod cyweiriau telyn a chrwth ...'
'efe a ddylai wybod cyweiriau telyn, a thyniadau crwth ...'
The first passage must refer to tuning the strings of the telyn and the crwth. The
second, expanded passage must refer to tuning the strings of the telyn and stopping
the strings of the crwth on its (unfretted) fingerboard; i.e. the basic skill
 30

required by the telyn was tuning (always difficult), and whereas this could also be
said of the crwth, actually the greater skill on the crwth lay in the stopping, which is
the difficult bit here. The word 'tyniad' in the metrical/harmonic sense must have
been transferred from the crwth or some stopped instrument to the telyn, and the
double-tonic emphasis will probably have had its origin on a stopped instrument (not
the crwth) where stoppings alternated with the sounding of open strings in an
accompaniment (probably to vocal performance). The particular type of lyre that
could give rise to this kind of terminology is discussed in Part 4 of this work, pp. 143-
5.
It will be this primary meaning of 'cywair' which will have given rise to the term
'cyweirdant' as used in metrical contexts (i.e. within the cyweirdant/tyniad system of
mesur).
2) There are the instances already discussed where the word has been used to
describe different tunings for the telyn. There are just three of these instances of
which I am aware which are from early sources, but none before the seventeenth
century:-
i) Robert ap Huw: lleddf gower gwyddel, p. 109. Note that this unique instance of
notations for inflections is exceptional amongst the nine diagrams of cyweiriau on p.
108-9; not even the closely-related version of lleddf gower gwyddel on p. 108 uses
B-quadratum or a natural sign. All the other cyweiriau given, together with lleddf
gower gwyddel on p. 108, use B-rotundum throughout and show no modifications to
F. Even lleddf gower gwyddel p. 109 uses B-rotundum in its top row. So far as we
can judge the cywair system as a whole from those shown on pp. 108-9,
 31

whatever it was that it was based on, it was not based on note-inflections.
The B-natural symbols on p. 109 do not necessarily imply that it was customary
to retune when one changed cywair, merely that different harpists from different
traditions may have used different tunings from one another. The reference to
Ireland in the version of lleddf gower gwyddel on p. 109 implies that at least some
Irish or Hiberno-Norse practice was (or had been) in a different tuning from that (or
those) which were the norm in Wales. Note that there is no reason to suppose that
either version of lleddf gower gwyddel on p. 108 or p. 109 was identical to the lleddf
gower which was commonplace in Welsh cerdd dant.
ii) Hafod 24. As discussed before, this passage draws attention to an association
between the gogywair and two particular notes: the cyweirdant - the set string - and
the flattening of the third above. These are almost certainly G and B-flat
respectively. This does not mean that each cywair used a unique tuning, only that
the gogywair employed these notes and that a tuning existed (at least conceptually if
not in actual practice) which employed a major third here (as in the hexachords).
But the implication is that the 'go-' prefix relates to the minor third, and we may, if
we choose, further draw out an implication that other cyweiriau used different
intervals in this or other parts of the scale. Note however that this is not expressed,
and that adopting the further implication relies on accepting the authority of Jones's
source. The fact is that the passage is anecdotal and not an orderly, systematic
attempt to
 32

contrast the cyweiriau, unlike the pp. 108-9 diagrams. So strictly speaking, we
cannot exclude the possibility that the other cyweiriau did not also, along with the
gogywair, use these two notes.
At this point it may seem pedantic to treat this passage so cautiously, but as will
emerge below the view that the cyweiriau can be explained by a multiple tunings
hypothesis is not really tenable in practice.
iii) Gwilym Puw (1676). He uses the word 'cywair' in the sense of different
tunings for the telyn. But the apparent link here with the sixteenth-century
eisteddfod tradition is very weak because of the late date, because he only employs
two of the titles of the five warranted cyweiriau of the sixteenth-century, and
because he includes a third which is entirely unknown to us from the sixteenth-
century tradition. As I argue, the performance of the eisteddfod tradition may well
have ceased shortly after 1584. One can easily conceive that fragments of the
terminology of the sixteenth-century eisteddfod tradition could have migrated to a
quite different musical tradition, one where the harp was used to play dances and
popular music of a lighter character as was in currency in Gwilym Puw's time.
Although Gwilym Puw's ancestry relates to the eisteddfod tradition, this material
would be firmer as evidence if it had been introduced into the record much earlier
than 1676. This date is really beyond the tailend of the dates for the introduction of
material on the tradition, and most of the material introduced earlier is established
to have been copied. If this material was
 33

not a copy, I would consider it as extremely late in origin.

Although none of these sources are conclusive that the telyn underwent retuning
when a cywair was changed (we cannot be sure that Jones and Puw were using
'cywair' in the same sense as it was used in the sixteenth-century tradition) they do
provide a basis for a hypothesis that the telyn was retuned between pieces to enter
different cyweiriau. If on adopting and implementing this hypothesis no anomalies
transpired, it would have to be taken as conclusive for the purposes of reconstructing
the music.
However, such a quagmire of anomalies and contradictions arises that I reject
the hypothesis. I set down here the arguments against the use of the word 'cywair'
to describe retuning the telyn. Note that many of these identify not merely that it is
difficult in practice to identify the particular solutions for each cywair, but that also it
would seem that such solutions could not in theory exist in the realm of retuning.

1. 'CYWAIR' IS RARELY SPECIFIED IN THE MUSIC TEXT

Although some catalogues of pieces for the telyn or the crwth specify the cywair of a
particular piece, in the MS text the cyweiriau of most pieces is ignored. In only 7 out
of 54 (13%) does the name of the cywair accompany the piece. In 4 of these cases
the designation is an integral part of the title in order to differentiate the piece from
another with an otherwise identical title. These are:
Y Caniad Crych ar y Bragodgywair (p. 76)
Caniad Bach ar y Gogywair (44, 46)
Profiad Brido ar Isgywair (64)
Profiad Brido ar Uwchgywair (65)
 34

This leaves only 3 out of 54 (6%) where the author has felt it worthwhile to go out of
his way to specify the cywair:
Caniad Ystafell (41)
Caniad Cynwrig Bencerdd (50)
Caniad San Silin (71)
Now if the knowledge of the appropriate cywair was essential to ascertain the
tuning of a piece, this would have been an extraordinary oversight for the author to
have made, given the meticulous detail of the text in almost every other respect. If
one accepts that the music text was intended to be entirely intelligible, then one is
forced to conclude either that the cywair is irrelevant to performance on the telyn, or
that the nature of the tuning(s) is evident either from the tablature or from other
sources.

2. 'CYWAIR' IS RARELY SPECIFIED IN OTHER SOURCES

The lists of titles in the Robert ap Huw MS. and in the early sources do not usually
specify the cywair. Generally the cywair is included in the title of a piece only to
distinguish the piece from another whose title is otherwise identical, and not as a
performance guide. Using these lists - and we have many of them - to discover the
cywair of the pieces in the text still does not fully succeed. A cywair for five more
pieces can be gleaned from Aberystwyth MS Gwysaney 28 (c. 1560) f. 71, one more
from BL MS Add. 15046 (1593) f. 35, and - tenuously - for the 24 clymau
 35

cytgerdd also. This leaves 17 pieces (31%) to which cywair cannot be ascribed.
The conclusion is that the author could not have omitted the cyweiriau in the
expectation that this information could be acquired from other sources. The cywair
must either have been self-evident from the tablature or unimportant in playing from
the tablature; it will not have been that the project of entabulation was hopelessly ill-
conceived in the first place.

3. CANIAD SAN SILIN

The note to this piece (p. 71): 'ar dro tant ne ar is gower, mae yn oreu'. As
mentioned above, I have strong doubts that this note is correct. But if we do accept
it as correct, it creates difficulties for the retuning hypothesis. Perhaps these were
two different terms for one tuning although it would be hard then to understand why
the term 'tro tant' should be considered the better. So if we accept 'tro tant' as a
'cywair' (it is never designated as such) then a choice of cyweiriau would be being
offered here, and this would lead us into strange territory, for the tablature offers a
single version and provides no transposition of the piece. Is it offering the same
musical text for two different tunings? If it is to be maintained that 'cywair' involves
retuning then the melody of this piece would surely be altered, and the harmonies
also. This is a technical possibility, but an improbable one if the tritone is to be
avoided. And it does not seem credible that the melody and harmony of an individual
piece could be subject to radical
 36

alteration, since all the other pieces present as such highly cohesive and crystallized
compositions.
All this is true, of course, only for harps. Stopped instruments such as the crwth
and the timpan are technically capable of realizing a single musical piece in more
than just one way. It is to these instruments that the whole language of options and
alternatives applies, in respect of fingerings and tunings. The San Silin note ceases
to be enigmatic if it is interpreted as information for the crythor.

4. PROFIADAU AND FORMULAE

A similar problem occurs with the profiadau. Although the beginnings of pieces in this
class were played on different cyweiriau - uwch and is - all the profiadau run into the
same text. This text was of substantial length - it comprised at least the 4 lines of
Profiad Chwith Ifan ab y Gof on p. 61 and the 2 lines of Pwnc ar ol pob profiad on p.
56.
Again, is it conceivable that this identical text could have been played using
different notes according to the tuning the telyn happened to be in for the beginning?
Or is it conceivable that the telyn would be retuned in the course of a piece, without
any specific directions to show exactly when and how?
The exact same problem occurs in other melodic formulae which are common to
different pieces. For example, take the phrase in Profiad Brido ar Uwchgywair
(65.2.9-14). This is very similar to the phrase which closes (i.e. the diwedd bach)
every cainc and diwedd of Gosteg Dafydd Athro, (introduced 15.2); the
 37

phrase used commonly in Y Caniad Crych ar y Bragodgywair (introduced 78.2); also

Caniad Marwnad Ifan ab y Gof (introduced 73.1), known from Aberystwyth MS
Gwysaney 28 (c. 1560) and Aberystwyth MS Peniarth 77 (c. 1576) to be ar y bragod
gower. The last part of this phrase is identical in the treble, and yet these pieces are
known to have been composed on a variety of different cyweiriau.
These formulae are so common that almost every piece in the text is linked,
either directly or indirectly, to almost all the other pieces (see Greenhill (1999) pp.
223-36). It is very unlikely indeed that the same - as it is written - phrase could be
played in many different tunings whilst remaining musically successful, especially in
respect of harmony.

5. THE EXISTENCE OF OTHER POSSIBILITIES FOR THE TERM

At this point one wonders if the cyweiriau might not have meant something other
than retuning the telyn. I outline here some initial propositions which could relate to
the meaning of the word: to correct, to adjust etc. Each of these possibilities would
surely need to be considered and debated before it could be claimed that 'cywair'
was understood and that it entailed retuning the telyn. Many of these possibilities will
be developed in later chapters.
a) Tuning sets for the crwth. Only one name for a crwth tuning set is immediately
identifiable as such: 'cywair naturiol'. This is surprising as there are very strong
arguments that there would have been a number of tuning sets for the crwth (see
Part 4, pp. 137-9).
 38

The possibilities are examined in Chapter X on crwth tunings.

b) Intervals. Although one poem by Wiliam Llŷn uses numbers to describe these
(see Part 4, p. 116), there are no vernacular names for intervals that have come to
light, unlike for the harp in Ireland. The existence of vernacular names is suggested
in Chapter IX, including 'cras' for the 5th.
c) Particular chords, or types of chord. Again no names are supplied for these. As
will be detailed later, the text demonstrates reliance on - significantly - five main
triads, and in fact large portions of the treatises on cyweiriau could be taken to apply
to triadic harmony.
d) Modes. Apart from a borrowing of the Latin names of the hexachords, no
names for these are supplied except by the cyweiriau of Peilin.
e) Modulations. There are no names for these. The cyweirdant/tyniad system
itself might properly be described in respect of melody as modulation between two
different modes.
f) Particular chord progressions (or types of chordal progression). There are no
names for these. The text and the measure system demonstrate that chord changes
were heavily structured and took place in a highly organized manner. This possibility
will be examined in detail later on in this chapter.
g) Temperaments. This is examined in chapter VIII.
The meanings:- adjustment, correction, perfection - are appropriate candidates
for all these possibilities, hence the use of the word 'cywair' cannot be taken on a
semantic basis to imply solely and specifically the retuning the telyn, when there are
 39

so many other initial possibilities. We have to admit as a possibility, then, the

proposition that the cyweiriau system might have operated normally within just one
single tuning on the telyn.

6. THE CRWTH

The pieces in the Robert ap Huw MS. must on the whole have been playable, in some
form, on the crwth (I except those pieces that modulate between modes: the
profiadau and Caniad Marwnad Ifan ap y Gof). Although the music text is arranged
for the harp, most pieces apparently must have been playable on the crwth because
repertory sources so rarely and so scantily differentiate pieces as for one or the other
instrument, and they mix within lists the compositions of both telynorion and
crythorion. Now in order to play these pieces the crythor must have used scordatura
devices, to make full use of the two unstopped strings of the thumb at least (see
Part 4, pp. 134-142).
There is no vocabulary that we are aware of for these tuning sets, unless it be
'cywair'. If the five warranted cyweiriau did relate to the crwth in this way, then a
telynior would not need to know the cywair for each piece, and this would explain the
strangely casual approach to specifying the cyweiriau. It could also account for some
of the discrepancies over which cywair certain pieces are recorded as being on, since
a single piece might be realizable on the crwth using different tuning sets.
 40

The use of 'cywair' for crwth tuning seems quite likely as the musical system and
its vocabulary appear to have been evolved on an instrument or a pair of
instruments of few strings, not on a harp with many open strings (see Part 4, pp. 16-
7, 140-1, 143-5).
It must be significant that the sixteenth-century material relating to cywair is
never presented exclusively in the context of the telyn. It is often in the context of
what relates at least partially to both instruments, such as the catalogues of pieces.
But the fullest exposition we have, from the early treatises, is in the specific context
of the crwth alone, not the telyn. Indeed the treatises are occupied by more material
on the crwth than on the telyn, and this has led me to believe that the crwth had
been more central to the idiom than the telyn, perhaps at an early period.
Thus we have (Peniarth 147 pp. 199-200; Peniarth 62 etc): 'Dywetter bellach
am y cowiriau... Pump cywair y sydd... Un bys y grythor sydd yn cadw tri chowir...'
etc. This passage is certainly about notes, and is probably about scordatura, and is
possibly about scales also, but is certainly not about telyn tunings.

7. THE EARLY TREATISES ON CERDD DANT

These include obscure expositions on cywair which, like the example above, appear
to occur in the context of the crwth, and are hard to reconcile with an understanding
of the word as retuning the telyn. For instance, Peniarth 147, p. 200: 'From the
 41

five main cyweiriau you can make as many cyweiriau as you want'! How can you,
from five tunings, make as many as you want? 'Each of the cyweiriau are mixed the
one with the other'. How can you mix different tunings together? How can the
number of tunings be unlimited? 'It is through instruction that the various fillings-up
(llanw) can be classified' - at least here is an acknowledgement from the author of
the difficulty of communicating such complexities. 'Llanw' here is probably used in
the sense of an interval; if so it does not accord well with the tuning interpretation of
'cywair'. These passages do make some sense if you take 'cywair' as related to
chords, chordal harmony and progression.
The point here is that the bulk of these expositions are obscure, and further that
little or no light has been shed on them by the much tested hypothesis of retuning. I
suspect that if the true meanings of 'cywair', 'cyweirdant' and 'tyniad' were
uncovered, these expositions would become almost wholly comprehensible. This has
not happened as yet in the literature.

8. SUBSEQUENT PRACTICE

Often the retuning hypothesis has been understood to involve the use of different
keys on the telyn. The use of five fundamental tunings from which one could make
an unlimited number of tunings is far in excess of the use of keys in medieval music
in so far as this is understood, particularly for a diatonic instrument. All the
indications are that the 'cywair' system was ancient, dating back at least to the
twelfth century, and it is only
 42

later, as the modes gave way to keys, that the number of tunings in Wales must
have multiplied. From all that we know, it was in a different place (the Continent),
under different circumstances (the influence of fully-chromatic keyboard
instruments), at a different time (the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), on a
different instrument (the large Renaissance harp) and for a different music
(Baroque) that the harp and harping practices were adapted for inflections. Could it
have been the traditional, modally-based music of Wales that was really at the
forefront of this development?
Indeed as late as 1676 Gwilym Puw only supplies one basic tuning and two others
for the harp in Wales. In Ireland, Bunting (relating to practice in 1792) gives one
basic tuning, one alternative and a third that was rarely used. This is the quantity
that we would expect in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but for earlier
times we would be entitled to expect the same or less since modality rather than key
is understood to have generally played a greater part in tonality. Yet on the retuning
hypothesis it would appear that in Wales the number of tunings would have declined
as the transition was made from the old cerdd dant to popular music. Meanwhile of
course in the rest of Europe the number would have been increasing as the old
modal system gave way to keys. There seems to be something very wrong here.
More specifically, as we have seen, the sources quote the Guidonian system of
hexachords and attempt reconciliations between it and the secular cerdd dant
tradition. Now it is
 43

thought that in practice the Guidonian system was in fact diatonic, but as quoted in
the early literature it is hexatonic, and it includes only one inflection - B-flat,
implying that it was sufficient to occasionally retune just one string in each octave.
But as we have seen, the only inflection that is specified in the MS is B-natural on p.
109, implying the use otherwise of B-flat. This is within the old hexachordal system.

9. THE MULTIPLICITY OF 'CYWAIR' TERMS

Any interpretation of 'cywair' as retuning the telyn has to explain the large number
of cyweiriau. If retuning the telyn was indeed involved, then the tradition had not
merely allowed some proliferation of tunings to develop, but it had embarked upon a
veritable jamboree of retuning.
There are many 'cywair' terms in addition to the five 'warranted' cyweiriau:
'bragod gywair', 'cras gywair', 'gogywair', 'lleddf gywair' and 'is gywair'. From p. 108-
9 are added: 'cywair Ithel', 'cywair gwyddelig dieithr', 'lleddf gywair gwyddel', 'cywair
chwith'/'cywair dieithr', 'cywair ynghywair Edward', 'cywair yr Athro Fedd' and
'cywair ynghywair y wrach'. In addition again there are references in titles of pieces
to 'uwch gywair', 'yr anghywair', 'cywair y gwyddel', 'cywair uchel', 'cywair cywair'
(probably resulting from a copyist's eyeskip), 'lleddf gywair Brido', 'cywair dau
hanner' and 'cywair Seisyllt'. These terms total twenty, and they do not include the
following from Hafod 3: 'G gywair', 'dylod gywair', 'eglurgywair' and 'ffrwythleddf
gywair', nor 'braidd gywair' from Puw, yet it
 44

is always possible that some of these later terms were drawn from the old cerdd dant
tradition.
None of the early sources from which these terms were drawn purports to be a
definitive list, so we may surmise that there may have been even more 'cywair'
terms, of which there is no record. In view of the small number of harp tunings used
subsequent to the decline of the cerdd dant tradition, is it really credible that the
tradition had evolved some twenty different tunings for this small, diatonic
instrument?

10. THE DIAGRAMS ON PP. 108-9

It has been necessary for those writers who have adopted the retuning hypothesis to
interpret these diagrams as retunings of the telyn, with - as I shall demonstrate -
considerable difficulty.
The suggestion here has been that the left-hand columns of letters denote strings
of the telyn, whereas the right-hand columns of letters denote not strings but notes
to which the strings of the left-hand column are tuned. This interpretation of the
alphabetical symbols of the right-hand columns as notes is unprompted as there is
no indication of them as such, and these writers have been happy to preclude, up
until now, the letters of the text itself and the left-hand columns indicating anything
other than strings.
In the absence of any explanation from Robert ap Huw as to how the diagrams
are constructed and what it is that they signify about the cyweiriau, the above
supposition can be argued on just
 45

one basis: the indication of B-natural in the context of lleddf gywair gwyddel on p.
109 discussed above. Thus it appears that possibly in the octave marked '|' the A
string is 'tuned' to B-natural, as is the B string above it.
There is an ambiguity here however, as on the preceding page the same cywair is
given with these A and B strings unchanged, and with the F string above 'tuned' to
G. It could be unwise to base an explanation of an entire system on one unique,
ambiguous instance. All that can be said with certainty here is that the author wished
to draw attention to some relationship between two strings or two notes and B-
natural. It is not necessary that the left-hand columns do signify strings as opposed
to notes, particularly when in this instance an alphabetical symbol in the right
column does appear to be referring to a note.
Thus it cannot be argued that the diagrams must refer to retuning the telyn on
the basis that there is no other possible explanation. I can argue that there is at
least one alternative possible explanation, and perhaps there are others I have not
thought of. The following proposition has a lot of merit.
It is actually very viable that these complex diagrams indicate the missing
lynchpin of their music theory. What we, and the tradition, appear to lack is any
codification of the actual note-relationships between cyweirdant and tyniad, yet we
should expect that these would be defined and analyzed, since they underpin and
define the entire musical system, and they extend to a complexity beyond that of the
double-tonic.
The telynior would naturally have thought of each finger of
 46

the lower hand as a distinct 'voice', moving from a cyweirdant position to a tyniad
one that corresponded, and then back again. From the text we know there were
many different sets of patterns to these shifts of finger and note, and if no means of
articulating the principles had been developed then teaching, particularly of
composition, would have been very difficult indeed. It would be difficult to articulate
the patterns as for each 'voice' there are three different options used: no shift, a
shift up or down to adjacent strings, and a shift up or down two strings. A table
would be required for each pattern, showing which of these three options is used by
each 'voice'.
These are precisely the options indicated in pp. 108-9. The relationships between
the columns in the diagrams involve a) no change, or b) a change to adjacent notes
either up or down, or c) a change to two notes up or down. These are precisely the
same as the movements of the fingers on the telyn as they move from a cyweirdant
chord to a tyniad chord. So it could very well be that the diagrams indicate the
relationship between cyweirdant and tyniad: - chordal progression.
We are familiar with cyweirdant/tyniad metrical relationships, these are the
measures. The diagrams could show harmonic relationships between them - the
system whereby a cyweirdant chord is transposed to become a tyniad chord. This
would be a system of transformation or modulation between notes, not between
strings and notes. Thus the left columns could show cyweirdant notes and the right
columns the corresponding tyniad notes. One selects a chord at will from the left
column to form a
 47

cyweirdant chord, but then, having done so, one has to play a specified tyniad
counterpart, determined by the particular cywair. This is to say that when composing
in any particular cywair one can choose notes freely from the left column to form a
cyweirdant chord, but having done so the right column then simply dictates the
counterpart tyniad chord.
So, restating this in slightly different terms, we could interpret the tables as: both
left and right columns simply indicate notes, thereby showing the harmonic
relationship, the chordal progression.
Working on this basis, we must expect that the chords selected from the first
column in each cywair, although various, would tend to have prevalent ones amongst
them, and that there would thereby be a strong association between particular
tuning sets for the crwth and particular cyweiriau. It may well be, then, that when
we look at early material on cyweiriau, we should not expect details of tuning (harp-
strings) and scale to emerge but details of chordal progressions.
Note here that certainly nowhere else is the actual harmonic relationship of
cyweirdant/tyniad analyzed or defined, and yet it is this relationship which underpins
the entire musical system and defines it as a genus.
I have not argued here that this is the definitive explanation, only that it is a
possible one. If the diagrams included the other warranted cyweiriau in addition to
the cras gywair the whole proposition could be simply tested against parts of the
text. As it is the fact is that we cannot be certain what
 48

the diagrams indicate. The situation is further complicated by the addition of a linear
or metrical dimension to the cyweiriau on p. 112 where they are described as clymau
and even a measure is actually ascribed to one of them. But this does suggest the
horizontal, linear dimension in which chordal progression occurs, and not the vertical
dimension of harmony that tunings directly relate to. The cyweiriau must have been
more complex in concept than scordatura.
The existence of a viable explanation of the diagrams, as advanced here, throws
the onus onto the proponent of the retuning hypothesis to actually demonstrate that
the diagrams do relate to retuning the telyn. And rather alarmingly no writer has
explained why the retuning interpretation has to be applied to the diagrams; no
arguments have been put forward as to why this is necessary. The matter has
always been approached as if it were self-evident, but as we have been seeing it is
not self-evident, nor is it the only possible explanation.
In fact there are several strong arguments against such a hypothesis, which
largely arise from the practical difficulties of applying it:
i) Intonation. The compass involved would be large. For example the hypothesis
would require the a| string turned down to ff in cywair yr Athro Fedd but up to b| in
cywair ithel. I suggest this is quite impractical - the string would tend to go out of
tune, in my experience of gut and metal strings, and I expect the same of horsehair.
Note that without such extremes harps are already notoriously difficult to tune,
because
 49

sharpening a string slightly always tends to flatten the adjacent strings, and vice
versa. A light portable early harp would have a flexible string-band which would tend
to accentuate these difficulties.
ii) Tone. Given that such a string must be capable of bearing the tension of b|
without any risk of breaking, what would be its tone quality when tuned to ff? My
experience of all types of string is that this is unacceptably poor.
iii) Purpose. What would be the purpose of such tuning sets? In some cases one
ends up with the same diatonic scale one (presumably) began with, but sounding on
different strings! My experience of this is that it is deadly to one's sense of note
position, which is already fragile on the harp by the very nature of the instrument.
Any suggestion that such a tuning was a flippant or satirical comment (Ellis
(1977) p. 79) or lay outside the canon (Ellis (1991) p. 33) has to be doubted
because of the technical and formal nature of the context.
In the case of other supposed 'tuning sets' one ends up with hexatonic or
pentatonic tunings, but the music text already contains pieces and sections of pieces
that are hexatonic or pentatonic (in their selection of alphabetical symbols) in ratios
that are interestingly similar to early traditional folk music from the British Isles.
A possible explanation here, suggested by Osian Ellis, is the production of
enhanced tone from echoing or ringing strings in unison. But the parallel here with
tunings of the Irish harp
 50

is weak. In Bunting's tuning for the 30-stringed harp there is only one such pair
(3%). There is an example here (lleddf gywair gwyddel) p. 109) of seven pairs
(28%), and others where duplication is not the pattern. Indeed the very design of
the small diatonic harp with its constraints on string lengths does not lend itself to
dedicated sympathetic strings in the way long instruments with fingerboards do. If
one has relatively few strings one does not want to demote some of them to the
status of sympathetic strings, else the melodic and harmonic possibilities become
reduced.
iv) Idiosyncracy. These supposed 'tuning sets' would produce results quite unlike
any other known concept of retuning. Would the technique of the early telyn have
been so unique?
These arguments are conclusive. I should stress that I have experimented with
these proposed tuning sets in practice extensively, not just considered them
abstractedly on the page, and I think that any reader who did the same would
concur. It is only through experiencing the difficulties of implementing the p. 108
diagrams as tuning sets in practice that the full weight of these arguments is
experienced. Certainly the diagrams cannot be used in support of the retuning
hypothesis.

CONCLUSIONS ON MULTIPLE TUNINGS

For the reasons outlined above, it is necessary to reject the hypothesis that 'cywair'
was used to denote retuning of the telyn. The true meaning or meanings of 'cywair'
will be other than this. My own view is that they describe the
 51

cyweirdant/tyniad relationships, which are themselves closely bound up with the

tunings and fingerings of the crwth. As such they would not have immediate bearing
on the task at hand - the discovery of the notes produced by the tablature symbols.
Indeed it ought to be sufficient for present purposes to accept the issue as
obscure or unresolved. For I have - over the years of studying and playing the
tablature - evolved a deep respect for its consistency, its cohesiveness, and its
detail. Of course we have problems in grasping both the conventions of the musical
tradition and the conventions of the notation, but it would be deeply puzzling if the
text was seriously inadequate as a means of communicating music scores to those
who were familiar with the conventions of the music (but not with the conventions of
the tablature). It ought to be the case that we have some confidence that the
document as a whole should contain the necessary information on the notes used by
the pieces - if it did not provide this then the entabulation would assuredly have
been a musically purposeless exercise!
At this point we are entitled to approach the document afresh, unencumbered by
false expectations about tuning. In the absence of any directions for retuning, save
for the one enigmatic reference to the use of tro tant as an alternative (p. 71)
discussed before, the possibility that the telyn was not retuned between pieces - that
it remained invariably in one tuning - must be the first to present itself.
Accordingly, it is necessary to discover if a single tuning exists which can
accommodate the whole text in a way which could
 52

conceivably have been musically successful at the time.

Preoccupied with what now begins to look as if it has been a wild-goose chase -
the search for different tunings which can accommodate parts of the text -
contributors have not attempted to discover one tuning which can accommodate it
all, although Polin ((1982) p. 2) added a footnote suggesting that this would be
difficult, and Dart (p. 55) commented - without explanation - that in respect of
tuning most of the manuscript makes musical nonsense if it is transcribed literally.
Yet I shall demonstrate in the next two chapters that Dart was mistaken in his
impression. A literal reading does produce music which makes sense after all - music
which is perfectly straightforward in tonality.
 53

V. TUNING THE TELYN

REVIEW OF THE EVIDENCE FROM THE TEXT

The text contains 25 alphabetical symbols:-

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
cc dd ff g1 a1 b1 c1 d1 e1 f1 g a b c d e f g. a. b. c. d. e. f. g .

This is, incidentally, a different number from those that contributors have generally
discovered, but I assure the reader these are all present, without ambiguity (see Part
4: TECHNIQUE, p. 129).
The marks added to the alphabetical symbols are clearly octave marks, and they
are not entirely unique - the horizontal bars and the dots occur in the same positions
in the allegedly-antique tablature cited in Wulf's Handbuch (this was noticed by
Whittaker (1974A) p. 26). Most contributors have been agreed that they enable the
symbol pairings to be arranged in ascending sequence as above. The question then
arises: are these solely the strings of the telyn, or are they both strings and notes?
It has generally been assumed by previous writers that the symbols stand for
strings only and not notes per se, and that more information extraneous to the
tablature is required on the tuning of a particular piece entabulated before it can be
played. They have believed that most strings were retuned to different notes
according to the piece to be played. I have explained above why there is no need to
hypothesize such a complication, and if
 54

one does not do so, then it will be that these symbols stand for both strings and
specific notes. There is nothing radical in such a proposition as of course it was more
common in tablatures in general to use alphabetical symbols to represent notes
rather than strings.
Note also that study of the catalogues of pieces reveals that the repertory in
general from which these pieces were drawn was played apparently on the crwth as
well as the telyn, and most probably upon the timpan also. Although the text is in
form for the telyn (the pieces are shown in harp arrangements), we have to view
most of the pieces in the text as realizable in essence on the crwth and timpan, and
of course the important common factor in performances on the three different
instruments (as solo alternatives to one another) would be the notes, not the string-
arrangements and the fingering.
What can the symbols tell us about the scale? The symbols are arranged in
seven-note, apparently diatonic octaves, with G as the lowest note within each
octave (which is unusual amongst tablatures). A diatonic scale is what one might
expect of instrumental music from late-medieval Europe. No doubt greater divisions
of the scale were used in practice in much vocal music and perhaps on instruments
with fingerboards, and generally in Southern Europe, but scales of seven or less
notes in the octave are commonplace in the record, especially in Northern Europe.
Small harps do not lend themselves to greater divisions of the scale of course.
In connection with this, it is worth restating that Gerald
 55

de Barri in describing the music produced by these very stringed instruments does
not appear to have been struck by anything odd in its tonality. Rimmer (p. 28)
observes:

Whatever music Giraldus heard in Ireland, it did not sound to him

barbarous and peculiar; he described it specifically as better
executed and more agreeable than that generally heard in England.
Whatever its musical idiom was, it seems to have been not far
removed from that of Western Christendom.

In the absence, at this point, of any evidence to the contrary, it seems on the
face of it that the scale was composed of the natural notes known by the names of
the alphabetical symbols used. However, the rounded b used throughout the text is
in contrast to the square b used for B-natural on p. 109 (as already discussed).
Although both types of B are looped in Robert ap Huw's cursive script, the distinction
between the two is deliberately exaggerated graphically, and emphasized by the
addition of the diesis on p. 109. Because no other signs for sharpening or flattening
notes are given in the text (and such signs had been devised before the sixteenth
century) it can be deduced here that the scale was of all natural notes with the
exception of B-flat.
Such a scale is well within the realms of possibility; this we know from every area
of the study of early music in Europe. Gerald de Barri mentioned b-molle for
example. For plainchant,
 56

notation accommodated only the inflection B-flat/B-natural, all other notes remaining
natural (despite the probable use of F-sharp and E-flat in practice). We should
remind ourselves here that B-flat, although modern terminology can confuse one into
thinking that it is the departure or the exception from the rudimentary scale, was
never considered as secondary to B-natural. It is thought (Reese p. 160) that B-flat
may have been '... not merely a faintly undesirable substitute for b-natural, as the
theorists too often imply, but its peer; and the (plainchant) melodies themselves,
with their frequent use of b-flat, bear out the theory'. As was customary, Peilin
describes B-natural as sharp.
The adoption here of the scale which the tablature literally offers is of course
necessary method whilst there remains no evidence that another scale was intended.
This does not entirely rule out the possibility that F-sharp or E-flat may have been
used on occasion, and that this tablature, like other early notations, simply did not
stretch to indicating this. But it is also possible to approach the problem by analyzing
the chords in the text, if one is prepared to apply certain principles of harmony (such
as an aversion to the tritone) to this field. It is of course not necessarily correct to do
so as we cannot be sure precisely which aesthetics the composers of the music in the
text subscribed to. Writers have differed widely on this point, ranging from Glyn (p.
130): '... these measures are nothing else than the simple repetitions of two chords,
tonic and dominant ...' to Whittaker ((1974B) p. 51) who accepted as a
 57

possibility the extensive use of the tritone and concluded: ''Cyweirdant' harmonies
are always treated as consonant, even if, within our own terms of reference, they
may appear to be highly dissonant. 'Tyniad' harmonies, on the other hand, are
treated as mild dissonances ...'.
Actual analysis of the harmonies of the text reveals a huge number of internal
rules and tendencies, from which one can deduce universalities, such as that the
music is sophisticated and complex; but when one specifically tries to unpack the
harmonic language into modern terms one is hampered by the very multitude of
these internal rules. A more effective approach is to formulate some harmonic rules
that one might expect to find, and then analyze the text to see if indeed they are
there to be found. There should be some validity in this approach because there is
literary evidence to suggest that harmonic taste within cerdd dant largely
corresponded to that of contemporaneous European art-music in the classification of
concordant and discordant intervals (see the poem by Wiliam Llŷn quoted by Ellis
(1991) p. 32, and Panton 56 pp. 33-5 quotes the nine consonant intervals of
plainsong with a note that they refer to both 'tant' and 'lleferydd': string and voice).
However the text commonly admits what appear to be simple and compound 2nds,
even in cyweirdant positions, so the harmony was not entirely what we consider as
conventional.
Avoidance of the tritone is an obvious choice of a potential rule, and perhaps less
secure is avoidance of the semitone as a constituent of chords. It is important to
define 'chord' here
 58

rigorously because:
1) Letters placed vertically over one another may not have been played
simultaneously. It is clear that usually, in the upper part, they were not played
simultaneously, but there are strong arguments that they were played
simultaneously in the lower part (Part 4, pp. 116-9, 142). Therefore it is best,
initially, to restrict the analysis to the lower part.
2) It is clear that the notes were often damped, for reasons of harmony. This was
commonplace in the upper part, and it may have been done, rather sparingly, in the
lower part also. Nevertheless, for the sake of simplicity, I assume for the current
purpose that the lower part was not damped.

AVOIDANCE OF THE TRITONE

In order to detect this it is necessary that one of the following pairs of symbols be
avoided in the text: G-C, A-D, B-E, C-F, D-G, E-A, F-B; and indeed only one is
avoided: B-E. Therefore, if the composers felt it was necessary to avoid the tritone,
then the tritone must lie between B and E, which is to say the notes here must be B-
flat and E-natural. (If they were B-natural and E-sharp then the A would have to be
sharp and so on.) This is of course exactly the scale the tablature indicates, and this
finding confirms that tuning. As the finding is unlikely to be due to chance, there is a
strong likelihood that the composers and performers did feel it was necessary to
avoid the tritone.
Bringing the upper part into account and discounting those situations where I
understand the upper-part note was played
 59

before or after the notes of the lower part, one finds examples of B and E together,
but extremely rarely; and in most cases the formula was altered on its subsequent
appearances, presumably because it was felt to be inaccurate or unsatisfactory
harmonically.
All the other pairs of symbols are commonly found in the lower part, and with
about equal frequency, apart from E-A which is not very common. E should be
considered to be a weak note in many pieces, and it is the only note upon which
drones are never established in any piece in the text. In hexatonic pieces either E or
B symbols are not used for plain notes, and in the largely pentatonic Caniad Tro Tant
E is not used as a plain note. No doubt this was because the apparent tritone
between B and E strings would further restrict a pentatonic or hexatonic piece,
unless the piece was so formed by dropping the B or the E. The absence of a note,
and presumably a string, for E in the bass (and for the B below that) would be
connected to this. So it seems that in the choice between dropping B and E, it was E
that was more likely to be dropped. From this it follows that in general a structural
reliance on the pair B-F would be preferred to E-A, and this may explain the
infrequency of the pair E-A.
In view of the evenness of the frequency of the other pairs, the total absence in
the lower part of B-E is really striking.

AVOIDANCE OF THE SEMITONE AS AN INTERVAL

In order to identify the presence of this principle it is necessary that two of the
following pairs of adjacent symbols is
 60

avoided in chords: G-A, A-B, B-C, C-D, D-E, E-F, F-G. Now G-A, C-D and F-G are
commonly used. Never used are A-B, B-C, D-E and E-F; and therefore it is likely that
two of these four pairs involve semitonal intervals. Among the possible options here
of course are the two involved in the literal reading of the tablature: the combination
A-natural to B-flat and the combination E-natural to F-natural. Although this part of
the analysis does not in itself enable one to narrow down the options to a single
scale, it does support the identification of B-E as the tritone and the use of the
natural scale with B-flat.
Bringing the treble into account we find G-A is common, but also, rather
unambiguously, E-F in a repeated figure in cainc x and cainc xiii of Yr Osteg Fawr.
This is rather disconcerting, but I must emphasize that it is possible, because it is in
the treble, that the two notes were not struck simultaneously. My personal
conclusion is that this is a deliberate and humorous use of a semitonal discord in a
light-hearted piece.
 61

VI. MODALITY

When the tablature letters are read literally, what sort of music emerges? How
credible is the music in terms of tonality and harmony? It is very interesting here to
look into the modalities that emerge within the music text. We cannot be sure that
the concept of contrasting different modalities with one another between pieces
formed part of the tradition's theory, especially as the characteristic alternation
between cyweirdant and tyniad upon which the music is based suggests that
'modulation' between pairs of modes within passages would have been the best basis
for their theory of tonality.
But in respect of actual practice, if we exclude the tyniad components of the text
for the moment we can assign modes to the melodic lines of the upper parts of the
pieces by referring to the final plain notes of sections and of passages which end in a
cyweirdant. The result here is that most pieces in the text happen to have been
composed in a clearly-defined mode, with a minority of pieces exhibiting one or a
few shifts in modality as they progress. This is to say that mode was important - it
really grasps the ear here despite the predominance of the cyweirdant/tyniad
modulation, largely because melodic finals are often supported by their root chords.
So it may indeed be correct to interpret Robert Peilin's list of cyweiriau (discussed
before) as intended - albeit not necessarily correctly - to relate to scalar modes.
 62

The modes used provide us with some means of judging the credibility of the
literal reading of the tablature. If the Locrian mode emerged here as common (or,
perhaps, at all) it would be doubtful that the literal reading could be correct. The
indicator of the Locrian mode here would be E, and in fact no passages in the text
use E as a modal final. As mentioned before, in many pieces E is a weak note or is
not used as a plain note at all, and it is never used as a drone. Harmonically, E is
commonly used in conjunction with C and G to form what undoubtedly is the major
triad C-E-G, and also (very rarely) E is used in conjunction with A and C to form the
minor triad A-C-E. Both the other available major triads: F-A-C and B-flat-D-F are
commonplace. The other minor triads are less commonplace: G-B-flat-D and D-F-A
(which is rare). This is to say that two factors reduce the frequency of a triad: the
presence of E and the presence of minor thirds. No triad raised on E occurs, of
course.
The harmony used is generally composed of chords raised on the above roots by
various inversions, but quite frequently closer harmony occurs, where A, B-flat or D
are added to C-G, and G to B-flat-D-F. Less frequently G or C are added to any
chord. None of these 'mixed' chords involves an interval of less than a tone on the
literal reading.
This sort of use of harmony is quite intelligible, and it combines with melodic lines
to create a strong impression of modality in most of the text. The frequency with
which particular modes are used is unsurprising. The most common final is C,
followed by G, indicating the Mixolydian and Dorian modes
 63

respectively. The Ionian and Æolian modes are much less common but they are
present. In the broader European context there is nothing strange in this which could
cause us to call into question the adoption of this literal scale. Indeed these findings
are reassuring. In tonality the reconstructed music is entirely credible.
Concerning scales, the adoption of the literal reading entails reading the majority
of pieces as diatonic, but with a considerable number of pieces as on gapped scales,
either pentatonic or hexatonic ones. Drones are fairly commonplace but by no means
predominate. Again there is nothing here that lies outside or even close to the
margins of what one would expect from the European context.
It should be emphasized at this point that this analysis of modality has only
become possible through the progress that has been made in this work, on several
fronts, the most important of which are summarized here:
1) The discovery that the B symbols used throughout the music text are specific;
that they are B-rotundum in contrast to B-quadratum.
2) The identification of the abbreviated symbols in abbreviated examples of y
plethiad byr (Part 4: TECHNIQUE, pp. 76-8; Greenhill (1999), p. 219), which is
especially prevalent in closing formulas - such as Close I A (Greenhill (1999), p. 232)
- which of course contribute greatly to an understanding of modality.
3) The definition of the sequential order in which the
 64

segments of text should be read and of the endings of the constituent ceinciau and
diweddau of sections (Part 5: METRE, appendix p. 1) so that modal finals can be
located.
It will perhaps have been without the aid of some or all of these advances that
Thurston Dart and Polin were discouraged from a literal reading.
Here is a summary of the modalities of the individual pieces as they strike the
ear, with the short and damped notes of the fingering movements not contributing to
the impression of scale. As adopted generally in this work, lower-case Roman
numerals refer to sections of a piece, and Arabic numerals refer to specific
addresses: page no., line no. and column no.

gosteg dafydd athro C; hexatonic - no E; G drone

gosteg yr halen C; diatonic; C drone
yr osteg fawr C; diatonic; C drone
gosteg lwyteg C; probably diatonic but no B in 1st section; C drone
klymau kytgerdd C; diatonic, no drones
kaniad y gwyn bibydd C (despite the piece ending on A); diatonic; G and C
drones
kaniad ystafell G; diatonic (i-x), pentatonic - no E or B (40.5.9-41.1.22),
diatonic thereafter; D and G drones in xii
kaniad kydwgan F; diatonic; C drone
kaniad bach ar y go gower C; diatonic; G and C drones in xii
 65

kaniad kynwrig benkerdd F; diatonic but no B in xii; C drone, with F drone also in
xii
kaniad llywelyn ap ifan ... G (i-vi), C (vii-xii), G (xiii-xvi); hexatonic - no E (i-
xii), diatonic (xiii-xvi); F drone (parts of i-iv)
kaniad suwsana G (i-iv), C (v-vi); diatonic with weak E (i-iv), hexatonic (v-
vi) - no E; F and G drones (parts of i-ii)
pwngk ar ol pob profiad G; hexatonic - no E; B-flat and G drones (56.1.1-56.1.16)
profiad kyffredin C; hexatonic - no E; no drones
y ddigan y droell F; hexatonic - no E; no drones
kaingk ruffydd ab adda ... G; hexatonic - no E; no drones
kaingk dafydd broffwyd C; pentatonic - no A or B; G drone
profiad yr eos brido C (57.5-58.3.17), D (58.3.18- 58.4.3), C thereafter;
hexatonic - no E; no drones
profiad yr eos D (58.5-59.6.15), C thereafter; quadritonic - no B, C or F
(58.5.1-58.6.8), diatonic (58.5.1-59.1.19), hexatonic - no C
(59.2.1-59.3.5), diatonic (59.3.6-59.6.15), hexatonic - no E
(59.6.16 onwards); no drones
 66

profiad chwith ifan ab go C (60.1-61.1.7), D (61.1.8-12), C thereafter; diatonic

(60.1.- 60.4), pentatonic - no B or E (60.5.1-60.5.8),
diatonic (60.5.9-60.6.13), hexatonic - no E (60.6.14-
61.4.15); C drone (60.1.13-60.2.18 & 60.3.13-60.5.8)
profiad fforchog ifan ... C; hexatonic - no E; no drones
profiad y botwm C (62.4.9-63.3.2), D (63.3.3-7), C thereafter; hexatonic - no
E; no drones
profiad y brido ar is gower C (63.4.1-64.2.8), D (64.2.9-64.3.13), C thereafter;
hexatonic - no E (63.4.1-6), hexatonic - no B (63.4.7-
64.2.8), diatonic (64.2.9-64.3.13), hexatonic - no E (64.3.14
onwards); F drone (63.4.1-63.4.6), C drone (63.4.7-64.2.8)
profiad brido ar uwch gower D (64.4-65.2.5), C thereafter; hexatonic - no E (64.4-5),
diatonic (64.6.1-65.2.19), hexatonic - no E (65.3.1
onwards); no drones
 67

kaniad y wefl C; diatonic; G drone (xii)

kaniad tro tant D (i-xii), B-flat (xiii); pentatonic - no E (ceinciau) and
weak G (diwedd); F and B-flat drones (xiii)
kaniad san silin G; diatonic; no drones
kaniad marwnad ifan y go G (i-v), C (vi-xvii); diatonic; G and C drones (xvii)
y kaniad krych ... C (i-vii), D (80.5.5-81.1.3), C (81.1.4-xii); diatonic (i-vi),
hexatonic - no E (vii), quadritonic - no B,C or E (80.5.5-
81.1.3), hexatonic - no E (81.1.4-81.5), diatonic (x-xii); D
drone (80.2.1-80.3.5), A drone (80.5.5-81.1.3)
kaniad hun wenllian G (i-ii), C (iii-xii); diatonic; no drones
kaniad pibau morfydd G (i), C (ii-xv); diatonic; no drones
kaniad llywelyn dylynior C; diatonic; G drone (xv)
 68

VII. PITCH

It seems probable that when it was originally conceived to notate the music (or at
least to associate the notes with the letter system), the tradition was confronted with
a decision as to which letters to use to describe the notes. As we have seen from
Hafod 3, the notes within the octave had their own vernacular names arising from
the Welsh terms for individual strings, and these were fairly distinct from the letter
system. If rational factors prevailed at the time, the tradition must have chosen the
notational scale with B-flat over that with B-natural because the F hexachords more
nearly approximated the pitch (in absolute terms) of the telyn and the crwth than
the G hexachords. This is to say the F strings on the telyn must have been closer to
F notes in plainchant than to G notes. I can see no other reason why it should have
been preferred. This narrows down the pitch involved somewhat, but it could still
have been that the pitch of the telyn was two or three tones away from the actual
mean pitch of the plainsong of the time (whenever that time was exactly).
Notwithstanding the circumstances in which the strings of the telyn were first
associated with the letter-names of the notes, it will be the safest option to consider
that telyn pitch in the tablature related closely to the pitches of stringed instruments
in the sixteenth century, that is to say in a range somewhat below concert pitch.
The octave levels can be specified by reference to early
 69

surviving harps of 29/30 strings from Ireland and Scotland. The augmentation of
these from harps of 25 strings is suggested by representations of small harps (which
predate the extant harps) which appear to lack a projecting block. It appears
probable that the design of 25-stringed harps was augmented to 29/30 by adding
strings in the bass, not in the top register. Taking into account the dimensions of the
extant early harps (and crowds) and discounting the bottom dimensions, it is
necessary that middle c is
_
represented in the text by the symbol c|, and not by the symbol c as transcribed by
Polin amongst others; that is to say she has transcribed the music, as she admitted
was possible (p. 184), an octave too low. The tessitura encompasses C of the bass
clef (second space) to the G an octave above the treble stave, i.e. c to g'''
(somewhat higher than Agricola's 26 strings: F to c''' and Glarean's 24: F to a''' on
the Continent). This results in the pieces in the manuscript being pitched at a level
that is very acceptable for solo performance, and definitely not so low as to suggest
that the pieces were designed merely for the accompaniment of vocal delivery.
It is important to emphasize here that it is probable that absolute pitch was
actually of rough significance, since in the Irish tradition of early stringed
instruments absolute pitch was an important component of expression in
composition.
 70

VIII. THE METHOD OF TUNING

Diatonically-strung harps lend themselves to tuning in any number of straightforward

sequences of 4ths, 5ths and 8ves from a particular individual set string, as indeed
was described by Gwilym Puw for the Ordinary Set and by Edward Bunting in
Ireland.
For practical purposes it is not necessary to identify a particular string in the text
that was used for the purpose of a set string, although it appears from Hafod 3 that
y cyweirdant in the sense of a set string (as described in Hafod 24) was one of the G
strings, and this matches the octave division of the tablature. From Gwilym Puw it
can be inferred that the first octave to be tuned would be the lowest complete one,
commencing from an initial set string at the top of that octave. Translated onto a 25-
stringed telyn this implies that the initial set string would have been that denoted by
_
the symbol g in the tablature. However, C is the modality of most pieces in the
manuscript text, and Hafod 3 also associates cyweirdant with that note, by the name
'C cyweirdant'. So it is more probable that a C string was the set string. Tuning
_
probably began from the one denoted by the symbol c in the tablature. From C the
tuning cycle comprises the ascending chain of 5ths C-G-D-A-E and the descending
chain of 5ths C-F-B(flat).
It is necessary here to correct what appears to have been a misinterpretation in
the modern literature of the Hafod 24 passage concerning the locating of y
cyweirdant. The passage
 71

begins: 'Pa fan bynnag y bo y Kowirdant yn y delyn...' (wherever the cyweirdant is

on the harp). Now we know that the total number of strings on individual harps in
Wales was not standard but tended to vary. Thus the choice as to where to locate
the cyweirdant - the set string from which one begins the tuning cycle - would often
have been different from one harp to another, and the passage is obviously written
with this in mind:- Jones (or his source) could not attempt to define y cyweirdant in
relationship to the top or bottom strings of all harps, and it will have been this that
led him to qualify his statement about where it is located. Thus it is that this passage
cannot be taken as evidence that the tuning cycle could be commenced from
different strings on the same harp, that the scale was transposable and could be
raised from any starting note. A telynior would have customarily tuned from a single
initial string.
One more very important point needs to be made in respect of the method of
tuning. We should not take it for granted that the cerdd dant harpists simply
followed the sort of tuning sequence described by Bunting, for to do so would be to
assume that they used Pythagorean intonation. We might be entitled to assume this
if it had been that cerdd dant was the product of a harp-based musical culture, but it
seems most probable that the cerdd dant tradition would not have been forged on
the harp, and if scales on a divisive principle rather than the cyclic principle of
Pythagorean tuning had been evolved on the crwth and timpan they may have been
used on the harp as well. So initially we cannot be
 72

sure about what sort of diatonic scale it is that is implied by the string symbols in the
tablature.
In fact initially, we cannot even be sure that they used any particular intonation
as a universal prescription. For all we know at this point it may have been that they
used different intonations for different pieces. We have already excluded the
possibility of retuning between pieces in the manuscript in any gross way - by as
much as two tones in scordatura or as little as a semitone in inflected notes -
because the music does not require it, none of the evidence points to it and the harp
does not easily lend itself to this sort of treatment, without sharping levers or pedals.
But none of these arguments extends to small changes in intonation. If the musical
style of different compositions would be enhanced by it, would this highly-discerning
and specialized professional élite have been prepared to delicately reset their tuning
of the telyn by the microtones needed to adjust intonation from one piece to
another? For if this was the case, then the methods of tuning would be complex
indeed. Even implementing a mean-tone temperament involves more than tuning in
4ths, 5ths and 8ves, it involves testing and checking 3rds at least as well.
We need to examine carefully the whole, neglected issue of intonation before
drawing any conclusions on tuning method. Those readers who are unconcerned with
this level of detail can pass over the next, lengthly chapter, where a wide range of
possible intonations is examined. Let it suffice here to add that the tuning sequences
that a range of intonations would require would
 73

be very numerous, as the musicians would have needed a sequence for passing
directly from each intonation to every other intonation.
 74

IX. INTONATION

We turn now to the question of intonation. The tuning of the harp by 5ths is
described by the continental writer Glareanus in 1547 and also by Bunting, but -
even if these sources did have some indirect relationship to practice in the cerdd
dant tradition - neither of them mention if their tunings were by pure 5ths, by
tempered 5ths or by a mixture of pure and tempered 5ths. Nor has any of the
evidence of cerdd dant ever been interpreted as directly indicating anything about
intonation, and contributors appear to have been in the dark as to whether a single
intonation or a variety of intonations was employed. Nevertheless, the problem
cannot be ignored else - in the strictest sense - the music has to remain unretrieved,
and unless some conclusions can be reached on intonation the music must be
declared irretrievable. The problem simply has to be addressed, and at the very least
I hope to introduce the topic here.
I believe that the problem of intonation is best approached by examining the
requirements of each individual composition and not by attempting to decide on a
particular generic solution. At least this approach is on a firm footing, based as it is
on the contents of the tablature, and it should ensure that the best is done for the
musical realization of the compositions lying there. I propose here to establish the
desirability (on stylistic grounds) and technical feasibility of a particular collection of
intonations, before moving on to the evidence that this
 75

collection was codified.

Firstly, let us consider the indications concerning tempered versus untempered
intonation. It will emerge that there are very strong indications that tempering would
have been employed, and that there is no historical evidence that precludes it.
If pure 5ths were exclusively employed in tuning, the resulting untempered scale
(expressed in cents) would be:

C D E F G A B C
0 204 408 498 702 906 996 1200

In its favour, this Pythagorean-type scale is very simple to tune and possesses
several pure intervals. In addition to its pure 3/2 5ths and 4/3 4ths, the scale's tones
are all pure 9/8 major tones. It is necessary here to immediately point out that if
Pythagorean intonation had been used in cerdd dant, these pure major tones would
have had much greater impact than they could in any other early music because
several intervals of a single tone were used as vertical sonorities in the manuscript;
fairly commonplace chords include F-G, G-A and C-D. Thus in cerdd dant the purity
of major tones would have been exploited harmonically, not just melodically, if
Pythagorean intonation was used.
However, Pythagorean intonation does not yield pure major or pure minor 3rds,
and whereas it is not possible to positively exclude Pythagorean intonation, the
music is characteristically so strongly dominated by triadic harmony that it is
acoustically very limited by an intonation that has no pure 3rds. For more than
anything it is this triadic harmony which creates
 76

the astoundingly precocious appearance that the music presents to us, and in
practice the music gains resonance greatly from any intonation that admits pure
3rds. This is for a number of reasons. Not only is the harmony based on triadic
consonance, but the music is based primarily and very strongly on its harmony
rather than its melody in the first place. The richly-harmonic timbre of the harp is
especially conducive to harmonic music and to temperament, with the harp's
multitude of open strings where the note produced by every string plucked is
supported by sympathetic resonance from other harmonically-related strings. This is
of course particularly pronounced in the case of the wooden harp with metal strings
(less so for the leathern harp with horsehair strings) and in the case of single-rank
diatonically-tuned harps in general (with no chromatic strings to interfere with the
harmonicity of sympathetic resonance). So the early cerdd dant musicians, before
and beyond any other instrumentalists, ought to have been particularly highly
motivated to temper some or all of their 5ths.
Furthermore, they would not have needed to await the development of thought
on this amongst continental writers, since from fifteenth- and sixteenth-century
accounts of the tuning of keyboard instruments it appears that tempering was
practiced by musicians before theorists in their writings began to experiment with a
variety of intonations and to record them.
I am very grateful to my fellow cerdd dant harpist, Paul Dooley, for the important
observation that this music is not best served by Pythagorean intonation (personal
communication).
 77

IRREGULAR TEMPERAMENTS

Pure 3rds can be achieved in two ways, either by lightly tempering all 5ths in some
form of mean-tone temperament or by irregular tempering, leaving some 5ths pure
whilst heavily tempering one or more others. Such heavily tempered 5ths as
irregular temperaments require tend to be unusable as consonant intervals, so any
irregular temperament would preclude the use of at least one 5th or another in a
single composition, but indeed a considerable number of pieces in the manuscript do
not use one or more particular 5ths. For these pieces, then, the opportunity for using
irregular temperaments did exist. Interestingly here, the absent 5ths are not wholly
a by-product of all of these pieces having been composed on gapped scales; in
several cases the pieces are heptatonic, so here one wonders if particular 5ths were
avoided in order to make use of particular temperaments. This would suggest that
just intonation was indeed a goal pursued by the composers, at least occasionally.
If this was so, then the variety of 5ths absent from these pieces would indicate
that the tradition used a variety of irregular temperaments. This is an interesting
proposition. We are presented with a complex problem in trying to deduce the
precise nature of the temperaments that this would require, but it can be done by
matching the requirements of just intonation that each piece makes with what
various temperings make
 78

available.
The circumstance that a considerable number of pieces in the manuscript have
one or more 5ths absent makes it possible to achieve pure major 3rds (and some
pure 10/9 minor 2nds) whilst retaining intervals of a pure 5th for such 5ths as the
piece employs. This type of temperament is irregular in the sense that 5ths that are
to be used in chords are left pure but those that are not are rendered unusable by
being heavily tempered, by a syntonic comma of 21.5 cents. The most useful
temperaments that happen to be available preclude only one or two particular 5ths,
leaving five or four of the six diatonic triads pure and available to the composer.
 79

These temperaments are set out as follows; - indicating a flattening by a comma, +

indicating a sharpening by a comma.

1. D - A- E- precludes G-D

2. A- E- B+ F+ precludes D-A, F-C

3. E- B+ F+ precludes F-C, A-E

4. D - A- E- B+ precludes G-D, B-F

5. A- E- B+ precludes D-A, B-F

6. G - D- A- E- precludes C-G

The scales produced by each set of temperings are:

C D E F G A B C
1. 0 182 386 498 702 884 996 1200
2. 0 204 386 520 702 884 1018 1200
3. 0 204 386 520 702 906 1018 1200
4. 0 182 386 498 702 884 1018 1200
5. 0 204 386 498 702 884 1018 1200
6. 0 182 386 498 681 884 996 1200

Scale 1 is the 4th inversion of the justly-intoned scale, on a tuning given by

Ptolemy (2nd century AD). Scale 2 is the same - when transposed down from C to A
- as that which is thought to be the basis of the Highland bagpipe scale. Scale 3 is on
a tuning given by Didymus (1st century BC). Scale 5 is to be found amongst old
Arabian lute tunings (Safi al-Din).
The pieces in the manuscript which can make use of these temperaments are:-
 80

Temperaments

Gosteg Dafydd Athro 3

Gosteg yr Halen 1
Yr Osteg Fawr 1
Gosteg Llwyteg 1
Clymau Cytgerdd 1
Caniad Cadwgan 1 or 4
Caniad Bach ar y Gogywair 2
Cainc Ruffudd ab Adda ap Dafydd 1
Cainc Dafydd Broffwyd 5
Profiad Fforchog 3
Caniad Tro Tant 1 or 6
Caniad San Silin 2 or 3

This list leaves a residue of pieces that do happen to lack some particular 5th
without a temperament available. Several pieces have an absent 5th A-E, but lack
the other absent 5ths that would enable them to be accommodated by any of the
above temperaments (taking into account that the Pwnc ar ôl pob Profiad - played
after and presumably immediately after every profiad - contains G-D such that none
of the profiadau could be entirely accommodated by temperament 1 or 4 without
changing the tuning). These are:
Caniad Cynwrig Bencerdd
Caniad Suwsana
Profiad Cyffredin
Profiad yr Eos Brido
Profiad Chwith Ifan ap y Gof
 81

Profiad y Botwm
Profiad Brido ar Isgywair
Profiad Brido ar Uwchgywair
Caniad y Wefl
whereas Profiad yr Eos does have A-E but has no F-C and so cannot be well-served
by temperament 3.
Accordingly, these ten pieces appear to require either Pythagorean intonation
after all, or a mean-tone temperament.

MEAN-TONE TEMPERAMENTS

The pieces listed above that cannot be satisfactorily accommodated by any irregular
temperament share that characteristic with a larger group of pieces that each
employ all of the six diatonic 5ths. Certainly, then, both groups must have been
played either in the untempered intonation or in a temperament which tempers each
and every 5th by sufficiently small quantities that they remain tolerable, not too sour
to the ear. In practice this would almost certainly involve equal quantities for each
5th, that is to say, in some form of mean-tone temperament. Equal temperament,
incidentally, is a highly unlikely contender, as in its early years it was probably
confined to fingerboard instruments.
The most likely candidates amongst mean-tone temperaments are 1/4-comma
and 1/3-comma mean-tone temperaments, in which each 5th is set small by,
respectively, a quarter or a third of the value of the syntonic comma of 21.5 cents.
Both are not really difficult to tune, because they produce pure 3rds - pure major
 82

3rds in the case of 1/4-comma mean-tone and pure minor 3rds in the case of 1/3-
comma mean-tone. The gain in resonance of exactly pure 3rds here outweighs the
loss of exactly pure 5ths because the size of the adjustment is less as a ratio of the
5th than of the 3rd. That both the 1/4- and 1/3-comma adjustments left the 5ths
tolerable is shown by the widespread use of these temperaments in Renaissance
keyboard music, although the smaller 1/4-comma adjustment is thought to have
been by far the more common of the two.
Compared with Pythagorean intonation, 1/4-comma mean-tone has the effect of
accentuating the sonority of major triads relative to that of minor triads, and this
arrangement does suit the way in which cerdd dant was organised harmonically.
From the music text we can see that it was the composers' general custom to place
major triads in metrical positions that were cyweirdant, whereas they would place
either major or minor triads in tyniad positions. So where the major-minor
patterning is used, 1/4-comma mean-tone brings out the contrast between
cyweirdant and tyniad, suiting the way in which cyweirdant carries a sense of repose
and tyniad one of transition. 1/3-comma mean-tone reduces this contrast. The
likelihood is, then, that of the two, 1/4-comma mean-tone would be preferred in
general.
1/4-comma mean-tone temperament creates this scale:
C D E F G A B C
0 193 386 503 697 890 1007 1200

The pieces in the manuscript that have no absent 5ths, and

 83

are better served by this temperament than by using pure 5ths are:
Caniad y Gwyn Bibydd
Caniad Ystafell
Caniad Llywelyn ab Ifan ap y Gof
Y Ddigan y Droell
Caniad Marwnad Ifan ap y Gof
Y Caniad Crych ar y Bragodgywair
Caniad Hun Wenllian
Caniad Pibau Morfydd
Caniad Llywelyn Delynior

Some parts of pieces in the manuscript do not follow the usual major-major or
major-minor patterns between cyweirdant and tyniad. Minor-major patterning
seems, albeit not entirely clearly, to be contained in part of Caniad Ystafell (38.5.1-
39.3.10), of Caniad Marwnad Ifan ap y Gof (71.6.1-72.5.7), of Profiad Brido ar
Uwchgywair (64.6.1-65.2.5) and of Caniad Hun Wenllian (87.6.1-88.1.12). This
implies that pieces may have existed outside of the music text that were composed
entirely in this rather contradictory format. If so the contrast in them between
cyweirdant and tyniad would probably be better served by 1/3-comma mean-tone
than by 1/4-comma mean-tone.
There are parts of pieces that are predominantly minor in both cyweirdant and
tyniad positions: Caniad Ystafell vii-xii and Y Caniad Crych ar y Bragodgywair
(80.2.1-3.10, 80.5.5-81.1.3). If there existed pieces entirely in this minor format
then their general sonority would be best enhanced by 1/3-comma mean-tone.
 84

Indeed some case can be made out on stylistic grounds for setting Caniad Ystafell in
1/3-comma mean-tone.
1/3-comma mean-tone temperament creates this scale:
C D E F G A B C
0 190 379 505 695 884 1010 1200

THE CYWEIRIAU REVISITED

It would be rash to presume that such a complex variety of intonations as has been
advanced here would have been effected in an ad hoc, uncodified manner, whilst
there still remains a terminology in cerdd dant that is unaccounted for. Could it
simply be that the cyweiriau refer to different intonations? The whole topic of the
cyweiriau is very abstruse, and in some ways we can almost afford to pass it by until
that extra, small piece of information is acquired that will make the whole topic
transparent, or until some part of the information we do have is revealed to be
faulty. However, if intonation is what the cyweiriau refer to then some alterations to
the intonations of a few pieces would need to be made. The practical import is that
Caniad San Silin would be played in untempered intonation instead of temperaments
2 or 3, and the options for three pieces can be narrowed down to just one: Profiad
Brido ar Isgywair would be played in untempered intonation, Profiad Brido ar
Uwchgywair would be played in 1/3-comma mean-tone, and Caniad Cadwgan would
be played in temperament 1.
Because of these minor practical implications, and whilst
 85

there is a possibility that there is historical evidence that implies the use of a variety
of intonations (in addition to the musical evidence we have been considering), it is
necessary to examine the technical feasibility of the proposition that the cyweiriau
refer to intonations.
The examination that follows is complex, but the opening point is a very simple
one. It is remarkably impressive that the above list of nine pieces in the manuscript
that have no absent 5ths includes as many as seven of the pieces that we are
informed are played on the bragodgywair:
Caniad y Gwyn Bibydd
Caniad Ystafell
Caniad Marwnad Ifan ap y Gof
Y Caniad Crych ar y Bragodgywair
Caniad Hun Wenllian
Caniad Pibau Morfydd
Caniad Llywelyn Delynior

Was the bragodgywair actually an intonation? After all, it is the use of all six
diatonic 5ths that marks this group as one that relates to intonation. So it is worth
examining the significance of all these seven pieces being incapable of irregular
temperaments. The only other piece in the manuscript known to be played on the
bragodgywair is Caniad Cynwrig Bencerdd, but that piece also, despite it having an
absent 5th A-E, is already on the list of pieces with absent 5ths that are unable to be
accommodated by any irregular temperament other than Pythagorean or mean-tone.
Thus it is that all eight pieces known
 86

as being on the bragodgywair share this intonational characteristic.

Of the other pieces with this characteristic, eight are unspecified in relation to
cywair. It is highly probable that two of these, Caniad Llywelyn ab Ifan ap y Gof and
Caniad Suwsana, should be identified with the titles Caniad Marwnad Llywelyn ab
Ifan ap y Gof and Caniad Marwnad Suwsana; the same contraction appears to have
occurred in the manuscript in respect of Caniad Marwnad Cynwrig Bencerdd (see Part
5, pp. 69-70). If so then they should be played on the bragodgywair ascribed to
them by Gwysaney 28 fo.71 and other manuscripts (see Miles pp. 620-3).
If this exhausted the cywair ascriptions in the lists we could infer that the
remaining six pieces too should be played on the bragodgywair, but there remain
two pieces that were played on other cyweiriau: Profiad Brido ar Isgywair and Profiad
Brido ar Uwchgywair. That these cyweiriau were not mere subdivisions of the
bragodgywair can be inferred from the fact that the isgywair was, like the
bragodgywair itself, one of the five warranted cyweiriau. Yet isgywair and
uwchgywair, the existence of which is not referred to anywhere except as part of the
latter title, do seem to form a pair of contrasting terms in this pair of titles. Clearly
some one thing or another was relatively high in Profiad Brido ar Uwchgywair, as
'uwch' means 'above', which was relatively low in Profiad Brido ar Isgywair, as 'is'
means 'below'. To judge from the music texts of the pieces, the variable involved in
the contrast was not pitch in any manifestation that is obvious there, so perhaps it
related to the
 87

more subtle realm of intonation.

The only type of intonational scenario that can satisfy the criteria required by this
contrast whilst also involving the bragodgywair has to be one in which the
bragodgywair constitutes some kind of a mean in some frame of reference that
relates to pitch levels, where the frame of reference admits the bragodgywair being
flanked on both sides - above by the uwchgywair and below by the isgywair.
Intonation can supply an answer, as at least the intonations available to be allotted
here do happen to be three in number. Moreover, they do relate to pitch levels, in
that Pythagorean intonation has its 5ths pitched wider than 1/4-comma mean-tone
and 1/3-comma mean-tone has its 5ths pitched narrower than 1/4-comma mean-
tone. This is to say that when tuning an ascending 5th, with Pythagorean intonation
the string being tuned is set higher than it would be with 1/4-comma mean-tone,
whereas with 1/3-comma mean-tone it is set lower than with 1/4-comma mean-
tone. This might imply that the uwchgywair equates with Pythagorean intonation,
that the very commonly-used bragodgywair equates with 1/4-comma mean-tone,
and that the isgywair equates with 1/3-comma mean-tone.
However, these identifications of intonation are not really suitable for Profiad y
Brido ar Isgywair and Profiad y Brido ar Uwchgywair, since the former is in major-
major cyweirdant-tyniad format whereas the latter appears at least in part (64.6.1-
65.2.5) to be in minor-major format. Predominantly minor tonality, as discussed
before, is better suited by 1/3-comma mean-tone than by Pythagorean intonation.
But if the cerdd dant
 88

harpists reckoned their strings not by counting upwards but in the way more familiar
to us of counting downwards, as was done in Gwilym Puw's diagram of tuning, then
the tempering of descending 5ths involves the raising of strings. Thus the
uwchgywair would equate with the appropriately minor intonation of 1/3-comma
mean-tone after all, whilst the isgywair would equate with the untempered
intonation. This is a satisfactory technical possibility, even though conceiving of
tuning in descending 5ths entails adopting a set string higher in the chain of 5ths
than the C proposed above.
Moving on now to the remaining pieces for which cyweiriau are specified, all
these lie amongst the pieces for which pure major 3rds can be supplied by irregular
temperaments. These are:
Temperaments Cywair
Clymau Cytgerdd 1 cras gywair
Caniad Cadwgan 1 or 4 cras gywair
Caniad Bach ar y Gogywair 2 gogywair
Caniad Tro Tant 1 or 6 (tro tant)
Caniad San Silin 2 or 3 (tro tant) or isgywair

From this list, the Clymau Cytgerdd and Caniad Cadwgan identify temperament 1 as
the cras gywair. Caniad Bach ar y Gogywair identifies temperament 2, the basis of
the Highland bagpipe scale, as the gogywair. Significantly, the piece is unique in
contrasting the 2nds F-G and G-A, which happen to be balanced - both are minor
tones - only in this particular temperament. The remaining one of the five warranted
cyweiriau - the lleddf gywair
 89

- we should expect to be represented here, the principal candidate being

temperament 3, used by two pieces: Gosteg Dafydd Athro and Profiad Fforchog Ifan
ap y Gof.
Caniad Tro Tant and Caniad San Silin remain problematic. As written in the music
text, they do not share a common tonality or even modality, and yet the note to the
latter (already introduced at p. 25) makes it clear that it could share the
characteristic of tro tant with the former. If it is the case that tro tant refers to B-flat
(as suggested p. 24) it would be easy to understand why Caniad Tro Tant was so
named, since - uniquely in the manuscript - it has B-flat tonality (and B-flat modality
in its last section). Caniad San Silin has different tonality and modality, so
presumably the import of the note to the piece is that whereas Caniad San Silin is
capable of being set on B-flat, the version given is set on G and it is this version to
which the preferred treatment isgywair should be applied.
This recommendation of isgywair for Caniad San Silin appears to be at odds with
the identification arrived at above of isgywair as untempered Pythagorean intonation,
but actually just because a piece such as Caniad San Silin does not require
untempered intonation does not mean that it cannot or should not be played in
untempered intonation. Certainly Profiad y Brido ar Isgywair cannot be played in
temperaments 2 or 3 because it employs all six 5ths, so isgywair cannot be identified
as either of these. It is just possible that Caniad San Silin, which appears to contain
archaic features (particularly its narrow compass), was deliberately set in what was
probably viewed (then
 90

as now) as an archaic intonation. Hence it may not have been that the advantages
offered for this piece by temperaments 2 and 3 were simply overlooked.

TERMINOLOGY

Whether or not we have enough information to have arrived at correct identifications

of particular intonations for the cyweiriau, on the information we have it does
appear, from the above demonstrations, that the general proposition that cyweiriau
comprised intonations is at least technically feasible. This interpretation is in
sympathy with the term 'cywair' itself and is supported by several terms used in
connection with cyweiriau. 'Cywair' has general meanings: adjustment, order,
agreement, proper state or condition, trim, reparation, restoration, which are very
appropriate in music for temperament as well as for tuning, key and pitch.
Furthermore, four of the five warranted cyweiriau possessed strings termed
'tannau lleddfon' (Peniarth 147, p. 200, Peniarth 62, p. 18). Now because cras
gywair has no tannau lleddfon named after it in these sources, 'lleddf' obviously
carries senses of contrast with 'cras' here. These are that whereas 'cras' is hard,
harsh, parched, dry, acrid, 'lleddf' is soft, calm, tender, placid (as well as being
oblique, inclined, askew). There are two possibilities concerning the tannau lleddfon.
Most probably the term referred to the middle pair of crwth strings, but it might have
been a term for tempered harp strings, for the act of
 91

tempering is commonly viewed as a softening of intervals. If this was the case, then
the strong implication here would be that cras gywair was viewed as untempered,
whereas the other cyweiriau (especially the lleddf gywair), with their tannau lleddfon,
were tempered.
It may have been, then, that cras gywair was the same as what we consider
untempered intonation - Pythagorean intonation - and that the two pieces we have
that are known to be on cras gywair did not avail themselves of the opportunity of
pure major 3rds afforded to them by temperament 1. The alternative solution is that

temperament 1 with its tempered D- A- E- was considered as the basic tuning, with
all other intonations considered as departures from this. It is not obvious why this
would be so (unless this tuning was the most ancient - it is one version of the 'tense'
diatonic tuning of Ancient Greek music), but it would leave temperament 3 - the
most likely contender for the lleddf gywair - with the greatest number of altered

strings: A B+ D F+, which would account for why the lleddf gywair was so-named
from tannau lleddfon.
On this reckoning, the naming of the gogywair could be accounted for on the

basis that temperament 2 with its A- E- B+ F+ has three altered strings: B+ D F+,
one less than the lleddf gywair might have had. 'Go' means 'rather', 'somewhat',
implying that it required only moderate adjustment, less adjustment than the lleddf
gywair must have had. But this is becoming very speculative.
'Bragod' is a term that also relates to taste. It refers to
 92

bragget, the beverage produced by sweetening bitter ale with mead, and so it seems
that 'bragod' was used here as a metaphor for bitter-sweet harmony. This is apt
enough for mean-tone intonation, particularly for 1/4-comma mean-tone, with its
slightly sour 5ths blended in triads with sweetly-pure major 3rds. I should emphasise
here that the triadic cerdd dant harmony brings out the distinctive flavour of 1/4-
comma mean-tone very strongly indeed. It produces an attractive, rather irresistible
blend of flavours.

THEORY

Finally, the proposition that cywair equates with intonation would explain some more
otherwise enigmatic facts supplied by the early literature (Peniarth 147, pp. 199-
200, Peniarth 62, p. 18).
That the cyweiriau show the various lleisiau - sounds - (as they quarrel one
against the other or as they are separated the one from the other) may indicate that
intonation affects intervals.
That from the five principle cyweiriau you can make as many as you want of
cyweiriau may indicate how temperings generate multiple intonations.
That all the cyweiriau are mixed the one with the other, and it is through
instruction that the llanw - the fillings-up - between the cyweiriau can be classified
may indicate how various intonations have complex impacts on chordal intervals.
That there is part of every cywair in the bragodgywair, that every finger of the
crythor keeps in it, and that the
 93

bragodgywair is the principal cywair may indicate that a mean-tone temperament

has the flexibility to accommodate all six 5ths.
That 'isgywair ar y bragod dannau' was censured at an early eisteddfod
(according to a tale related in a note to J D Rhys's Grammar of 1592) may indicate
that the niceties of intonation concern what is and is not acceptable to the ear, that
an unfamiliar intonation is difficult to accept.

Not everything concerned with cywair is immediately reconciled by the development

here of the proposition that cywair equates with intonation. Why with Robert Peilin's
naming of the harpstrings (see p. 8 above) the A string should be termed crasdant
and the B string when natural should be termed bragodant? Certainly the harmony of
the pieces we possess on the bragodgywair precludes the use of B natural, so
probably Peilin's naming is erroneous. How exactly is it that, as Peniarth 147 p. 199
informs us, the forefinger of the crythor keeps gogywair and bragodgywair and the
middle finger isgywair, cras gywair and lleddf gywair? Obviously intonation
determines the positioning of the fingers on the crwth, but it is not exactly clear how
intervals produced by these fingers define the various intonational scales involved.
Why should there be references to yr hen fragod gywair - the old bragodgywair -
(Peniarth 62, p. 8 and see Miles p. 635) when one would not expect 1/4-comma
mean-tone to be viewed as especially ancient?
Until some more headway is made with these problems of theory, the proposition
that cywair denoted intonation is best
 94

viewed as no more than a hypothesis. Nevertheless, in the light of all the arguments
developed here, it has to be conceded that at this time the cywair system appears
more convincing as a codification of intonation than it ever did in the former
interpretation - as a codification of scordatura. But howsoever one may choose to
conclude on the matter of cywair and whether or not one adopts the particular
temperaments it implies for the four pieces concerned, it remains the case that the
intonations that have been isolated here serve the manuscript repertory much better
than any one single intonation could.

SUMMARY

The following summary of the most probable intonation for each composition in the
music text also includes the possible alternatives for those four pieces where the
harmony implies a solution somewhat different from that derived from the
'cywair=intonation' hypothesis. The six irregular temperaments concerned are
labelled:

1. D- A- E-
2. A- E- B+ F+
3. E - B+ F+
4. D- A- E- B+
5. A- E- B+
6. G- D- A- E-
 95

Composition Temperaments
Gosteg Dafydd Athro 3
Gosteg yr Halen 1
Yr Osteg Fawr 1
Gosteg Llwyteg 1
Y Clymau Cytgerdd 1
Caniad y Gwyn Bibydd 1/4-comma mean-tone
Caniad Ystafell 1/4-comma mean-tone
Caniad Cadwgan 1 (or possibly 4)
Caniad Bach ar y Gogywair 2
Caniad Cynwrig Bencerdd 1/4-comma mean-tone
Caniad Llywelyn ab Ifan ap y Gof 1/4-comma mean-tone
Caniad Suwsana 1/4-comma mean-tone
Profiad Cyffredin 1/4-comma mean-tone
Y Ddigan y Droell 1/4-comma mean-tone
Cainc Ruffudd ab Adda ap Dafydd 1
Cainc Dafydd Broffwyd 5
Profiad yr Eos Brido 1/4-comma mean-tone
Profiad yr Eos 1/4-comma mean-tone
Profiad Chwith Ifan ap y Gof 1/4-comma mean-tone
Profiad Fforchog Ifan ap y Gof 3
Profiad y Botwm 1/4-comma mean-tone
Profiad Brido ar Isgywair untempered (or possibly 1/4- comma mean-tone)
Profiad Brido ar Uwchgywair 1/3-comma mean-tone (or possibly 1/4-comma
mean-tone)
Caniad y Wefl 1/4-comma mean-tone
Caniad Tro Tant 1 or 6
Caniad San Silin untempered (or possibly 2 or 3)
 96

Caniad Marwnad Ifan ap y Gof 1/4-comma mean-tone

Y Caniad Crych ar y Bragodgywair 1/4-comma mean-tone
Caniad Hun Wenllian 1/4-comma mean-tone
Caniad Pibau Morfydd 1/4-comma mean-tone
Caniad Llywelyn Delynior 1/4-comma mean-tone
 97

X. CRWTH TUNINGS

As the music text consists of telyn arrangements, the great problems that
performance technique on the crwth presents do not directly affect reconstruction of
the music. Nevertheless, crwth tunings do bear indirectly on the principles of
reconstruction, because 'cywair' is expressly related not only to crwth fingering but
to crwth tuning as well. It therefore becomes important to examine crwth tuning in
so far as the interpretation of 'cywair' depends upon it. I hope that this exploration of
crwth tuning and its terminology, whilst it falls short of solving all the unknown
features of the instrument, is sufficient for the present purpose of reappraising to
which instrument the 'cywair' terms most properly and primarily belong.
At the outset it needs to be stated that the music text reveals that the crwth
must have been handled with a technique which was essentially entirely different in
its approach to the stopped strings from the standard approaches used for organum
fiddling and for monodic playing of the violin and all other instruments with violin-
type tuning. Consequently, the crwth would have required a different approach to its
tuning, an approach which is indeed supplied by one source. The details of the
deduced 'alternate-stopping' crwth technique in the cerdd dant tradition are
addressed in Part 4, pp. 134-41.
Two tunings for the crwth have been handed down, that of Edward Jones and
Daines Barrington, and that of William Bingley.
 98

That of Jones and Barrington apparently derives from a passage in British Library
Add. MS 15020:91, of which there is a copy: Aberystwyth MS 168:6. The passage is
as follows:
Y modd i Gyweirio Crwth
Yn gyntaf codwch y crasdant (Iaf) cyfuwch ag y gellir heb ei dorri, yno
codwch y cowirdant (5ed) bumb not yn is; a chodwch y 6ed wyth not yn
is na'r cowirdant, ag yna gellir ei alw yn fyrdwn neu'n fas iddaw
Cyweiriwch yr ail tant (2d) wyth not yn is na'r cyntaf ag fe fydd
ynteu yn fyrdwn i'r cyntaf a chyweiriwch y trydydd tant (3ed) bump not
yn is na'r cywirdant yno codwch y llwfrdant (4dd) wyth not yn uwch ag
felly fe fydd y (3dd) yn fyrdwn i'r 4d ar crwth yn ei Gowair naturiol.

The directions are clear. They result in a tuning:

String 1: Y crasdant - the set string
String 2: ai Fyrdwn - 8ve below y crasdant
String 3: Byrdon y Llwfrdant - 8ve below y llwfrdant
String 4: y Llwfrdant - 2nd below y crasdant
String 5: y Cywirdant - 5th below y crasdant
String 6: ai Fyrdon - 8ve below y cyweirdant
The strings are paired in three courses, each course containing two strings one of
which is doubled at the 8ve below by its byrdwn. The outer pair of stopped strings
are set a 5th above the outboard pair and the inner pair of stopped strings are set a
4th above the outboard pair. Jones supplies the pitches: g-g'-c''-c'-d'-d''.
 99

The second tuning is provided by William Bingley, who interviewed a crwth-player

in Caernarfon in 1801, in which the relationships are different. The inner pair of
stopped strings are a 5th above the outboard pair, not a 4th, and the outer pair of
stopped strings are a 9th above the outboard pair. Also it is string 4 not string 3 that
serves as the bourdon in the inner pair. Bingley supplies the pitches: a-a'-e'-e''-b'-
b'', although perhaps neither these nor Jones's should be taken literally. For
comparison with Jones's pitches, we could consider Bingley's as: g-g'-d'-d''-a'-a''.
The similarities between these two tunings suggest that they are authentic in
their intervals. Yet, almost certainly, they could not have been alternative scordatura
for a single crwth, because the range of retuning involved would probably be
impracticable. To change from the 'natural' tuning to the Bingley tuning the outboard
strings would have to be lowered by a 5th, if the outer pair of stopped strings could
not be raised at all. The two tunings probably come from different traditions.
Nevertheless the reference to 'ei Gowair naturiol' clearly implies the existence of
other tuning sets, so it will probably have been that the cywair naturiol came from a
tradition that used other cyweiriau. It is frustrating that the source uses the loan-
word 'naturiol' and not a Welsh proper name, for surely this tuning must have had
such a name. If 'bragod gywair' had been used, for instance, then the hypothesis
that the five warranted cyweiriau relate to crwth-tuning would be proved. As it is, we
 100

are left to speculate what the Welsh names for this and the other cyweiriau of the
crwth actually were, but we do at least possess the information discussed before that
relates the five warranted cyweiriau to the fingering of the crwth, not the telyn. So
we need to consider whether the implied existence of alternative tunings to the
cywair naturiol is a practical notion.
In terms of practical applicability to cerdd dant, the cywair naturiol is very much
more appropriate than the Bingley tuning. The crucial difference between the two
here is that the former has the two stopped courses set at a 2nd apart and the latter
a 5th apart. The setting a 2nd apart is convenient - indeed virtually essential - for
accommodating the double-tonic which dominates the upper-part of the music text,
in that the fingering of a phrase stopped on the one course can then be replicated on
the other course to produce the phrase shifted by a tone. Meanwhile, in this
alternate-stopping technique first one course then the other is left open to sound the
appropriate accompaniment, the two courses exchanging rôles, alternating in the
measures. It is this double-tonic patterning which is characteristic of the melody in
the text. Also the melodic phrases are generally small in compass, they rely heavily
on adjacent notes, and they are stiffly formulaic. This deliberate, restricted mobility
is part and parcel of the fingering technique on the telyn, and on the crwth it may
arise out of fingering a phrase on just one course rather than on several strings (as
on the violin for example).
Bingley's tuning - at a 5th apart - would be more
 101

appropriate for music of the tonic-dominant variety, so it may derive from outside
the cerdd dant tradition, very possibly having been influenced (by 1801) by the
tuning of the violin. Alternatively, it may have been designed for the standard fiddle
technique where each finger is held flat across the fingerboard to stop both of the
stopped courses of strings simultaneously, thereby producing parallel organum at the
5th.
What, then, may have been the alternative tunings to the cywair naturiol? The
first point to be made is that the double-tonic does not underlie the whole of the
upper part of the text, and some use could therefore be made of tunings that have
the stopped courses set at intervals other than a 2nd. Other intervals occur in the
cyweirdant/tyniad phrasing, particularly phrases that are repeated without shifting
(contrast 81.2.10-81.3 with 81.4.11-81.5). Here the two stopped courses might be
better set in unison than at a 2nd. It might be worth noting, in connection with
departures from the root, 4th and 5th of the cywair naturiol, that Scottish traditional
violinists used scordatura, including one that employed root, major 3rd and 5th
(discussed by Collinson, p. 227).
Secondly, benefit could be obtained from resetting the relationship between the
stopped courses and the outboard course. Although it is not certain that the
outboard course did provide a drone (either by being continuously bowed or by being
repeatedly plucked pizzicato by the thumb), if it did then the dedication of these
strings to a drone of a single pitch would radically restrict the ability to play these
pieces on the crwth. As we
 102

have seen, the text uses several different notes as drones, and so it would be helpful
to retune the outboard course to provide these.
There again, the outboard course might not always have provided a drone. If
these strings were plucked by the thumb, the spacing between them is such that it
would be easy to pluck them individually. Plucking of these strings is not very
convincing acoustically. If they were continuously bowed, the thumb might still have
had a damping rôle or some harmonic muting rôle, or even a stopping rôle (using the
back of the nail), and any of these techniques might access the outboard strings
individually. In any of these circumstances it would be useful on occasion to reset the
interval between the outboard strings to intervals other than the 8ve.
A third possible location for retuning is suggested if one reads the 'cywair
naturiol' description as applying not to the tuning set in general but only to the
setting of the inner stopped course, such that the 8ve setting between these strings
was only one of a number of options.
With inadequate information on crwth technique, and with no extant crwth
arrangements at all, it would be an arduous task to discover by experiment precisely
which techniques and which tunings could produce the optimum contribution from
the instrument here. Furthermore, even if some progress were made, it is unlikely
that the names for the alternative tunings would become apparent. In the meantime
an understanding of the early passages on fingering the crwth remains elusive. Even
the string-names
 103

used there do not precisely match those used in the tuning-scheme.

What does seem clear is that in order to realize the basics of the harmony used in
these pieces, a variety of tunings similar to and including the cywair naturiol scheme
would have to be employed. The arguments for this are set out in Part 4, pp. 134-
41. The doubling of the melody at a 5th that Bingley's tuning would most
conveniently produce would definitely not be the most effective way of organizing
the stopped courses.
Would these alternative tunings have been termed 'cyweiriau'? In addition to the
inference from the 'cywair naturiol' tuning, it is possible to make out an argument
from the naming of the crwth strings. The terms for the stopped courses: 'crasdant'
and 'llwfrdant' are very interesting. The senses in which the words: 'cras' and 'llwfr'
are used in general suggest a sense of contrast between them, such that a sense of
boldness from the meanings of 'cras' contrasts with a timidity of 'llwfr' (literally
'cowardly'), and so it would seem that these strings were so named from their sound
- the intervals of a 5th and a 4th respectively with the outboard course - and not
from their positioning on the instrument. It seems likely, then, that all intervals
would have been known by terms as well as by numbers; terms such as 'cras'. 'Cras'
is of course one of the main 'cywair' terms, and so I suggest that the other 'cywair'
terms might refer to other intervals that arise as significant from tunings of the
crwth. On this line of thought it is odd that there is no 'llwfr gywair' ever mentioned,
but then perhaps
 104

'llwfr' is a mistaking of 'lleddf'.

I believe the cywair naturiol, in enabling the melody line to be supported by a
double-tonic accompaniment, must have occupied a central place throughout the
cerdd dant tradition. I expect that the timpan and any plucked precursors of the
crwth would have needed to have been organized on the same principles. The
possibility discussed before that the terms: 'cyweirdant' and 'tyniad' originally meant
the sounding of open and stopped strings respectively, implies the use of end-
stopped instruments of accompaniment as opposed to virtuosic solo instruments with
a full-length fingerboard. This is to say the double-tonic alternation of harmony in
cerdd dant may predate the development of solo stringed instruments and be
extremely ancient. Even the structuring of the cywair naturiol, reliant on the 4th -
5th chordal accompaniment produced between the outboard course and the courses
over the fingerboard, appears to be what Giraldus Cambrensis was referring to in the
twelfth century ('whether the strings strike together a 4th or a 5th'). The crwth,
operating as the bridge between the accompaniment lyres upon which the harmonic
system supposedly evolved and the music we have arranged for the telyn, is the key
to understanding the basis of the music's harmony.
 105

XI. CONCLUSION

In summary, what is offered here is a simple solution to the extremely vexed issue
of tonality. This has been arrived at by placing great credence on the early sources,
especially the tablature itself, to which is attributed a simple efficacy. A critical
approach has been adopted towards the elaborate constructions which have been
built upon these early sources. The result is that transcription of the whole text in
respect of tonality is enabled, for the first time. Prior to this the absence of
identifications of the cyweiriau of many of the pieces in the music text has limited
(strictly speaking) the scope of transcription. This interpretation simplifies
transcription tremendously. On adopting it, the transcriber no longer needs to apply
different hypotheses and methods to different parts of the text in general nor use an
ad hoc approach to those pieces for which no cywair is specified. In being this simple
and direct, the literal approach provides an interpretive approach with a certain
methodological 'bedrock' to it, which could never be matched by any 'cywair'
interpretation whilst the cyweiriau of all pieces remains unknown. Hitherto it has
been supposed that recovery of all the music is an impossibility because of this
sticking-point, and that interpretation must always and necessarily be to some
extent speculative.
Direct, literal transcription results in coherent music. The analysis of the
tonalities of the pieces presented in Chapter VI
 106

is a statement about musicality as well as technicalities. With some twenty-five years

experience of playing all the pieces exclusively in this tuning I can say that the
tonalities establish a certain standard of musicality which is transparently accessible
to modern ears. In short, this interpretation has musical appeal, and this will have
had some influence on the many transcribers and performers who, for various
reasons, have often selected this tuning for particular pieces. This interpretation also
has appeal for the performer of course, because the daunting prospect of resetting
the harp to different keys and scordatura tunings is removed. For the art in general
(and for its promotion), more than ever hinges on the interpretation of tuning now
that the possibilities have been expanded to include no gross retuning. It is not only
the correct identification of the notes that is at stake here, but how palatable a
prospect the music is to potential performers and audiences.
Many issues - such as the nature and details of the cyweiriau - remain
unresolved, but it appears that none of these relate directly to the purposes at hand:
reconstruction and transcription. But because they have previously been understood
to relate to transcription I shall here discuss such tentative conclusions as I have
been able to come to on these issues.
The nature of the cyweiriau. By 1676 Gwilym Puw was using 'cywair' in the sense
of different tunings for the telyn, but it has to be, of course, that 'cywair' would have
only come to mean 'key' as different keys developed or were introduced into Wales.
We need to know exactly when and where this happened, but it
 107

would be incorrect to argue that because in modern times 'cywair' means 'key' it
must be that the use of different keys is as old as the use of cyweiriau terms. My
conclusions on this are that the concept of key had no place in the old cerdd dant,
and that although it may well have been that the Welsh language needed a word for
key in music generally before the demise of the old cerdd dant, it would not have
needed such a word for the specific field of the old cerdd dant. It would be odd
anyway for a vernacular word to have evolved for 'key' before modern times, as a
loanword should be expected (early MSS. use 'kliff' for the letter name of a note,
'not' for its Guidonian name, etc.).
My conclusion is that the cyweiriau system basically operated within the single
tuning indicated by the tablature, but was capable of operating also in some
compositions that used F-sharp or B-natural, none of which happen to be in the
music text. So I read Hafod 3 p. 233 as correct in indicating that the gogywair used
B-flat. As to why the gogywair alone should be named here, perhaps important
chords in the gogywair were based on B-flat. I suspect this is the case with tro'r
tant: that the term draws attention to the significant use of the string which can be
turned, but not necessarily to the actual inflecting of it. And indeed Caniad Tro Tant
in the music text is unusual and distinctive in using B-flat as a constituent of its
cyweirdant chords and not its tyniad chords. From this it would follow that if indeed
Panton 56 should be taken as identifying b-durum with tro'r tant, then Panton 56
would be wrong. I think it is wrong; that the author is trying to identify the sense of
tro'r tant
 108

with what in reality 'dyrchafael y tant' indicated - the sharpening of a string from its
usual and radical pitch. It would be an easy misinterpretation to make.
The conclusion that the cyweiriau system operated normally within one tuning on
the telyn does not prohibit a strong relationship between it and tuning in general. If
indeed the cyweiriau system was a system of chordal modulation, something so
complex is not going to have been arrived at in any abstract and theoretical way, but
only by playing music and experimenting with it on stringed instruments. It is bound
to have been, in its early origins, absolutely bound up with tuning, but probably at a
time before the telyn was used. The cyweirdant/tyniad system must have been
evolved on an early instrument - probably an end-stopped lyre. It is to the tuning of
early instruments - the crwth, the timpan and various forms of lyre - and not to the
telyn that one must look in order to discover the full detail of the cyweiriau, and
there is no immediate prospect of achieving this. Fortunately this is not a barrier to
recovering the music in the Robert ap Huw manuscript.
A final point to be made is that the music produced by this literal interpretation
exhibits a very great range of tonal contrast and diversity. The composers evidently
enjoyed exploiting the very wide palette of harmony that was available to them,
supporting melodic lines of various modalities and pitched at a wide range of heights.
The breadth of the parameters that were available here was sufficient to develop a
large repertory of really long pieces. We would do well to reflect on just how
 109

much diversity was achievable through the very sophisticated use of all the potential
of a simple, small, single-strung diatonic harp, without needing to resort to any gross
retuning or any use of accidentals. In this respect the music really is a great credit to
the inventiveness of the tradition that produced it.

© 2000 Peter Greenhill All rights reserved.

 110

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 111

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 112

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Reese, Gustave: Music in the Middle Ages (London, 1940).

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 113

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© 2000 Peter Greenhill All rights reserved.