What an eisteddfod is, and how the music competition works
The eisteddfod
WHAT THIS IS
What an eisteddfod is, and how the music competition works
IN ITS MODERN FORM
Annual since 1861; Llangollen since 1947
IN THIS PROGRAMME
SOURCES
Public record only. The biographical facts are sourced; see About.
An eisteddfod is a competitive festival of music, poetry and performance in which entrants compete in defined classes and are judged by an adjudicator who delivers the verdict aloud, in public, immediately after the competition.
The word comes from the Welsh verb eistedd, to sit, and means something close to a session or a sitting. The largest is the National Eisteddfod of Wales, Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru, which has been held annually in its modern form since 1861, is conducted entirely in Welsh, and moves each year between north and south Wales.
Three separate festivals share the name and are constantly confused. The National Eisteddfod is the Welsh-language national festival. The Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod, founded in 1947, is a separate international competition. The Urdd Eisteddfod is the youth festival run by Urdd Gobaith Cymru and is one of the largest youth festivals in Europe.
From Cardigan Castle to 1861
The first gathering that is recognisably an eisteddfod was held at Cardigan Castle in 1176 under Rhys ap Gruffydd, who summoned poets and musicians, set them to compete and awarded chairs to the winners. The practice continued intermittently through the medieval period as a means of regulating the bardic profession: an eisteddfod licensed poets and harpists, tested their command of the strict metres, and distinguished the trained from the untrained.
The modern festival is a nineteenth-century reconstruction rather than an unbroken line. London Welsh societies revived the form in the late eighteenth century, and Iolo Morganwg attached to it the ceremonies of the Gorsedd of Bards, which he devised in 1792 and which are now inseparable from the event even though they are two centuries younger than the eisteddfod itself. The National Eisteddfod Association dates the modern annual series from Aberdare in 1861. Everything since has been variation on the structure fixed then: a week-long festival, on a temporary site, with a pavilion, competitions all day and ceremonies at set hours.
The chairing and the crowning
The two literary ceremonies are the fixed points of the week, and they are conducted by the Gorsedd in full ceremonial. The Chair is awarded for an awdl, a long poem in the strict metres, which requires cynghanedd, the system of consonantal alliteration and internal rhyme that governs Welsh classical verse. The Crown is awarded for a pryddest, a long poem in free metre. A Prose Medal is awarded for an extended prose work.
Entries are submitted under a pseudonym and judged blind. At the ceremony the adjudication is delivered first, the winning pseudonym is announced, a trumpet sounds and a spotlight finds the winner, who stands and is escorted to the platform. If the adjudicators judge that no entry reaches the standard, the prize is withheld, and this happens. The most widely remembered instance is the 1917 festival at Birkenhead, where the chair was awarded to a poet who had been killed at the Battle of Passchendaele weeks earlier, and the empty chair was draped in black.
The music competitions, and how they are judged
Music occupies more of the timetable than poetry, and the classes are finely divided. A competitor enters a numbered class with a set test piece or a piece of their own choosing within stated limits, performs on the stage in the pavilion or in a smaller venue, and waits with the other competitors while the adjudicator speaks.
| Class | What competes | Typical requirement |
|---|---|---|
| Mixed choir | SATB choirs, often with a minimum and maximum number of singers | A set test piece plus an own choice, unaccompanied or with piano |
| Male voice choir | TTBB choirs, divided by size into large and small classes | A set piece, frequently a twentieth-century Welsh commission |
| Female choir and youth choir | SSA and SATB ensembles under a stated age | Set and own choice, with age verified on entry |
| Solo voice | Soprano, mezzo, tenor, baritone and bass, split by age band | Two contrasted items, at least one in Welsh |
| Blue Riband | The winners of the senior solo classes competing against one another | A single further performance, judged on the night |
| Cerdd dant | Solo and party penillion singing, a counter-melody sung against a harp | The harp tune is given; the vocal line is set by an arranger |
| Instrumental | Piano, strings, wind, brass, harp, by age band | Own choice within a time limit, marked on technique and interpretation |
| Folk singing and folk dance | Soloists, parties and dance teams | Traditional repertoire, often unaccompanied or with harp |
| Composition | Works submitted in advance under a pseudonym | A brief set by the organisers, judged on the score |
Adjudication is the distinguishing feature. Two or three adjudicators sit at a table in the hall, mark independently against published criteria, confer, and then one of them stands and speaks. The address is a critique, not a scoreboard: the adjudicator describes what each performance achieved and where it fell short before naming first, second and third. It is delivered in Welsh at the National, and it is done in front of the competitors and the audience. Prize money is modest. The value of winning is the placing itself, which choirs and soloists record for decades afterwards.
Llangollen, and the difference between the two
The Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod was founded in 1947, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, with the explicit purpose of bringing competitors from many countries to one small Denbighshire town. It is held over several days each July, is conducted in English as well as Welsh, and admits choirs, folk groups and dancers from abroad who compete in national costume. Its Choir of the World prize is contested by the winners of the principal choral classes.
The distinction from the National is worth stating once. The National Eisteddfod is a Welsh-language cultural institution in which the competitions are the substance and the language rule is absolute. Llangollen is an international music competition that happens to use the Welsh word for the form. Neither is a concert series, and neither should be confused with a festival that simply presents invited performers: at an eisteddfod, everyone on the stage has entered a class and will be marked.
Why it still matters to Welsh music
The eisteddfod is the reason Wales has had a national platform for amateur performance for longer than it has had a professional orchestra. It gives choirs an annual deadline, gives composers a commissioning route through the test pieces, and gives young singers and instrumentalists a public standard to measure themselves against before they reach a conservatoire. It also employs conductors: the National Eisteddfod appoints a music director, a post held in 1977 by the Welsh conductor Owain Arwel Hughes.
The competitive principle is the part outsiders find strangest and the part that does the work. A festival that only presents performances asks nothing of the performers beyond turning up. A festival that marks them, in public, in front of their neighbours, produces a country in which a village choir will rehearse one eight-minute piece from October until August.
Also in this programme
- Welsh classical musicThe composers, the choirs and the institutions
- Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau: Land of My FathersThe anthem, its author and its music
- Karl JenkinsThe most performed living Welsh composer
- Wales Millennium CentreWhat is inside it, and who works there