What an eisteddfod is, and how the music competition works
The eisteddfod
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.
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
WALES
SOURCES
Public record only. The biographical facts are sourced.
The largest is the Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru, the National Eisteddfod of Wales, held annually in its modern form since 1861, conducted entirely in Welsh, and moving each year between north and south Wales. The word comes from the Welsh verb eistedd, to sit; the plural is eisteddfodau.
Three festivals share the name and are constantly confused. The National Eisteddfod is the Welsh-language national festival. The Eisteddfod Gerddorol Ryngwladol Llangollen, the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod, founded in 1947, is a separate international competition. Eisteddfod yr Urdd, run by Urdd Gobaith Cymru, is the youth festival, one of the largest in Europe.
From Cardigan Castle to 1861
The first gathering 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. It continued through the medieval period as a way of regulating the bardic profession: licensing poets and harpists, testing their command of the strict metres, separating 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 Gorsedd Cymru, the Gorsedd of Wales, formerly Gorsedd y Beirdd. He devised them in 1792, and they are now inseparable from the event though two centuries younger than it. The annual series dates from Aberdare in 1861, and everything since is variation on the structure fixed then: a week on a temporary site, y Maes, the field, with a pavilion, competitions all day, ceremonies at set hours, and an art exhibition, Y Lle Celf.
The chairing and the crowning
The Welsh
- Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru
- the National Eisteddfod of Wales, the festival's actual name and the one it publishes under
- y Maes
- the field, meaning the temporary site itself, which is what competitors and audience call it
- Gorsedd Cymru
- the Gorsedd of Wales, the order of bards and musicians honoured for service to Welsh culture
- Y Gadair
- the Chair, the senior poetry prize, and a physical chair built for that year's festival
- Y Goron
- the Crown, the parallel prize, awarded on a different day of the same week
- awdl
- the long poem in strict metre that wins the Chair, the hardest technical task in Welsh verse
- pryddest
- the long poem in free metre that wins the Crown, unbound by those rules but judged as severely
The two literary ceremonies are the fixed points of the week, and Gorsedd Cymru conducts them in full ceremonial. Y Gadair, 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. Y Goron, the Crown, is awarded for a pryddest, a poem in free metre. A Prose Medal is awarded for an extended prose work. The ceremonies have their own names, cadeirio'r bardd and coroni'r bardd.
Entries are submitted under a pseudonym and judged blind. At the ceremony the adjudication comes first, the winning pseudonym is announced, a trumpet sounds and a spotlight finds the winner, who is escorted to the platform. If no entry reaches the standard the prize is withheld, and this happens. The best remembered is the 1917 festival at Birkenhead, where the chair went to a poet 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 an own choice within stated limits, performs in the pavilion or a smaller venue, and waits with the others while the adjudicator speaks.
| Class | What competes | Typical requirement |
|---|---|---|
| Mixed choir | SATB choirs, with a stated minimum and maximum | Set test piece plus own choice, with piano or unaccompanied |
| Male voice choir | TTBB choirs, split into large and small classes | Set piece, often a twentieth-century Welsh commission |
| Female choir and youth choir | SSA and SATB ensembles under a stated age | Set and own choice, age verified on entry |
| Solo voice | Soprano, mezzo, tenor, baritone and bass, by age band | Two contrasted items, at least one in Welsh |
| Blue Riband | The senior solo winners against one another | One further performance, judged on the night |
| Cerdd dant | Solo and party penillion singing, a counter-melody against a harp | Harp tune given; the vocal line set by an arranger |
| Instrumental | Piano, strings, wind, brass and harp, by age band | Own choice within a time limit |
| Folk singing and folk dance | Soloists, parties and dance teams | Traditional repertoire, often with harp |
| Composition | Scores submitted under a pseudonym | A brief set by the organisers |
Adjudication is the distinguishing feature. Two or three adjudicators mark independently against published criteria, confer, and one then stands and speaks. The address is a critique, not a scoreboard: it describes what each performance achieved and where it fell short before naming first, second and third. At the National it is delivered in Welsh, in front of the competitors and the audience. Prize money is modest; the value of winning is the placing, which choirs record for decades.
Llangollen, and the difference between the two
Llangollen was founded in 1947, in the aftermath of the Second World War, to bring competitors from many countries to one small Denbighshire town. It runs 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. At the National, Rheol Gymraeg, the Welsh rule, formalised in 1950, requires all proceedings to be in Welsh, and the competitions rather than the platform performances are the substance of the week. Llangollen is an international competition that happens to use the Welsh word for the form. Neither is a concert series: 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, composers a commissioning route through the test pieces, and young singers and players a public standard to measure themselves against before 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