Edward Jones

Edward Jones, baptised in Llandderfel (Wales) on 29 March 1752 and died in London on 18 April 1824, was a Welsh harpist, historian and composer whose importance rests above all on his recovery of the traditional music of his country. A native of Merionethshire, he settled in London around 1774 or early 1775, apparently at a time when the harp was still a prized instrument in aristocratic drawing rooms.

In the capital he built a reputation as a performer and as a harp teacher among families of high society. He took part in the concerts of Bach and Abel, for which he wrote numerous dances and songs. Fanny Burney noted in her diary, in May 1775, that he owned an excellent instrument and played it with clarity and delicacy, though his playing lacked expressiveness. From around 1788, when he published his Three Sonnets Now Most in Vogue at Paris, he styled himself harpist or bard to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, a title he later changed to 'Bard of the King'. His output comprises some 38 publications: sonatas, marches and popular dances, mostly for harp or keyboard, which should probably be regarded as derivative, although they reveal considerable technical facility, especially in the Musical Remains of 1796, arrangements of works by Handel, J. C. Bach and Abel. He also composed drawing-room songs in English, French and Italian, and collections of national airs from countries such as Malta, Holland, Sweden and Switzerland.

His most enduring contribution, however, is his work as a compiler. In Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards (1784), The Bardic Museum (1802) and Hên Ganiadau Cymru (1820) he published 209 distinct melodies, most of them Welsh. He gathered them from manuscripts held by noble houses, notebooks of harpists and fiddlers, informants across his wide network of correspondence, and oral tradition. He was also the first to print Welsh lyrics for popular songs, among them 'Ar hyd y nos' and 'Nôs Galan'. According to the introduction to Relicks itself, many of these melodies admitted several penillion metres, which explains their connection with Welsh traditional singing.

Jones financed the publication of folio editions on the music and bardic tradition of Wales and encouraged the eisteddfod competitions, where he often contributed the prizes for the harp contests, beginning at Corwen and Bala in 1789. His legacy endures above all in his collections, which remain a basic source for knowledge of the Welsh repertoire of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.