Madam.

I was interested to read the article ‘The Forgotten Maestro of Aberystwyth’.

Walford Davies was a major figure in British music and there is certainly plenty to celebrate about his achievements during the years he was Gregynog Professor of Music here.

During the 1920s Davies put Aberystwyth firmly on the international musical map. He organised Bartok’s first public recital in Britain in what is now Theatr y Castell - a case for a commemorative plaque, surely? Incidentally, Davies found his guest’s music “baffling”. Charles Clements was not wholly taken with Bartok’s playing but quick to say, “He rather enjoyed mine!”

Davies brought Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Holst and many leading musicians to Aberytwyth. His music department staff included some of the country’s finest performers. Their pioneering initiative, taking music into the rural communities of Wales, was widely influential.

In Aberystwyth, Davies brought town and gown musical collaboration to new levels in both scale and excellence.

He was an outstanding choral leader and his spirit lives on in the town’s two major mixed-voice choirs, Aberystwyth Choral Society and the University Singers.

Both continue to present regular full-scale performances with professional orchestras and soloists while elsewhere such events have become rare, if not extinct.

The article mentions a visitor, Howard Brayton – obviously a Walford Davies aficionado, who was “surprised” that little is known about Sir Walford in the town.

Not so long ago, though, he could have heard Frank Bott talk enthusiastically about Davies at Aberystwyth’s Musicfest.

Dr Rhian Davies, director of the Gregynog Festival and a foremost authority on the composer, lives right here.

The university music department should be doing something, we are told – but its closure over 25 years ago rather excuses this inertia.

However, had Mr Brayton made contact with the university’s director of music, I should have enjoyed sharing my admiration for Davies’ work at Aberystwyth. I would have invited him to look around our Walford Davies Music Library, presided over by a portrait of Sir Walford himself.

I could have shown Mr Brayton programmes for the university choir explicitly acknowledging its debt to Davies and the choral tradition he nurtured.

When 160 performers fill the stage of the Great Hall, as we did a few weeks ago, and perform to hundreds more packed into the auditorium, this is when we celebrate and share Henry Walford Davies’s rich and vital musical legacy to Aberystwyth.

Yours etc,

Dr David Russell Hulme, FRSA, director of music and Reader, Aberystwyth University.

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