David Wynne
Welsh composer David Wynne was born David William Thomas on a farm at Penderyn on 2 June 1900. His father was a shepherd. He attended school until he was twelve, worked in a local grocer's shop for two years and then worked in the coal mines until he was twenty-five. He took music lessons from local music teacher, organist and composer Tom Llewellyn Jenkins and was awarded a scholarship to University College Cardiff, studying with David Evans and John Morgan Lloyd. He then did teacher training at Bristol University and took a job as head of music at a boys grammar school, Lewis School Pengam, becoming Wales' first full-time secondary school music teacher.
Wynne's String Quartet No 1 won the Clements Memorial Prize in 1944, launching his composing career, and he then began to get regular commissions. His music is particularly influenced by the Welsh language and early Welsh poetry.
David Wynne died suddenly at his home in Pencoed on 23 March 1983, aged eighty-two, whilst working on his Symphony No 4.
A selection of articles about David Wynne
Echoes of Oblivion by Robert McCarney - Four by Four by Five fff