National curriculum expectations that pupils should study the traditional music of Britain’s regions and countries make sense, because such music often has more in common with genres studied under the heading of “world music” than it has with western classical repertoire.

Work by organisations such as South-West Arts and Folkworks, based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, have done much over the past decade to rescue English traditional music from oblivion. In Scotland and Wales record companies including Temple and Sain have released many albums of traditional and traditionally derived music in response to a growing interest in the styles of the past.

In Wales the eisteddfod, or competitive arts festival, has done much at local and national levels to foster traditional styles, particularly of vocal and harp music. And the emergence, supported by Sain, of performers such as Sian James, Plethyn and Pigyn Clust has helped create a new audience for traditional music and inspired festivals such as Dolgellau’s sesiwn fawr, held each July in this north Wales market town.

Introducing pupils to Welsh traditional music has never been easier in terms of recorded and live repertoire. Here are some suggestions for performing, listening and composing activities for 10 to 12-year-olds. The activities are drawn from Welsh vocal, harp and dance repertoire.

Vocal music The strength of the Welsh vocal tradition was first commented on 900 years ago and remains in evidence today. Example 1 above shows the traditional song melody, “Hiraeth am Feirion” (“Longing for Merioneth”). For our purposes the melody can be played on, for example, flutes, violins and keyboards, and the chord symbols on keyboards and guitars.

A version of “Hiraeth am Feirion”, performed by Ffynnon, can be found on The Rough Guide to the Music of Wales (RGNET 1052 CD, track 7).

In common with other Welsh songs, this melody is in the Dorian mode (the scale D to D using only white notes on the keyboard). Ask your pupils to compose a new melody using this scale, beginning and ending it on D.

National instrument of Wales Harp music is as important to Welsh cultural life as singing. For centuries, the harp has been identified as the national instrument of Wales and many Welsh national melodies began life as harp tunes. Traditional musicians prefer to play the small Celtic harp or the Welsh triple harp, which is baroque in origin and has three rows of strings, rather than the large modern European harp whose resonant sound is associated with western classical music. The European harp is, however, often heard at eisteddfodau and some school groups use it.

Robin Huw Bowen plays the traditional harp melody “Morfa Rhuddlan” (“The marshes of Rhuddlan”) on The Triple Harp of Wales (Sain C660 side 2, track 3). Example 2 is a version of the melody.

Penillion The penillion (pen-ith-tlion) harp and voice tradition is unique to Wales. In penillion, the harpist does not accompany the singer but plays a separate melody with its accompaniment, while the singer “competes” by inventing a counter-melody. This improvised melody begins independently of the harp melody but, according to the rules, harpist and singer should conclude their performance at the same time. Example 3 is the penillion harp melody “Llwyn Onn” (“The ash grove”), and an example of an improvised vocal melody designed to fit with it and its chordal accompaniment. Both melodies should be played separately, and then together, by pupils and the guitarkeyboard chords added.

Encourage pupils to invent their own penillion counter-melodies using notes from the G major scale, on which the original is based. Ask them to try out the composed melodies with the given harp melody and chords.

A fairly recent development in the penillion tradition has been the notation and harmonisation of some originally improvised vocal melodies for choirs. These new versions of the melodies are performed with the original harp music. An example of this type of penillion, “Yr Afon” (“The River”) can be heard performed by The Island Party on the cassette Can Cymru 2 (Sain C811G side 2, track 5).

Dance music Wales was first colonised by the English in 1282 and the colonisers made many unsuccessful attempts to stamp out the country’s Celtic traditions. In the light of this, today’s traditional musicians are especially conscious of Wales’s Celtic culture and myths (such as those in The Mabinogion, a collection of stories from the Middle Ages), and of the country’s distinctive language, which is spoken by more than 500,000 people.

They help these traditions survive by performing song and dance melodies from the past, by reworking such melodies in contemporary style and by composing new melodies which are related to those of the past. Example 4 is the traditional dance tune “Mantell Siani” (“Jenny’s Mantle”).

The tune is played by Cilmeri on their album Henffych Well (Sain C836N side 1, track 1).

Fernhill specialise in reworking traditional dance tunes and songs, giving them contemporary relevance. Their song “Fi Wela” (The Rough Guide, track 20) demonstrates this approach. Plethyn’s “Tan yn Llyn” (Golau Tan Gwmwl, Sain SCD6045 track 20) is an example of a new melody in traditional style.

Michael Burnett is editor of the Classroom series in ‘Music Teacher’ magazine