David Wynne (2 June 1900 – 23 March 1983) was a prolific Welsh composer, who taught for many years at Cardiff University and wrote much of his best-known music in retirement.
For the next two years he worked at a local grocer's shop,[1] then at the age of 14 he went down the pit at the Albion Colliery, Cilfynydd, where one of Britain's worst mining disasters had occurred in 1894.
[2] He continued to work there until the age of 25, even after beginning lessons with a local music teacher and organist, Tom Llewellyn Jenkins, himself a minor composer.
[3] In 1925 he was awarded a Glamorgan Scholarship to University College, Cardiff, becoming a pupil of Professor David Evans[4] and John Morgan Lloyd; he obtained a B.Mus.
In 1944 he was awarded the Clements Memorial Prize for his First String Quartet, and this effectively launched his career as a leading composer; thereafter he received regular commissions.
In Owain ab Urien, a cantata for male voice choir with brass and percussion,[12] he set some of the earliest Welsh poetry, written in the 6th century.
This work was also commissioned by the Welsh Music Guild, whose president at the time was Sir Michael Tippett, in memory of its founder, John Edwards;[13] and first performed at the Festival Hall in London in 1967 by the Pendyrus Male Voice Choir under its late director Glynne Jones and the Philip Jones brass ensemble.