ABSTRACT
Significant musical provision in the late medieval Welsh church was probably confined to a very small group of institutions. Chief among them was St Davids cathedral, where the existing community was augmented in the later fourteenth century by the foundation of an adjacent chantry college dedicated to St Mary the Virgin. There is also some evidence of musical activity at the other Welsh cathedrals, at the Benedictine priory of St John, Brecon, at a handful of the better-endowed parish churches, and at the sizeable collegiate institution of Abergwili in Carmarthen, refounded as the College of Christ, Brecon in c.1540. Choristers had been known at some of the English secular cathedrals from the later twelfth century, and in 1363 endowments were provided to support the choristers who were already on the foundation of St Davids. The 1546 survey of chantry foundations suggests, nevertheless, that the musical glories of the College of Christ were short-lived, as the 1542 statute anticipated and intended.
