ABSTRACT
Williams had experienced her own ‘moment of silence’ when, between 1944 and 1947, bad health and exhaustion had forced her to almost give up composing completely. Her decision to move back to her native Barry in the late 1940s had been primarily determined by health reasons, but the Wales she returned to was different in many ways from the one she had left earlier for the Royal College. Although rich in terms of folk culture and choral tradition, the 1920s Welsh musical scene had been conspicuously lacking in the professional orchestras, opera houses and other musical institutions that were taken for granted in most European countries. The founding of an independent BBC Welsh Regional Service and the BBC Welsh Orchestra (both in 1936) had been key developments, and Williams had directly benefitted from the new Cardiff-based Music Department’s policy of performing and broadcasting works by Welsh composers. As was the case with other regional orchestras, the BBC Welsh Orchestra was disbanded in wartime, but the orchestra was then reformed in 1946 under the new direction of Williams’s gifted contemporary Mansel Thomas. There were other signs of expansion in Wales during the immediate post-war years. In 1945 the Arts Council of Great Britain created a Welsh Committee, responsible for advising on music policy in Wales, and both the Welsh National Opera Company and the National Youth Orchestra of Wales came into existence at this time. Furthermore, important festivals such as the Swansea Music Festival (established 1948) began to spring up, offering yet another new dimension to musical life in Wales.
