Early Life and Education
Owen was born in Treforest, South Wales on 1 October 1891. Her parents were both amateur musicians who ran a drapery business. She was a musical child, showing great talent at an early age and received piano lessons early on. While in her teens she appeared as a soloist in a performance of the Grieg Piano Concerto. At 16 she began to study piano and composition with Dr David Evans in Cardiff and published her first work in 1909, a hymn tune entitled "Morfydd.".
After two years of study with Evans, Owen won a scholarship to study at Cardiff University and was formally admitted into the composition class. Many of her works were performed in student recitals at Cardiff, and she graduated in 1912. Owen then moved to London to study with Frederick Corder at the Royal Academy of Music on the Goring Thomas scholarship, which she held for four years. It was at the Academy that Owen also began to study voice. She was a very successful student and won two prizes (including the Charles Lucas medal for composition and the Oliveria Prescott prize for general excellence) within her first year. She continued to accumulate awards during her stay at the Royal Academy where her work - songs, part-songs and piano pieces including a sonata, pieces for violin and piano, trio for violin, cello and piano - were performed. At the end of her course, she was honoured with the Academy's diploma, the ARAM.
In the meantime she developed her voice as a mezzo-soprano, winning another scholarship - the Swansea Eisteddfod Prize for singing. At a concert in the Bechstein Hall (later renamed the Wigmore Hall) in 1913, she sang 4 of her own songs:"Chanson de Fortunio"; "Song from a Persian Village", "Suo Gân" and "The Year's at the Spring". Her professional debut was in January 1917 at the Aeolian Hall in London.
Read more about this topic: Morfydd Llwyn Owen
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