Morfydd Llwyn Owen - London Life and Career

London Life and Career

While she was in London, Owen formed two separate circles of friends. The first group being that of the Charing Cross Welsh Presbyterian Chapel, which was a central gathering point for many Welsh people living in London. Owen developed an especially close friendship with the wife of the then Liberal MP for Flinshire, Sir Herbert Lewis. Lady Ruth Lewis was an important figure in the Welsh Folk-Song Society of London and invited Owen to become involved with the organization. Owen obliged and transcribed, as well as wrote accompaniments to, many pieces for collections of Welsh Folk Songs. She provided musical examples to illustrate Lewis’s lectures on folksong and in 1914 they collaborated in publishing Folk-Songs Collected in Flinshire and the Vale of Clwyd.

The other social circle Owen associated with was the London literary intellegensia; notable acquaintances were the poets D. H. Lawrence and Ezra Pound. She also was friends with several Russian émigrés. It was through her Russian friendships, as well as influence of her work with Ruth Lewis, that Owen developed a fascination with Russian folk song. In 1915 she asked for, and received, a fellowship from the University of Wales to study the folk music of Russia, Norway and Finland. However, the outbreak of the First World War made travel impossible.

In February 1917, much to the shock and disappointment of her parents and the Lewis family, Owen married the psychoanalyst Ernest Jones. Jones was the leading exponent in Britain of Freud’s ideas and an avowed atheist. It was reported that Ruth Lewis refused to even meet him. There is some evidence that Jones was unsupportive of Owen’s musical career; in a letter of 20 February 1917 to Sigmund Freud, Jones indicated that the 1917 Aeolian Hall concert was to be Owen’s final public appearance. However, Owen did perform again, presenting the premiere performance of Harry Farjeon’s song cycle A Lute of Jade in July 1917 at the Birkenhead National Eisteddfod.

In the summer of 1918, whilst travelling in South Wales with Jones, Owen developed a sudden and acute case of appendicitis. She died after an emergency operation on 7 September due to delayed chloroform poisoning. She was buried in Oystermouth Cemetery on the outskirts of Swansea where her gravestone bears the inscription, chosen by Jones from Goethe's Faust: "Das Unbeschreibliche, hier ist's getan" - "Here the indescribable is done."

Though Owen only composed seriously for just over 10 years, she was able to produce 180 compositions. These include pieces for chamber ensemble, piano, mixed choir and tone poems for orchestra. However, it is her compositions for voice and piano that are regarded as her most important and mature contributions. Her most well known include "Slumber Song of the Madonna", "To our Lady of Sorrows", "Suo Gân", and her masterpiece in Welsh, "Gweddi'r Pechadur". There were also some 22 hymn tunes and several anthems. After her death, Jones and Corder arranged for the publication of a four-volume memorial edition of her work for voice and piano and for piano solo (Anglo-French Music Company Ltd, London 1924). Thanking Jones for the copy he sent her, her close friend Elizabeth Lloyd wrote, "Each page brought fresh memories of our lost darling". A centenary edition of some of her songs and piano pieces was published in Cardiff in 1991.