EXCELSIOR - Treorchy Male Choir

EXCELSIOR 31
Voice Choir Competition at the National Eisteddfod welcomed 20,000 fans,
such was the popularity of choral contests. This exciting, vibrant and youthful
industrial heartland of South Wales, of which the Rhondda was the most
famous, became an entire hotbed of musical fanaticism. Competitors were
vindictive: big money was at stake in bets, law suits took place and sabotage
was used on more than one occasion. Long before village rugby teams
reached a position of prominence, it was the choirs who inspired villagers to
turn out en masse to watch the "battle of the giants". Newspaper reports of
the period tell some joyous tales of adjudicators fleeing for their lives when
awarded the first prizes at various eisteddfodau. Tomatoes, boots, even chairs
were thrown across marquees at the adjudicator’s table. At one semi-national
in Carmarthen, the adjudicator escaped from his hotel dressed as a policeman
to avoid an angry mob.
Rhondda Glee Society
One of the 20th centuries most eminent Welsh composers, William Mathias,
summed up the story of Rhondda choral music in Victorian times by saying,
“The tradition of the 19th century Welsh choralism was as much a sociological
as a musical phenomenon, arising out of the need of the people to
express religious fervour or to rise above hardship and poverty through the
means of choral singing. They are to be honoured for doing so. They and
their leaders were in bond to their time in taking the only means open to