Grace Williams

Born on the Welsh coast in 1906, Grace Williams was a composer with a strong sense of national identity, writing lyrically Romantic music—most of it orchestral—that was often influenced by the shapes and sounds of old Welsh poetry. After studying at London’s Royal College of Music (where she was a star pupil of Vaughan Williams) and in Vienna, she eventually settled back in Wales, writing to commissions from the BBC and local festivals. She found her own mature voice at the time of World War II in works like the lightweight Fantasia on Welsh Nursery Tunes (1940) and the more substantial Sea Sketches (1944), a five-movement orchestral suite steeped in memories of the Glamorgan coastline of her childhood. Later, more probing scores include Missa Cambrensis (1971), a darkly ceremonial Mass setting that incorporates Welsh-language elements alongside the traditional Latin. But by her death in 1977, her work was largely overlooked, and took several decades to re-establish itself in performance.