AN EXHIBITION remembering one of the great Welsh composers of the 20th Century has opened in Abergavenny during Eisteddfod season.

The life and work of Mansel Thomas, a former resident of Abergavenny, is being celebrated in an exhibition on High Street over the course of the nine-day cultural festival.

The wide-windowed building opposite Waterstones has been decked out with photographs and other images recording the achievements of the composer, as well as LPs and CD covers of some of his recorded works.

The architects behind the display are the Mansel Thomas trust, a charity which labours to bring his unpublished and unknown works to the public eye.

Two members of the trust with particularly close ties to the cause are Grace and Terry Gilmore-James, Mansel’s eldest daughter and son-in-law respectively.

The couple have worked tirelessly as the editor and secretary of the trust, and alongside their colleagues, they have helped to publish over 400 of Mansel’s compositions and arrangements for public enjoyment and use.

“We’ve travelled to the Eisteddfod Maes this week to listen to some of my father’s music being performed,” said Grace, who lives with Terry near Caerleon.

Some of Mansel’s prominent compositions have become important parts of the Welsh canon of music, and are often sung at competitions on the Maes.

Household names among them including “Y Bardd”, “Eifionydd”’ and “Caneuon y Misoedd”.

The great composer’s music covered a broad range of styles, from chamber music and orchestral pieces, to music for brass ensembles, arrangements of Welsh folk songs, and children’s songs.

Some of his compositions include musical settings for the poems of T. Llew Jones, a long-time friend and collaborator.

A dearly held collection of songs for Grace is Caneuon Grace a Sian.

“Mansel wrote this collection for Grace and her sister in 1946 while he was waiting to be demobbed from his role as a sergeant serving in Brussels throughout the Second World War”, said Terry.

When he returned from the war, Mansel returned to work at the BBC, where he had embarked on a career in broadcast before the war in 1936.

From 1950 to 1965, he served as the head of music for BBC Wales, and would invite famous figures of the day including Sir William Walton, and Sir Arthur Bliss, Master of the Queen’s Music, to conduct performances of their own compositions.

“He brought great kudos to what was called the BBC Welsh Orchestra at the time. It’s now the BBC National Orchestra of Wales,” said Terry, a chamber organ and piano player himself.

Mansel also had close ties to the National Eisteddfod, and as a master piano player took part in the Grieg Piano Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra at the 1930 Eisteddfod in Mountain Ash.

Originally from Rhondda Fach, Mansel and his wife Megan, a cellist, met through playing music together.

They lived in Cardiff for many years and raised their daughters Grace and Sian there.

The Thomases retired to Treadam in Monmouthshire in 1965 and built a close relationship with the townspeople of Abergavenny and residents of the surrounding area.

Mansel would often act as guest conductor for the Gwent Bach society, and the Abergavenny Orchestral Society.

When he died in 1986, Megan founded the Mansel Thomas Trust to carry out a labour of love by publicising the whole body of his work so that it would live on as part of the musical tradition.

“We’ve published the majority of his work now,” said Grace, “But there’s still a large amount to do, and we also work on digitising it, and publicising it for a wider audience to enjoy.”

There are also occasional surprises for the trust, as lost manuscripts of Mansel’s compositions come out of the woodwork from time to time.

“Just recently we were sent a manuscript for an arrangement of a Welsh folk song Mansel wrote,” said Terry, “It’s called Pistyll y Llan, which we’ve translated as the Village Spring.”

This long-lost song was sent to them by the family of a BBC producer who had worked with Mansel on a television programme that featured children from Cardiff schools singing the piece.

The trust will add this newly found manuscript to the large body of work they’ve published through their stalwart collaborators at Banks Music Publications.

Music continues to live on through Mansel’s descendants.

Grace was once an accomplished cellist as her mother was, and her sister Sian plays the viola.

“Even our grandchildren are taking up music,” said Grace, “My daughter’s daughter is now learning the cello, and all throughout our family there are accomplished musicians playing brass instruments, strings, and in bands.”

The music lives on.

The Mansell Thomas trust will be hosting the exhibition about the composer until Monday August 8 at the Tourist Information window on High Street in Abergavenny.

For more information about the life and work of Mansel Thomas, or to support the trust, visit their website: http://www.manselthomas.org.uk