Osian Ellis

Vorlage:Use dmy dates Vorlage:Use British English Vorlage:Infobox person Osian Gwynn Ellis CBE (8 February 1928 – 6 January 2021) was a Welsh harpist, composer and academic teacher. He was Principal Harpist of the London Symphony Orchestra, a founding member of the Melos Ensemble, and a harp teacher at the Royal Academy of Music. Many composers wrote music for him. He had a close professional partnership with Benjamin Britten, from 1959 to the composer's death, and often first performed and recorded Britten's works.

Career

Osian Gwynn Ellis was born in Ffynnongroew, Flintshire, in 1928, the son of the Rev Tomos Ellis, a Welsh Methodist minister, and his wife Jenny (née Lewis), a harpist. and spent the first four years of his life at Llys Myfr on Llinegr Hill. As a boy Ellis was obsessed with playing the harp and playing football. In 2018 he recalled: “I chose the harp because we had one at home. My mother, Jennie, was a good amateur harpist... We did spend some years living in Denbigh and I was the goalkeeper for Denbigh County School. The boys used to say I was better at football than the harp! I taught myself to play the harp to some degree and was encouraged by my mother. We played lots of little concerts around Denbigh during the war. I also had a wonderful teacher Alwena Roberts, who taught students right across North Wales."

He studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Gwendolen Mason, whom he later succeeded as Professor of Harp from 1959 to 1989. He joined the London Symphony Orchestra in 1961 and became Principal Harpist. He was a founding member of the Melos Ensemble and also formed the Osian Ellis Harp Ensemble.

Ellis's 1959 recording of Handel's harp concertos (with Thurston Dart) won the Grand Prix du Disque. In 1962, the Melos Ensemble with Ellis released what is considered by musicologist Paul Loeber the finest rendition ever of Ravel's Introduction and Allegro, playing with flutest Richard Adeney, clarinetist Gervase de Peyer, violinist Emanuel Hurwitz and Ivor McMahon, violist Cecil Aronowitz and cellist Terence Weil. The record, released on the L'oiseau-Lyre label, OL 50217, also included works by three other French composers — Debussy: Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp; Albert Roussel: Serenade for Flute, Violin, Viola, Cello and Harp; and Guy Ropartz: Prelude, Marine and Chansons for Flute, Violin, Viola, Cello and Harp. He also took part in the ensemble's recording of Peter Maxwell Davies's cantata Leopardi Fragments.

Honours and awards

Ellis was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1971. He was the Honorary President of the Wales International Harp Festival.

In 2018 he was honoured at the Wales International Harp Festival in Caernarfon when a new work was premiered to celebrate his 90th birthday.

Death

Ellis died in January 2021, at the age of 92. Elinor Bennett, the director of the Wales International Harp Festival said that Ellis was a huge inspiration to her and fellow musicians around the world. She said: "As the most prominent and outstanding harpist of his time, as harp teacher, composer, arranger, penillion singer and scholar, he contributed widely to the nation’s traditional music as well as to developments in the European classical music of his day... He encouraged many contemporary composers from Wales and farther afield to write new works for harp – including William Mathias, Alun Hoddinott, Rhian Samuel, David Wynne, Malcolm Arnold, Robin Holloway, Elizabeth Machonchy, William Alwyn, Carlo Menotti and Jorgen Jersild... As a scholar, he published several seminal works on the history of the harp in Wales and he contributed to a myriad of television and radio programmes in Wales and London."

Influence on other musicians

Concertos have been written specially for him by Alun Hoddinott (for the Cheltenham Festival in 1957), William Mathias (for the Llandaff Festival of 1970), Jørgen Jersild (1972), William Alwyn (1979) and Robin Holloway (1985).

Ellis is particularly known for his musical association with Benjamin Britten, with whom he collaborated extensively. Their relationship began when Ellis was the harpist in a performance of A Ceremony of Carols in London on 4 January 1959, conducted by George Malcolm, which resulted in an invitation to play at the Aldeburgh Festival the following year. Britten wrote the harp part in several of his major pieces with Ellis in mind, particularly A Midsummer Night's Dream, the War Requiem and the Church Parables. Britten also wrote his Harp Suite, Op. 83, for Ellis in 1969. Ellis appeared in many first recordings of Britten's pieces, often with Britten himself conducting. When Britten had to withdrew, due to heart surgery, from accompanying his partner, the tenor Peter Pears, on the piano, Ellis came to accompanied Pears, and Britten wrote new pieces for them, including Canticle V: The Death of St Narcissus and A Birthday Hansel.

Compositions and writings

Ellis's own compositions drew on his Welsh heritage, including settings of Welsh folksongs for tenor and harp and settings of medieval Welsh strict metre poems. Diversions for two harps includes a cerdd dant setting of Dylan Thomas' poem "And death shall have no dominion".

His writings include The Story of the Harp in Wales (1991) Vorlage:ISBN (a revision of an earlier publication in Welsh), which traces the harp's development and discusses some famous harpists.

External links

• Osian Ellis (Harp, Arranger) Bach Cantatas Website
• Warner, Matt: Tributes to harp legend Osian Ellis The Leader 15 January 2021
• Vorlage:Discogs artist