Mervyn Roberts (23 November, 1906 12 July 1990), full name William Henry Mervyn Roberts, was a Welsh composer, best known for his piano music.

Eiluned Davies Eiluned Davies (1913-1999) was an Anglo Welsh concert pianist and composer. Born in Walthamstow, London, the daughter of Welsh bard Owen Davies of Llanarth, Davies won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music at the age of 15 (1929-1933) whe ...

regarded him as one of 'Y Pump Cymreig' (The Welsh Five) along with

Denis ApIvor Denis ApIvor (14 April 191627 May 2004) was a British composer, best known for his ballet score ''Blood Wedding''. He had a parallel career as a consultant anaesthetist.Leach, Gerald. ''British Composer Profiles'' (3rd. Ed, 2012), p. 10 Biograph ...

, Daniel Jones, Grace Williams and David Wynne, all born in the first two decades of the 20th Century.Eiluned Davies
'The piano music of Mervyn Roberts'
in ''Cerddoriaeth Cymru Journal'', 1973, Vol. 4, No. 3 Roberts was born into an aristocratic family in

Abergele Abergele (; ; ) is a market town and community, situated on the north coast of Wales between the holiday resorts of Colwyn Bay and Rhyl, in Conwy County Borough and in the historic county of Denbighshire. Its northern suburb of Pensarn lies on ...

, Denbighshire - he was the second son of the first Lord Clwyd.Colin Scott-Sutherland. 'Mervyn Roberts (1906-1990)', in ''British Music'', Vol 24 (2002), pp. 5-20 He studied English and history at

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...

from 1925 until 1928, and then at the

Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music is a music school, conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the Undergraduate education, undergraduate to the Doctorate, doctoral level in a ...

with

R. O. Morris Reginald Owen Morris (3 March 1886 – 15 December 1948), known professionally and by his friends by his initials, as R.O. Morris, was a British composer and teacher. Teacher and author Morris was born in York, son of Army officer Reginald ...

Gordon Jacob Gordon Percival Septimus Jacob CBE (5 July 18958 June 1984) was an English composer and teacher. He was a professor at the Royal College of Music in London from 1924 until his retirement in 1966, and published four books and many articles about m ...

and Arthur Alexander. He was most successful as a composer during the 1940s and 1950s, when a number of his works were published. He was an occasional teacher, a contributor to music journals and during the war worked in the Civil Service. In 1947 he married the pianist Eileen Easom. From 1963-67 he taught piano at Christ's Hospital, Horsham. His music, chromatic but basically tonal, is almost entirely for the keyboard and follows in the tradition of Arnold Bax and John Ireland. The piano works include the set of ten ''Variations on an Original Theme'' for two pianos (1932, revised 1942) and the Piano Sonata (1934, revised 1949), which won the Edwin Evans Prize in 1950 when first performed that year by

Helen Perkin Helen Craddock Perkin (25 February 1909 – 19 October 1996) was a pianist and composer, best known today for her association with John Ireland (composer), John Ireland during the 1920s and 1930s.Richards, Fiona. 'Helen Perkin: Pianist, Composer a ...

. It was the first Welsh piano sonata to be published (in 1951, by Novello). Other works for piano include the grouped large-scale movements ''Ballad'' (1950), ''Barcarolle'' (1969, rev, 1983) and ''Romance'' (1957), the Sonatina (1948), the Four Preludes (1949), and the shorter pieces ''Summer's Day'' and ''Wind of Autumn''. He also wrote solo songs, part songs and chamber music. Christopher Williams has recorded the Sonata, the Four Preludes, the Sonatina and various shorter pieces. Some of the works for piano duo - ''A Christmas Prelude'', ''Passacaglia'', the ''Two Chorales for two pianos'' and the ''Elegy for two pianos'' - have been recorded by Bruce Posner and Donald Garvelmann.
On Heather Hill: Duo-Piano Discoveries from the British Isles
', Olympia OCD 680 (2000)

References

External Links

Performance of the Piano Sonata, by Steve Jones
*
Summer's Day: Piano Music by Mervyn Roberts
'' performed by Christopher Williams. Tŷ Cerdd CD TCR032 {{DEFAULTSORT:Roberts, Mervyn 1906 births 1990 deaths People from Abergele British classical pianists Welsh composers Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Alumni of the Royal College of Music