Joseph Parry

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Joseph Parry (May 21, 1841 — February 17, 1903), was a Welsh composer and musician, born in Merthyr Tydfil, Glamorgan, Wales. He is known best as the composer of Myfanwy and Aberystwyth (hymn).

The cottage at 4 Chapel Row, Merthyr Tydfil, where Parry was born, is now open to the public as a museum [1]. Parry's family emigrated to the United States in 1854, when he was 13, and he became an ironworker in Danville, Pennsylvania. There was a large Welsh community there and he became involved in strengthening Welsh culture locally. When, in 1865, he was admitted to the Gorsedd at the National Eisteddfod of Wales, he took the bardic name, "Pencerdd America". He also became a Freemason in 1867, while in Pennsylvania. His 1875 song, Ysgytwad y Llaw (The Handshake) appears to acknowledge his connection with the movement. He returned to Britain and studied music in London and Cambridge. In 1873 he became Professor of Music at the University of Wales. In 1876, he joined the masonic lodge at Aberystwyth, and became their organist. His opera, Blodwen, was first performed in the town's Temperance Hall on May 21, 1878, and was an enormous success, racking up a further 500 performances worldwide by 1896. His oratorio, Saul of Tarsus, was commissioned for the National Eisteddfod at Rhyl in 1892, and was also a major success. In about 1881, the Parry family left Aberystwyth for Swansea. A resident of Penarth in his later years, Parry died there and is buried in St. Augustine's Churchyard, Penarth.

He was the subject of a BBC dramatisation in 1978 entitled Off to Philadelphia in the Morning based on the book by Jack Jones, another of Merthyr Tydfil's famous sons.