A new piece of music inspired by the Landsker Line, and written by Pembrokeshire composer Alex Mills, will be performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for its world premiere at St Davids Cathedral next month.

The five-minute piece will be part of the orchestra’s concert at this year’s St David’s Cathedral Festival and gets its premiere after a two year Covid induced delay.

Composer Alex grew up in Broad Haven. He went to Broad Haven School and Tasker Milward VC School and now lives in London.

The 37-year-old said that he wanted to write a piece inspired by Welsh history, specifically the history of Pembrokeshire, where he grew up and where the piece would be premiered.

“After much thought, I couldn’t think of a feature that more uniquely captured the identity of Pembrokeshire and its people than the Landsker Line,” said Alex.

The Landsker Line is an invisible boundary that historically divided Welsh and English-speaking Pembrokeshire and their associated customs and culture.

Although it has shifted over the centuries, the boundary roughly began in the St Davids area and extended south to Amroth and on to Laugharne in Carmarthenshire.

“Historically, the boundary symbolised a very clear division of peoples and cultures, though over the course of the last 1,000 years its original purpose has become obsolete,” said Alex.

“Nevertheless, it’s a unique and defining feature of Pembrokeshire today that’s traceable in everything.”

Alex says that he used the idea of a musical line that moves and develops over time as the structural principle of the piece.

He used a simple traditional Welsh folk tune as his starting point which he abstracted and obscured to create a new line of music that permeates the whole piece.

The piece begins with this line played in unison by the whole orchestra before starting a process of fragmentation and development.

“For me, the idea of having one line of music running and meandering throughout the whole piece - which is itself constantly reimagined, observed from different angles, and layered with different colours and textures - symbolises the incredibly rich history and many layers of meaning inherent in the Landsker Line,” he said.

Landsker will ne premiered at St David’s Cathedral on Friday, June 3 at 7pm alongside work by Schuman, Britten and Beethoven.

For tickets see stdavidscathedralfestival.org.uk.