What are some good Celtic folk songs?

What is the story behind the folk songs of the British Isles set by Beethoven and Haydn?

• Among the lesser-known works of Haydn and Beethoven are settings of hundreds of songs from the British Isles. For example, Beethoven's Opus 108 consists of 25 Scottish songs, and Haydn's HOB XXXI consists of 273 Scottish song and 60 Welsh songs. (There are others as well.) Many of these are poems written in the few decades before these composers set them, by poets like Robert Burns and Anne Grant. These poems seem to have been associated with favorite folk melodies rather quickly, before Haydn and Beethoven set them. My evidence for this is twofold: 1) There are some poems set by both composers, and they have the same melody. 2) There are many melodies that are shared among many poems, especially in the Haydn songs. I am interested in learning who chose the melodies to associate with these poems, and what the origin and history of the melodies is.

• Answer:

  This man, the Scottish musician, clerk, and collector George Thomson (1757-1851), is the chief culprit in the case of the curious outbreak of Scottish folksong settings undertaken by composers such as Beethoven, Pleyel, and Hummel. From 1780 on, Thomson was employed with the Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of Art and Manufacture in Scotland, an organization founded under the Treaty of Union. Creating a body of Scottish song arrangements to which the finest Scottish poets and European composers of his age would contribute became a pet project, and Thomson's major contribution to posterity. Thomson got the idea for such a collection when a visiting Italian castrato performed a few Scottish airs in concert. He approached the younger brother of the Earl of Kellie, a minor composer, to assist him in this undertaking; but gambling debts led the nobleman to throw himself into the icy Scottish sea before he could provide much assistance. Thomson next approached Robert Burns, offering him the job of helping to revise the lyrics to many traditional Scottish songs considered too vulgar and/or poetically lacking for publication. Burns would not accept payment for the task, but set himself to it fiercely. By 1793 a collection of 25 melodies and lyrics had been cemented, but this would prove to be only the beginning of what became a much larger endeavor. As the collection grew into a compendium, Thomson used the Board's money to approach several major continental composers. He asked for everything from simple piano accompaniments for the songs to instrumental chamber music based on them. His typical method was not to allow the composers to view the complete song lyrics, sending only the bare melodies with minimal tempo indications and a few lines or one verse of text so that they could judge the meter. Thomson at last got around to contacting Beethoven, who, after some rather extended, thrifty negotiations, agreed to set about composing arrangements of 25 songs for solo voice, small chorus, and piano, with optional parts for violin and cello. This work was undertaken sporadically sometime between 1812-1817 and was eventually published as Beethoven's Op. 108, with German language lyrics in addition to the English ones. Beethoven's friend Anton Schindler tells us that the maestro was composing relatively little during this time, as his mental state had become more delicate than usual, and he found occupying himself with these light song arrangements a refreshing and interesting pastime. Beethoven made overtures about visiting Edinburgh, but this idea never came to fruition. His correspondence with Thomson provides some of the relatively rare surviving examples of the composer's shaky mastery of English. "The Highland Watch," from Beethoven's 25 Scottish Songs, Op. 108 In his Beethoven biography, Thayer says that Haydn's enormous collection of arrangements were written for the London publisher Napier; to what extent Napier's volume shares material with Thomson's I cannot say, though there is likely some overlap as well as discrepancies arising from different musical and poetic sources used by the two collectors. In his correspondence with Thomson, Beethoven seems to have incorrectly assumed that Haydn had earlier worked for Thomson also, as he attempts to negotiate his pay for the arrangements based on what he heard Haydn had earned from Thomson.