Just over 200 years ago, a man whose equivalent status today would
probably be as chief executive of Scottish Enterprise had a wonderful idea. Why
not get the very best of the world's composers to dress up traditional Scots
songs in a way that would sell like hot cakes to a sizeable niche market?
The man's name was George Thompson. As clerk to the Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of Art and Manufacturing in Scotland, he was both well connected and affluent.
He fostered a love for music, playing amateur violin in the ambitious Edinburgh Music Society orchestra, which attracted composers and music directors from Italy and Germany and performed in the city's elegant St. Cecilia Hall.
He was also well acquainted with London of the late 18th century through his business dealings there, and noted the trend among the upper-middle classes of hosting musical soirées, of the kind you might find in a Jane Austen novel, at which easy-to-perform arrangements of popular songs — particularly those of Scotland and Wales — were meat and drink.
Thompson saw an opening. In Edinburgh, there were plentiful
collections of songs by Robert Burns [right] and his contemporaries — chief among them being James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum (the earliest volumes of which were edited by Burns), and the definitive Orpheus Caledonius. They contained exquisite melodies and basic
accompaniments — little more than a bassline with figures to
indicate the harmonies. None had the sophistication that Thompson
had in mind for his ambitious publications.
For these, he made full use of his international diplomatic contacts — especially in that hottest of musical hothouses, Vienna — and enlisted the services of Ignaz Pleyel and Leopold Kozeluch to provide instrumental accompaniments and additional "symphonies" that would further adorn the Scots melodies. Where earlier publishers such as the London musicseller William Napier had kept instrumentation to a minimum, he went for the fuller combination of piano, violin and cello. In other words, he took an established form of chamber music — the piano trio — and fed it the Scots songs he loved.
His masterstroke, though, was to ask his friend at the Viennese embassy — the secretary to the British Legation, Alexander Straton — to contact the great Joseph Haydn, with a proposition that the composer might "do the symphonies and accompaniments to the 30 songs".
"When his name is added to those of Pleyel and Kozeluch, Scottish melodies can boast of being harmonized by the greatest luminaries of modern music," wrote Thompson.
Haydn obliged, and composed more than 200 arrangements.
Thompson's A Select Collection of Scottish Airs
ran to six volumes.
He even managed to persuade others, such as Beethoven and Weber, to
contribute. By far the most prolific and inspired input, though,
came from Haydn.
That's the impassioned view of the eminent Haydn scholar and senior lecturer at Glasgow University, Professor Marjorie Rycroft. For the past ten years, she and her colleagues, Dr. Warwick Edwards and Dr. Kirsteen McCue, have painstakingly sought the original source material for Haydn's Thompson arrangements, scrutinised and prepared them for publication, and now — with the help of the internationally acclaimed Haydn Trio Eisenstadt — helped establish them in the repertory.
Scots singers Jamie MacDougall and Lorna Anderson are currently in Eisenstadt with the Eisenstadt Trio recording the last of three box-sets which feature the complete Thompson commissions on the Dutch label Brilliant Classics. To mark such a crucial stage in the project — including the publication of the Haydn-Thompson editions — the same musicians will be centre-stage next week in Scotland, when Glasgow University hosts an Austria Day Celebration on 26–28 October.
Of all the composers Thompson used, Haydn was the one to "hit the nail on the head", Rycroft says. "Rarely does he get it wrong." That was an astonishing achievement, given that Thompson never provided him with the actual text — only the melody and a general description.
Are they really any more than triflings of an ageing and ailing composer who perhaps saw Thompson's offer of two ducats per song (about £50 in today's money) — doubled when Thompson learned Haydn was getting four ducats from rival publisher Napier — as an easy boost to his pension? After all, there's evidence to suggest Haydn passed on the task to a couple of his pupils, Sigismund von Neukomm and Friedrich Kalkbrenner.
Rycroft detects genuine genius in the songs. "It wasn't just a case of being able to swallow a brief and deliver the goods," she says. "These are wonderful miniature dramas that Haydn no doubt tossed off quickly, but he clearly found the melodies inspiring. Kozeluch and Beethoven were too fussy in what they wrote. Haydn's are beautifully written for piano trio, but always maintain an essential simplicity."
It was that quality of writing — Haydn, more than anyone, perfected the piano trio genre — that attracted the Eisenstadt Trio. "Back in 2002, they had just completed recording Haydn's entire output for piano trio, and were looking for a new project," Rycroft explains. At first they tried the songs with Austrian singers, but ultimately found a far more appropriate partnership in Scots duo MacDougall and Anderson. The recording project will ultimately extend beyond Thomson's commissions to include those of fellow 18th-century Scots publishers Napier and William White — 400 songs in all. Each year will see a new release until 2009.
The songs so far committed to disc are truly fascinating. Some are familiar — such as "Scots Wha Ha'e" or "My Love She's But a Lassie Yet" — even with the burnished veneer Haydn's style affords them. Others contain familiar words set to unfamiliar tunes. They are arguably something of a stylised curiosity, but in our fuller understanding of Haydn, they are a fresh and invaluable insight into the last years of one of history's most influential composers. In 1802, Haydn wrote to Thompson, saying: "I am proud of this work". Two years later, when Thompson asked him to simplify his version of "Johny Faw", Haydn was not at all well, and had all but given up composing. "The revision he provided could possibly have been the last thing he ever wrote," Rycroft says. How important is that?
The Haydn Trio Eisenstadt, with Jamie
MacDougall and Lorna Anderson, perform at Glasgow University's Austrian
Day Celebrations on 27 October.
Haydn's Scottish Songs for George
Thomson, Vols. 1 and 2 are available on Brilliant Classics at www.brilliantclassics.com.
