Beethoven composed 179 folk song arrangements, a greater number of individual works in this genre than in any other he pursued.
Composition History
A century before Bartók, Vaughan Williams, and Grieg, Haydn was approached by Scottish violinist William Napier to arrange Scots folk tunes for popular performance.
Compositional Technique
Beethoven's folk settings grew from the charm of Haydn's canzonettas but incorporated more rhetorical gestures, as seen in Haydn's second set of canzonettas.
Composition History
George Thomson, a Scottish collector and publisher, commissioned Beethoven, Carl Maria von Weber, and Haydn to create arrangements of folk tunes.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Beethoven was interested in the commission fee for folk song arrangements, noting Haydn's rate of a British pound per song, but also saw the potential for his own musical association with the project.
Critical Reception
Beethoven's folk songs, a hybrid of lieder, chamber music, and folk melody, have been unjustly forgotten, according to Barry Cooper.
Composer Biography
Unlike Handel, Haydn, and Mendelssohn, Beethoven never traveled across the English Channel, and his limited English led to George Thomson sending him folk melodies without text.
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