Welsh Journals

The Welsh Folk-Song Melodies set by Beethoven: A Preliminary Investigation BARRY COOPER It may seem surprising that the German composer Ludwig van Beethoven should make settings of Welsh folk-song melodies. The explanation lies, curiously, with a Scotsman, the Edinburgh music publisher George Thomson (1757-1851). Thomson was a civil servant by profession, but he was an enthusiastic amateur musician who was greatly interested in folk-song. Initially, he concerned him- self primarily with folk-song of his own country, but his interest soon spread to Irish song and then to Welsh (and eventually to that of other countries too). The first four volumes he published, during the period 1793-1805, consisted of Scottish songs with a few Irish ones intermingled; these were followed by three volumes of Welsh songs, and some further Scottish and Irish volumes. The Welsh volumes, each of which contained about thirty songs, were dated 1809, 1811 and 1817.1 These have not commanded much scholarly attention and are not even mentioned in the article on Wales in The New Grove Dictionary. Thomson's aim was to preserve all the best folk-songs of the countries concerned in the best available version of their melodies and with excellent texts. In his view, many attractive folk melodies were marred by the execrable doggerel of the verses, and so he commissioned a number of first-rate poets to produce new verses, which he then carefully and thoughtfully matched up with the tunes he had collected usually after they had been harmonized. Most folk-songs were originally unaccompanied, but by Thomson's day it had become normal to provide keyboard accom- paniments when they were published. Many such accompaniments, however, were mediocre, and Thomson wanted something much better. He therefore passed over all British composers and applied instead to some of the best composers in Europe: initially Ignaz Pleyel, followed by Leopold Kozeluch and Joseph Haydn. In order to