Kirsteen McCue & Marjorie Rycroft
This online edition provides readers of Kirsteen McCue’s Robert Burns’s Songs for George Thomson (The Oxford Edition of the Works of Robert Burns, Vol IV, OUP, Oxford, 2021) with the opportunity to explore the Scottish Airs that George Thomson commissioned from Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837). It complements the publication of previous Urtext editions (ed. Rycroft) of Thomson’s Scottish Airs arranged by Ignaz Pleyel (Scottish Songs, 2 vols, Doblinger Diletto Musicale, DM 1414 & DM 1415, Vienna, 2007), Leopold Koželuch (https://burnsc21.glasgow.ac.uk/kozeluch-edition/, 2021), Joseph Haydn (Joseph Haydn Werke, XXXII/3 & XXXII/4, Henle Verlag, Munich, 2001 & 2004)) and Carl Maria von Weber (Carl Maria von Weber Sämtliche Werke, VIII/12, Schott, Mainz, 2012).
Many complementary resources can be found on the website for the AHRC-funded ‘Editing Robert Burns for the 21st Century: Prose and Songs’. George Thomson (1757-1851) was Burns’s second song editor and was an Edinburgh civil servant and amateur musician. As the introduction to McCue’s new edition of Burns’s songs for George Thomson makes clear, Burns’s relationship with Thomson involved an intense epistolary collaboration between poet and editor, with Thomson’s invitation to Burns dating from September 1792 and their final exchange taking place just weeks before Burns’s death in July 1796. After James Currie’s first edition of the poet’s Life and Works in 1800, which featured the Burns-Thomson correspondence and many of the song lyrics for the first time (in vol. 4), Thomson’s place in Burns’s afterlife is both central and controversial. The new edition of Burns’s Songs for George Thomson explores this creative collaboration in depth for the first time, presenting the 173 songs Burns produced for Thomson’s project with full scholarly apparatus.
As the ODNB entry on Thomson articulates, his project to produce collections of national songs from Scotland, Wales and Ireland, ran for over 50 years. Between 1793 and 1841 Thomson published six volumes of Scottish Airs, three volumes of Welsh Airs (1809, 1811 and 1817) and two volumes of Irish Airs (1814 and 1816) – a total of over 600 songs. His project was facilitated partly by Thomson’s love of his native poetry and music and his interest in amateur music-making, alongside his official role as Senior Clerk to the The Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufactures in Scotland, a post-1707 government body responsible for overseeing the export of Scottish produce. While Thomson commissioned the work of around 30 contemporary men and women writers – including Burns, Walter Scott, James Hogg, Joanna Baillie, Anne Hunter and William Smyth – to collect, edit, or, most often, to create new lyrics for songs, he was also keen to commission contemporary European composers to create new musical arrangements of the airs or melodies of each nation. These would later include major figures Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Carl Maria von Weber and Johann Nepomuk Hummel.
Thomson’s first composer was Ignaz Pleyel (1757-1831), who arranged a total of 32 songs, 25 of which appeared in the First Set of Original Scotish Airs (1793 and reprinted 1794) and the remaining 7 in the Fourth Set (1799). Thomson continued to correspond with Pleyel in the hope that he would agree to compose more ‘Symphonies and Accompaniments’, but without success. Their correspondence became acrimonious with each claiming to have written letters that went unanswered. The resulting breakdown in communication delayed Thomson’s publication plans until he secured the services of Leopold Koželuch (1747-1818) a Bohemian composer based in Vienna. During his collaboration with Thomson, Koželuch would produce a set of ‘Six Sonatas’ for piano (with accompaniments for violin and ’cello) based on Scottish airs, and settings or arrangements of some 106 airs for Thomson’s Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs along with 27 Welsh airs and 10 Irish airs for their respective song collections. The settings of Burns’s songs by Koželuch have been edited for the first time by Marjorie Rycroft and are also available on our ‘ERB21c’ web resource: Urtext edition of the Koželuch arrangements of Burns’s songs. After Koželuch’s involvement Thomson was able – via the help of Alexander Straton, a Scot who was working for the British Legation in Vienna – to establish a working collaboration with his favourite composer, Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), who would be his most prolific musical collaborator. They corresponded between 1799 and the composer’s death in 1809 and Haydn would produce 214 song settings for Thomson’s three collections of national airs. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) would come on board with Thomson’s project in 1803, contributing some 179 settings across all three of Thomson’s national collections by 1820. The correspondence with both composers reveals a complicated transportation network and illuminates Thomson’s ‘hands-on’ editorial process.
Having received 10 arrangements for voice accompanied by flute, violin, cello and piano from Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) in 1825, Thomson hoped the composer would oblige him with a few more. However ill health and the pressures of preparing Oberon for its premiere at Covent Garden on 12 April 1826 prevented Weber from doing so. Thomson therefore decided to approach another very popular and highly regarded European composer of the day – Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837). This Urtext edition of Hummel’s settings for Thomson is presented here for the first time.
Hummel was by this time renowned as a virtuoso pianist, composer and teacher whose groundbreaking piano method, Ausführliche theoretisch-practische Anweisung zum Piano-Forte-Spiel vom ersten Elementar-Unterrichte an bis zur vollkommensten Ausbildung [Comprehensive theoretical and practical instructions for Piano-Forte playing from the first elementary lessons to completion of training], was published in 1828 (3 vols).
Born in Pressburg (now Bratislava) on 14 November 1778, Hummel was a child prodigy whose musical talent was evident from an early age. Following his father’s appointment as Music Director of Emanuel Schikaneder’s Theater auf der Wieden the family moved to Vienna in 1786. The young Hummel lodged with Mozart who taught him piano for two years before advising him to embark on a concert career of his own. In 1788 the young Hummel, accompanied by his father, set off on an extensive European concert tour that lasted 5 years. They arrived in England in 1790 and came north to Scotland, staying for 3 months in Edinburgh where they each performed and taught. Thomson recalls having heard the young Hummel perform and mentions this in his letter of 11 April 1826 (see Correspondence).
On their return to Vienna in 1793 Hummel resumed his studies, taking composition lessons from Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and Antonio Salieri and organ lessons from Joseph Haydn, whom he had met in London. It was thanks to Haydn that in 1804 Hummel was appointed Kapellmeister to the Esterházy Court in Eisenstadt, a post he held until 1811. He returned to Vienna, where he established himself as a freelance composer and piano teacher. In 1816 he accepted the post of Kapellmeister at the King of Württemberg’s court before moving to Weimar in 1819 as Maitre de Chapelle at the court of the Grand Duke of Sachs-Weimar-Eisenach where he remained till his death.
In Weimar he was responsible for conducting opera at the court theatre and for performing and organising music for public performance as well as private court functions. He was able to negotiate periods of leave which enabled him to resume touring to Paris (1830), London (1830, 1831 and 1833) and Vienna (1834). The later tours were less successful. His popularity was on the wane due to the emergence of younger virtuosi such as Paganini and Liszt. He was plagued by ill health in his final three years and died in Weimar on 17 October 1837.
While his compositional style owes much to that of the Classical Viennese composers (Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven) it also points forward to that of Chopin and the early Romantic style. Perhaps it was Hummel’s Classical style that convinced Thomson he would be able to arrange the Scottish melodies in a similar manner to those of his predecessors – Pleyel, Koželuch, Haydn, Beethoven and Weber.
Hummel was to be the last of Thomson’s European composers. The correspondence between them began on 11 April 1826 and lasted till 26 June 1832, when Hummel sent Thomson his final Declaration stating that the ‘Ritornelles or Symphonies & Accompaniments so composed by me for the said M.r Thomson are hereby conveyed to him and to his heirs or assignees, as his and their sole and absolute property in perpetuity ….’.
Between June 1826 and April 1832 Hummel sent Thomson 20 Scottish Airs arranged for flute, violin, cello and piano, for which Thomson paid a total of 99 Ducats:-
20 Ducats for Nos. 1 – 5 (@ 4 Ducats each);
60 Ducats for Nos. 6 – 17 (@ 5 Ducats each);
15 Ducats for Nos.18 – 20 (@ 5 Ducats each);
4 Ducats for revisions to Nos. 11a, 13a, 14a & 16a (@ 1 Ducat each).
In addition to the autograph scores of Hummel’s 20 Scottish songs, preserved in the British Library (see Sources), there is an autograph bifolium (Add MS 32189 fol.108r) containing six Schottische Melodien (Maggie Lauder; Auld Robin Gray; The blue bell of Scotland; Macpherson’s farewell; The auld gudeman and The weary pund) (see Facsimile) and eleven Irländische Lieder (Thro’ Erin’s Isle to sport awhile; ‘Tis the last rose of summer; The Minstrel boy; Oh had we some bright little isle of our own; Oh! doubt me not the season is o’er; No, not more welcome the fairy members of music; The time I’ve lost in wooing; Come rest in this bosom; When cold in the castle lies the friend; To Ladies eyes around, Boy, we can’t refuse and This earth is the planet). It is not clear what Hummel intended to do with these melodies, each of which has a simple figured bass line. Nor is it known from whom, or from where he sourced them. In a letter dated 26 June 1832 (see Correspondence) Hummel mentions having been given “a Copy of the Scotch [sic] Melodies”, which may have been Thomson’s recently published ‘New Edition’ of 1831. The Irish Airs and The blue bell of Scotland must however have been copied from another source.