Struggling through the worst winter in 100 years in the UK, I finally made it to University of Manchester for a conference jointly organised by the respective centres for Robert Burns – at my own Alma, University of Glasgow – and Lord Byron Studies, at Manchester. This was my first full academic conference and the company was indeed august. In academic terms I believe I was comfortably the least qualified panel member, amongst such luminaries as Sir Drummond Bone (Liverpool), Nigel Leask, Murray Pittock (both Glasgow) and Martin Procházka (Charles, Prague).
I intend to post my paper in the near future. In the meantime, the abstract was as follows:
How do we define a song? There is certainly little doubt of the influence of the Byronic Hero to composers in the vanguard of Program Music such as Berlioz, or of the influence which heightened sentiment of “scenes like th[o]se” of the Cotter’s Saturday Night had on Mendelssohn. However to what extent can we claim either Burns or Byron to even have been a songwriter, let alone assess their songs’ influence over the nascent romanticism of European culture?
The airs arranged by Beethoven to accompany Burns’ songs can be discounted. They reflected the choice of the editor, rather than the author and were composed for in a very disjointed manner. Beethoven even complained to Thomson: “I do beg you always to send me the words of the Scotch Songs. I don’t understand how you, who are a connoisseur, fail to realize that I’d write these compositions quite differently if I had the words. These songs can never be properly done without them …”. Even where the author and the editor were in accord over a melody, the choice must reflect on the editor in at least equal measure as on the lyricist. Neither is the composer.
The properties which make British folksong individual have proved sadly not to be amenable to longer forms. The experiments of Vaughan Williams, Holst et al. stumbled toward disappointing inertia when faced with any more than a brief movement.
Can we claim their songs as being important or must we hedge our bets in respect of their themes or at best their lyrics?
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