25 Scottish songs

"Off to Scotland! When do we leave? Do I have time to finish smoking my cigar?" Yes, there was time enough, as well as an ocean liner for which the famous composer Jonathan Savournon had been graciously given two tickets. His works have not survived, and for good reason: the composer was born of Jules Verne's vivid imagination. His novel Backward travel in England and Scotland is still relevant today, especially its conclusion: "They touched everything, but to tell the truth, they saw nothing! It wasn't Mendelssohn's trip to the Highlands or his Scottish Symphony that inspired Jules Verne, but an excursion he led himself in 1859 with French composer Aristide Hignard (1822-1898).

And what of Beethoven? He is known to have seen neither the Seine nor the Firth of Forth. However, a certain George Thomson (1757-1851) from Edinburgh got in touch with him in 1803, after he had already commissioned chamber music arrangements and brief introductions to Scottish airs from Haydn, Pleyel and Koželuh: for voice, piano, violin and cello. By 1820, Beethoven had made some 170 arrangements for himself, and we can imagine that this was not just a job for the family. These arrangements replace the original piano trios he completed in 1811, the last of which was his large-scale Op. 97. For Thomson's commissions for instrumental introductions and conclusions had opened Beethoven up to a freedom of writing - a freedom that was not perceived in Edinburgh. Thus, an anonymous journalist wrote of the 1822 edition published by Schlesinger in Berlin: "This is not a sleeping bard being awakened by ruins under the mist: it is the independent spirit of Beethoven wandering over the hills of sleep in a country he himself has dreamed up, and which he calls Scotland." (Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 30th year, 1828, p. 284)

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