A good source of information is also the complete edition of Haydn's
works which appears at Henle, Germany. The Thompson songs have a long
introduction with extensive information on the songs.
Am 05.02.2019 20:11 schrieb howard posner:
On Feb 5, 2019, at 12:38 AM, Alain Veylit <[email protected]>
wrote:
I suspected I was a bit overly paranoid.
Not really, given the number of works falsely attributed to Haydn.
It seems to me like an easy job for the composer and a lucrative thing
for the publisher who is able to put a famous composer's name on the
title page
That was the plan in a nutshell. And this was all a few years after
Haydn had been a rock star in London.
The composers were only given the tunes: I suppose that means the
melody, when the results include both a violin part and a figured
bass. How much work would that be for Haydn or Beethoven?
Who knows? Haydn arranged 214 songs for Thomson, which may account
for a steep decline in his compositional output after 1802. Beethoven
(who started writing arrangements for Thomson in 1810, the year after
Haydn died) did about 150, of which Thomson published 125. There’s an
extant letter from Beethoven in which he explains that he should be
paid more than Haydn was paid because his settings are more elaborate,
with violin and cello parts. Thomson evidently agreed. There’s
another exchange in which Beethoven demands that Thomson start sending
him the lyrics along with the tunes. Thomson responded that he often
commissioned new poetry once the arrangements were done, but he did
send Beethoven some texts after that. Some of Beethoven’s settings
have elements of real composition, so he may spent real time on them.
To get on or off this list see list information at
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
