CPMF Musical Moment 18

 Enjoy this audio clip featuring baritone Timothy Jones as he performs with Stephanie, cellist Beth Rapier and pianist Ryo Yanagitani in “Come fill, fill my good fellow” from Beethoven’s Scottish Songs, Op. 108 recorded July 2018 in Boerne, TX.

Jeffrey Sykes, our festival program annotator for many a season, wrote these notes in summer 2018:
In late eighteenth-century Scotland, there was a movement afoot to collect and catalogue native Scottish folksongs. A number of such collections were published in the last quarter of the 1700s. The Scotsman George Thompson, who came to this game in the 1790s, wanted to create a collection that surpassed all others. He had the idea to approach the major
Continental composers of the day—in his view, Haydn, Kozeluch, and Pleyel—and ask them to make folksong arrangements accompanied by violin, cello, and piano for his collection. Each of these composers obliged Thompson’s request. (Haydn created over 400 folksong arrangements for Thompson—and Thompson’s rivals.) Eventually all three composers stopped writing for Thompson, at which time he approached Beethoven. Over a period of eleven years (1809-1820), Beethoven composed 179 folksong arrangements for Thompson. It is, quite astonishingly, the largest body of work from Beethoven’s pen. Today we hear one selection from the Scottish Songs, op. 108, the only set of arrangements to which Beethoven assigned an opus number.

May this beautiful performance help remind us all of the blessings of our friendships.