Borrowed and not returned
A corrected copy of 43 folk-song arrangements for voice, violin, cello and piano, which was made for George Thomson. Thomson, a Scottish publisher and collector of folk-songs, first approached Beethoven in 1803 to ask him to write chamber music using Scottish songs. The project did not materialize, but in 1806 they entered negotiations on arrangements of Scottish folk-songs. Having reached an agreement, Thomson sent Beethoven 43 melodies to be arranged in 1809. It took a further year before the 53 songs were finished; in July 1810 Beethoven announced in a letter that he had despatched the finished compositions. Thomson waited for them in vain; the three copies never arrived in England. A year later, in 1811, Beethoven complained to Thomson that he would have to re-compose his first ideas, the ones he could still remember, on account of the missing autograph copy. The corrected copy shown here now appears on the scene: it was not one of those intended for Thomson but probably a present from Beethoven to his pupil the Archduke Rudolph. Beethoven did not really intend to do all the work again and so wrote to Ignaz von Baumeister, the Archduke's music librarian in the summer of 1811 (presumably before 20 July 1811): "I would ask you to lend me for a while the Scottish songs, which I gave to his Imperial Highness, as 2 manuscripts, including one in my own hand, have gone lost and they now have to be copied again, to be sent on."
The borrowed copy is in all probability the one shown here, which Beethoven never actually returned. The Archduke's music collection, which he left to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna on his death, does not contain any such copy. (J.R.)
