"The Blue Bell of Scotland": Popular Song, National Air & "Volkslied" - Pt. 2: Mr. Thomson, Mr. Ritson & Mr. Johnson (1802-3)

1. Mrs. Jordan's New Hit (1800)
2. Mr. Thomson, Mr. Ritson & Mr. Johnson (1802-3) 
3. The German Versions (1839-1852) 

I. 

In the first part I have described how a new popular song was introduced on stage and then quickly became a great hit, a "favourite air". One of the major critics didn't like it but that didn't matter much. Other performers and publishers jumped on the band-wagon and offered their own versions to get a slice of the new cake. In the earliest ads the song was called an "old Scottish Ballad". In fact it was a simple song in the popular style that was supposed to sound like an old traditional. Of course this can be seen an attempt at taking advantage of the great enthusiasm for Scottish national airs. 

But it was a mistake to try to pass it off as an "old" song. The publisher tried to correct this by noting in the ads that Mrs. Jordan herself had written the tune. But that didn't help much. Soon editors of songbooks and scholars began to look for precursors and older versions. What they then did was to create a fictitious history around the song that was later taken at face value. One may also say that their attempts at dispossessing Mrs. Jordan of her song proved to be very successful. 

II. 

The first one to offer a new "older" version was George Thomson (1757-1851; see McAulay, pp. 44-52) from Edinburgh, editor of the Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs. This great representative anthology of Scottish songs appeared since 1793. He did his best to modernize the genre and often added new - in his eyes better - texts. Thomson also commissioned popular composers from the continent like Pleyel, Haydn and later Beethoven to write new arrangements. In 1802 the third volume of the Select Collection was published. All arrangements were by Joseph Haydn. Here we can find "O Where tell me. Air, The blue bell of Scotland" (No. 135). The tune is nearly identical and even in the same key but there is a new text by "written for this work on the Marquis of Huntly's departure for the continent with his regiment, in 1799, by Mrs. Grant, Laggan". Anne MacVicar Grant (1755-1838, see Wikipedia) was a Scottish writer and poet who occasionally helped out Mr. Thomson with new lyrics. Her attempt doesn't sound particularly convincing. It is is more along the lines of standard patriotism and lacks the touching simplicity of the original words:

Oh where, tell me where, is your Highland Laddie gone?
O where, tell me where, is your Highland Laddie gone?
He’s gone with streaming banners where noble deeds are done,
And my sad heart will tremble till he come safely home.
He’s gone with streaming banners, where noble deeds are done.
And my sad heart will tremble, till he come safely home.

O where, tell me where, did your Highland Laddie stay?
O where, tell me where, did your Highland Laddie stay?
He dwelt beneath the holly trees, beside the rapid Spey,
And many a blessing follow'd him, the day he went away;
He dwelt beneath the holly-trees, beside the river Spey,
And many a blessing follow'd him, the day he went away.

O what, tell me what, does your Highland Laddie wear?
O what, tell me what, does your Highland Laddie wear?
A bonnet with a lofty plume, the gallant badge of war.
And a plaid across the manly breast that yet shall wear a star,
A bonnet with a lofty plume, the gallant badge of war,
And a plaid across the manly breast that yet shall wear a star.

Suppose, ah, suppose, that some cruel, cruel wound
Should pierce your Highland Laddie, and all your hopes confound!
The pipe would play a cheering march, the banners round him fly,
The spirit of a Highland chief would lighten in his eye;
The pipe would play a cheering march, the banners round him fly,
And for his King and Country dear with pleasure would he die.

But I will hope to see him yet in Scotland’s bonnie bounds,
But I will hope to see him yet in Scotland’s bonnie bounds,
His native land of liberty shall nurse his glorious wounds,
While wide through all our Highland hills his warlike name resounds,
His native land of liberty shall nurse his glorious wounds,
While wide through all our Highland hills his warlike name resounds. 

There is no mention of Mrs. Jordan as the author and original performer of this song. Instead Thomson clearly tried to suggest that the tune already existed before she sang it on stage. I won't doubt that the Marquis sailed to France in 1799. But the text was surely written later and is based on Mrs. Jordan's version. Apparently Thomson had at first not even planned to include this song. It looks as if it was Haydn's own idea to arrange it and then he sent it to him unsolicited in January 1802 (see Edwards, p. 8): 

"I send you with this the favourite air 'The Blue Bells of Scotland,' and I should like that this little air should be engraved all alone and dedicated in my name as a little complimentary gift to the renowned Mrs. Jordan, whom, without having the honour of knowing, I esteem extremely for her great virtue and reputation" (Hadden, pp. 149-50).

Haydn liked the tune. It was later also included in his Six Admired Scotch Airs (1805, pp. 2-5, at Google Books). But it is not clear how and where he had received the song. He can't have heard it himself because the last time he was in England was in 1795. But it is also unlikely that he had a copy of the original sheet music. It seems he wasn't familiar with the text and had asked Thomson to send it to him (see Edwards, p. 8). It is also strange to see that he was so impressed by Mrs. Jordan even though he didn't know her personally. 

Thomson must have then asked Mrs. Grant to produce a new text which she did on short notice. This volume was ready at the end of April 1802 when it was entered at Stationer's Hall (see Kassler, 28.4.1802). The text can also be found in Anne MacVicar Grant's own collection of poetry published the following year, the Poems on Various Subjects, together with a short note about this one and her other works for Thomson (1803, pp. 407-9): 

"The Author wrote these songs at the request of her Friend Mr. George Thomson, in whose valuable Collection the Airs will be found, joined to the Verses, along with the beautiful Accompaniments of Haydn." 

III.

The second attempt to dispossess Mrs. Jordan followed soon. Antiquarian and scholar Joseph Ritson (1752-1803, see Wikipedia; see Bronson) was one of the foremost experts on national songs and old English poetry. Among his many relevant publications were a series of songsters, collections of texts of songs from the North-East of England, for example The Bishopric Garland or Durham Minstrell (1784), The Yorkshire Garland (1788) and the Northumberland Garland, Or Newcastle Nightingale (1793).

The last of this series was The North-Country Chorister; An unparalleled variety of excellent songs. Collected and published together, for general Amusement, by a Bishoprick Ballad-Singer,  published first in 1802, shortly before his death. Here we can find another version of the song with the title "The New Highland Lad". With seven verses it was the longest so far and he added a short but somewhat nasty and unkind remark: "This song has been lately introduced upon the stage by Mrs. Jordan, who knew neither the words, nor the tune" (No. IV, pp. 12-3, here in: Northern Garlands, 1809): 

There was a Highland laddie courted a lawland lass,
There was, &c.
'He promis'd for to marry her, but he did not tell her when;
And t'was all in her heart she lov'd her Highland man.

Oh where, and oh where does your Highland laddie dwell?
Oh where, &c.
He lives in merry Scotland, at the sign of the Blue bell;
And I vow in my heart I love my laddie well.

What cloaths, O what cloaths does your Highland laddie wear?
What cloaths, &c.
His coat is of Saxon green, his waistcoat of the plaid;
And it's all in my heart I love my Highland lad.

Oh where and oh where is your Highland laddie gone?
Oh where, &c.
He's gone to fight the [faithless] French whilst George is on the throne,
And I vow in my heart I do wish him safe at home.

And if my Highland laddie should chance to come no more,
And if, &c.
They'll call my child a love-begot, myself a common whore;
And I vow in my heart I do wish him safe on shore.

And if my Highland laddie should chance for to dye,
And if, &c.
The bagpipes shall play over him, I'll lay me down and cry,
And I vow in my heart I love my Highland boy.

And if my Highland laddie should chance to come again,
And if, &c.
The parson he shall marry us, and the clerk shall say amen;
And I vow in my heart I love my Highland man. 

We don't know who this "Bishoprick Ballad-Singer" was and Mr. Ritson didn't tell his readers when exactly he had heard and written down the text, before May 1800 or later. But it is highly unlikely that it was a precursor of Mrs. Jordan's song. There is simply no evidence for such a claim and no other earlier variants have been found. Why should a stage star from London borrow a song from an obscure ballad singer who was busy somewhere in the North-East of England? For me this text looks like it was derived from Mrs. Jordan's original lyrics and this would also be much more likely. 

It is easily possible that this particular provincial performer had simply adopted a current popular hit, added some variations and additional verses and sang it to a different tune. Folklorists often tend to assume priority for variants from oral tradition even if they were collected after the publication of the printed version. This may have been the case here. As long as we don't have an actual date Mr. Ritson's text surely can't serve as evidence for any kind of claims about the song's origin and age. We only know that it was first published two years after Mrs. Jordan first performance and the original sheet music. 

IV. 

The following year the sixth and last volume of James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum appeared. Here we can find another version of "The Blue Bell of Scotland" (Nr. 548, pp. 566-7), this time with a different tune and a new set of words that looks as if it was derived from the variants available at the time: 

O where and o where does your highland laddie dwell;
O where and o where does your highland laddie dwell;
He dwells in merry Scotland where the blue bells sweetly smell,
And all in my heart I love my laddie well
He dwells in merry Scotland where the blue bells sweetly smell
And all in my heart I love my laddie well.

O what lassie what does your highland laddie wear,
O what lassie what does your highland laddie wear,
A scarlet coat and bonnet blue with bonny yellow hair,
And none in the world can with my love compare.

O what lassie what if your highland lad be slain,
O what lassie what if your highland lad be slain,
O no true love will be his guard and bring him safe again,
For I never could live without my highlandman.

O when and o when will your highland lad come hame,
O when and o when will your highland lad come hame,
When e'er the war is over he'll return to me with fame,
And I'll plait a wreath of flow'rs for my lovely highlandman.

O what will you claim for your constancy to him,
O what will you claim for your constancy to him,
I'll claim a Priest to marry us, a clerk to say Amen,
And ne'er part again from my bonny highlandman. 

But for some reason there is no information about the source of this piece. When and where did Mr. Johnson get the tune and the text? Who sang it that way? This is not particularly helpful. Perhaps he had to use a different melody to avoid problems with the publisher of Mrs. Jordan's song. Or perhaps he wanted to imply that this is an older variant. But he didn't say that. Therefore it is not clear what to make of his version of the song. 

V. 

At that point - in 1803 - three additional versions of "The Blue Bell of Scotland" were available. There is no evidence that any of them was older than the song introduced by Mrs. Jordan in May 1800. All three only came to light two respectively three years after her first performance and the publication of the original sheet music. I tend to think that these were deliberate attempts to undermine her claim to the song. Thomson, Ritson and Johnson created alternate histories that were later often adopted uncritically by other writers and scholars. 

This was for example the case with R. A. Smith who reprinted the version from the Scots Musical Museum in his Scotish Minstrel (Vol. 5, 1821, pp. 58-9) and referred to it as the "Old Set". Smith also included Mrs. Jordan's tune together with Johnson's text as the "Modern Set". This was of course misleading. 

William Stenhouse - in his commentary in a later reprint of the Museum (Vol. 6, 1839, p. 480) - regarded the song as a "parody" of Anne MacVicar Grant's poem. Apparently he thought she was the original author of "Blue Bell of Scotland". Interestingly David Laing quoted in his additional notes (pp. 526-7) an informative remark by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe who referred to Ritson's "older words of this ballad" and also claimed to have found "another set of words, probably as old, which I transcribed from a 4to collection of songs in MS. made by a lady upwards of seventy years ago". But the text quoted here bears only a very superficial resemblance to Mrs. Jordan's "Blue Bell". It is also about someone going to war. Strangely it looks more similar to Ritson's and Johnson's versions, especially in the fifth verse: 

O, fair maid, whase aught that bonny bairn,
O, fair maid, whase aught that bonny bairn?
It is a sodger's son, she said, that's lately gone to Spain,
Te dilly dan, to dilly dan, te dilly, dilly dam.

[...]

O, fair maid, what if he should come hame?
O, fair, &c.
The parish priest should marry us, the clerk should say amen.
Te dilly dan, &c.
[...] 

"The Blue Bell of Scotland" was of course also included in G. F. Graham's Songs of Scotland, at that time the most comprehensive anthology of Scottish songs (Vol. 2, 1848, pp. 106-7). Mr. Graham felt it necessary to commission a new text - "Oh, I Ha'e Been On The Flow'ry Banks of Clyde" - from one Miss Stirling Graham of Duntrune because he regarded "the old words as very silly". His notes are quite interesting and he was able to compile all information that was available so far. Graham correctly saw it as an English and not a Scottish song. But nonetheless he still got the chronology wrong and believed that the variants published by Ritson, Johnson and Sharpe were all older than Mr. Jordan's popular hit.

William Chappell also discussed the song in his Popular Music of the Olden Time (c.1860, II, pp. 739-40). He saw clearly that Mrs. Grant's version was written after the publication of Mrs. Jordan's "Blue Bells" and correctly noted that Sharpe's text "is in a different metre, and could not be sung to" the two available tunes. But he also claimed - without any further evidence - that Johnson's tune was the original one and that the text published by Ritson already existed before Mrs. Jordan wrote her song. At least he acknowledged that she had composed the tune she sang:

"As to the words, all the verses were not fit for the stage; therefore Mrs. Jordan selected four, made trifling alterations in them, and sang them to a tune of her own."

In the meantime composer Sir Henry Bishop (1786-1855) had also attempted to "dispossess, if possible, the old song of Mrs. Jordan". This was only reported in 1870 by writer and poet Charles Mackay in his Recollections (pp. 199-201). Sir Henry claimed to have found the English song "I have been a forester this many a long day" and "three or four bars of the melody were almost identical". It seems he believed that this was the original source of Mrs. Jordan's tune. As far as I can see nobody else has ever seen this tune except Mr. Mackay who wrote "The Magic Harp" to this melody. There is a song with this title but only with the music written by one Stephen Stratton (see Copac). In fact this story sounds very dubious and I would not take it too seriously. 

We can see that most of the research about this song during the 19th century was not particularly convincing. All these writers had problems with the exact chronology and missed the very simple point that Mrs. Jordan had been the first one to perform "The Blue Bell of Scotland". All other variants were only published thereafter. Instead they relied on Ritson's dubious and unverifiable claims. Not at least they misled themselves by assuming that the tune in the Scots Musical Museum must be older than the "modern" popular hit. 

As a result the song's real history has been seriously obscured. This can be seen in some publications from the turn of the century. Banks in his Immortal Songs of Camp and Field: The Story of Their Inspiration (1799, pp. 279-87; see here p. 286) wrote about Anne MacVicar Grant's life, then quoted from both Ritson and Mackay and in the end claimed wrongly that Mrs. Jordan's text was an "altered version of Mrs. Grant's song". In Crosland's English Songs and Ballads (c. 1902, p. 197) it was only described as "anonymous". Even in modern works Mrs. Jordan doesn't get the credit she deserves. Roger Fiske in his Scotland in Music (1983, p. 73) stated that the song "was published as her own composition." This is of course also misleading. 

There is no reason to doubt that Dorothea Jordan was the author of both the tune and the text of "The Blue Bell of Scotland". The song's history started exactly on May 12, 1800 when she performed it first at Drury Lane. I know of no evidence that an earlier variant existed. The versions presented by Thomson, Ritson and Johnson were only published after that date and there is no proof that they were older. Later claims by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe and Sir Henry Bishop that they had found a precursor are also not convincing. This is all that can be said at the moment. 

Literature 

• Louis Albert Banks, Immortal Songs of Camp and Field: The Story of Their Inspiration, Cleveland, 1899, at the Internet Archive 
• Betrand H. Bronson, Joseph Ritson: Scholar-At-Arms, 2 Vols., Berkeley, 1938 
• William Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time.; A Collection of Ancient Songs, Ballads and Dance Tunes, Illustrative of the National Music of England, Vol. II, London, n. d. [1860], at the Internet Archive 
• T.W.H. Crosland, English Songs and Ballads, London, 1902, at the Internet Archive 
• Warwick Edwards, New Insights into the Chronology of Haydn's Folksong Arrangements: Reading Between the Lines of the George Thomson Correspondence, in: Haydns Bearbeitungen Schottischer Volkslieder. Bericht über das Symposium 21. - 22. Juni 2002, Haydn-Studien 8.4, 2004, pp. 325-40, here pdf at University of Glasgow
• Roger Fiske, Scotland In Music. A European Enthusiasm, Cambridge 1983
• G. F. Graham, The Songs of Scotland Adapted To Their Appropriate Melodies Arranged With Pianoforte Accompaniments By G. F. Graham, T. M. Muddle, J. T. Surenne, H. E. Dibdin, Finlay Dun, &c. Illustrated with Historical, Biographical, and Critical Notices, 3 Vols, Edinburgh, 1848-9, at the Internet Archive 
• J. Cuthbert Hadden, Haydn. With Illustrations and Portraits, London & New York, 1902, at the Internet Archive 
• Michael Kassler, Music Entries at Stationers' Hall 1710-1818. From Lists prepared for William Hawes, D. W. Krummel, and Alan Tyson and from Other Sources, Burlington, 2004 (Online Edition, 2013, partly at Google Books) 
• Charles Mackay, Forty Years' Recollections of Life, Literature, and Public Affairs. From 1830-1870, Vol. 2, London, 1870, at the Internet Archive 
• Karen McAulay, Our Ancient National Airs: Scottish Song Collecting from the Enlightenment to the Romantic Era, Farnham 2013 
• Joseph Ritson (ed.), Northern Garlands, Triphook, London, 1810, at the Internet Archive 
• R. A. Smith, The Scotish Minstrel. A Selection from the Vocal Melodies of Scotland Ancient & Modern Arranged for the Piano Forte, Purdie, Edinburgh, n. d. [1821-24], 6 Vols., at the Internet Archive 

Go back to: 1. Mrs. Jordan's New Hit (1800)

Go to: 3. The German Versions (1839-1852)

"Exotic" Airs in Germany - Dalberg's "Ueber die Musik der Indier" (1802)

I. 

In the previous article I have discussed the publication of national airs of the more exotic kind in France by both Rousseau in his Dictionnaire de Musique (1768) and by Laborde in his Essai sur la Musique (1780). The latter had offered - as part of this massive musicological treatise - the largest collection so far with more than 50 tunes. In fact it was at that time the best summary of what was known about foreign musical cultures. Germany - as usual - was a little behind the time in this respect. Johann Gottfried Herder published his groundbreaking anthology of Volkslieder in 1778/9 but this was a multicultural collection of only texts. Of course there were books by travellers, explorers and missionaries about foreign countries and cultures - most of them translated from French or English - and some of them even included notes about music as well as musical examples. 

Some influential pioneers became interested in this genre and made available at least a few assorted "exotic" tunes. Musicologist Johann Nicolaus Forkel for example reprinted the relevant parts as well as some musical examples from two popular travel reports - by Forster and Niebuhr - in the Musikalisch-Kritische Bibliothek (2, 1778, pp. 306-320). He also listed some of the already available literature from France and England in his Allgemeine Litteratur der Musik (1792, see pp. 32-3; pp. 135-6), a useful bibliography, even though in this respect very incomplete. The legendary Abbé Vogler apparently traveled as far as North Africa and brought some tunes back. He published two small collections in the 1790s, Polymelos ou Caractères de Musique de differentes Nations (1791) and Pieces de Clavecin faciles (1798). The latter included melodies from Africa and China. Vogler also performed these kind of tunes in his spectacular organ concerts (see: Polymelos - Abbé Vogler's Collections of National Airs). 

But only in 1802 - also the year the first collection of Scottish songs appeared in Germany: Haydn's Alt-Schottische Balladen und Lieder (available at the Internet Archive) - the first comprehensive anthology of "exotic" national airs was published as a part of Fritz von Dalberg's extended German edition of a 10 year old article about Indian music by the famous English orientalist Sir William Jones. Here the interested reader could find more than 50 Indian, Chinese, Arab and Persian tunes as well as a lot of additional information about oriental music: 

• Ueber die Musik der Indier. Eine Abhandlung des William Jones. Aus dem Englischen übersetzt, mit erläuternden Anmerkungen und Zusätzen begleitet, von F. H. v. Dalberg. Nebst einer Sammlung indischer und anderer Volks-Gesänge und 30 Kupfern, Beyer und Maring, Erfurt, 1802 (available at BSB, München, 4 Mus.th.723 & at the Internet Archive; also at Universität Wien, Phaidra) [the part with the tunes was also published separately as 'Lieder der Indier und anderer orientalischen Völker', Beyer & Maring, Erfurt, 1802]

Johann Friedrich Hugo von Dalberg (1760-1812; see Embach & Godwin 1998, Embach & Gallé 2012; see also Wikipedia) was a very interesting character but is barely known today. He came from an old and distinguished family. His older brother was the last Kurfürst of Mainz. He himself became capitular in Worms, Speyer and Mainz, typical benefices in these circles. Dalberg studied law, was appointed Geheimrat and became an expert for education but otherwise avoided a career in politics or bureaucracy. Instead he turned his attention to the arts and made himself a name as a musicologist - among his works were for example Blicke eines Tonkünstlers in die Musik der Geister (1787, at UB Heidelberg) and Untersuchungen über den Ursprung der Harmonie (1800, at BSB) - , composer - mostly of songs (see Embach & Godwin, pp. 497-551; see his first collection, 1788, at UB Frankfurt) - , pianist, translator and writer. And not at least he was one of the first German orientalists.

 

At that time intellectuals in Germany were looking east. Herder had proclaimed in 1774 - in his anonymously published Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit (p. 147) - the orient - "das Morgenland" - as the "cradle of humanity". Especially India became something like a "dreamland" for everybody who was searching for the sources and origins of Western culture. It was more or less Herder who created what has been called the "mythical image" of India (see Willson 1964, pp. 49-71; also Frank 2009) and he had to rely on the available literature mostly from England and France, being it travel books, translations of Eastern literature or scholarly treatises. In fact German scholars were in this respect completely dependent on their English colleagues who of course were able to do original research. 

Dalberg knew Herder personally, he corresponded and traveled with him and as a faithful admirer felt inspired by his ideas (see Embach & Godwin, pp. 171-202, pp. 367-8; Kovar, pp. 44-5). In the preface he  referred to Asia as "die Wiege unseres Geschlechtes" where music must have been developed first: "the earliest musical knowledge, like the beginning and origin of all arts and sciences, should be searched for" there, especially in India (pp. III-IV). But to learn more about Indian music he had to go to London, at that time something like the multicultural capital of Europe. 

II. 

The '80s and '90s saw "the rapid acceleration of the cultural discovery of India" (Farrell, p. 10) and the key figure of this movement was Sir William Jones (1746-1794; see Cannon 1990; see Wikipedia), from 1783 until his early death judge in Calcutta. Already in 1784 the Royal Asiatick Society of Bengal was founded, with Sir William as the first President. He knew a lot of languages including Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, also learned Sanskrit and was busy as a linguist, translator and orientalist. With an astonishing productivity he produced numerous works. Jones also started and edited a periodical, the Asiatick Researches [see ESTC T149936], that was published in Calcutta since 1789 and regularly reprinted in London. The first volume was even translated into German (Riga 1795, at  BStB). Here the interested reader could find most of the relevant original research. 

Also music from India became a topic of interest (see Bor 1988; Woodfield 1995, pp. 281-95, Farrell 1997, pp. 15-44; Zon 2007, pp. 48-59; Zon 2006; Cook 2007). Until the 1780s barely anything was known about it except some occasional notes by travellers and missionaries (see Woodfield 1995, pp. 276-8; Bor 1988, pp. 52-4). Laborde in his Essai (1780) didn't even mention Indian music. French voyager Pierre Sonnerat wasn't particularly impressed of what he had heard and the short remarks in his Voyage aux Indes Orientales et a la Chine (1782, pp. 101; also German ed., 1783, pp. 78-9) sound rather dismissive:

"La Musique est dans le même état d'imperfection que les autres arts. Les chant est sans harmonie [...] Les Indiens ont plusiers instruments [...] Celui qui fait le plus de bruit, est pour eux le plus beau & le plus harmonieux".

But already the first volume of the Asiatick Researches included an interesting article by Francis Fowke about musical instruments (pp. 295-99, here in the 5th ed., London 1806). Sir William Jones himself also found some time to deal with music and he worked on his article about the "Musical Modes of the Hindus" since 1784. But it only appeared in 1792 in the third volume of the Asiatick Researches (pp. 55-87).

 

This was only a rather short, theoretical and fragmentary treatise. He wrote mostly about the scales and added only one musical example. But it was the first serious discussion of the principles of Indian music based on first-hand knowledge and it became the starting-point for all further research (see Zon 2006, pp. 199-205). This article can be seen as only one of several attempts at a more thorough examination of oriental musical cultures. In 1779 the at that point most comprehensive work about Chinese music had appeared in Paris, the Mémoire Sur La Musique Des Chinois, Tant Anciens Que Modernes (at the Internet Archive)  by French Jesuit missionary Joseph-Maries Amiot. The Austrian officer and scholar Franz Joseph Sulzer added a chapter of more than 100 pages about Turkish Music to his Geschichte des transalpinischen Daciens (3 Vols., 1781-2, here Vol. 2, pp. 430-547). Also Italian scholar Giambatista Toderini wrote about music in his Letteratura Turchesca (Vol. 1, 1787, pp. 222-52; German ed., 1790, Vol. 1, pp. 240-67). Jones' publication closed another gap and put India on the musical map. 

At that time a lively music scene in Calcutta had developed among the new English elite. They imported musical instruments and music from home (see Woodfield 2001). Some of them also started collecting and playing local music. One William Hamilton Bird - who was quite busy there as impresario, conductor and instrumentalist and about whom not much else is known (see Farrell, p. 32) - managed to compile, arrange and then publish the very first collection of Indian tunes - "taken down from actual performances [and] written down in staff notation for performance of Western instruments" (dto., p. 31) - in 1789: 

• William Hamilton Bird, The Oriental Miscellany; Being A Collection Of The Most Favourite Airs of Hindoostan, Compiled And Adapted For The Harpsichord, &c., Cooper, Calcutta, 1789 (at the Internet Archive)

Here we can find 30 tunes, all arranged for piano, some with variations, as well as an Introduction with helpful explanations about the different genres: Rekhtahs, Teranas, Tuppahs and Raagnies. Especially with the latter he had some problems and noted that they "are so void of meaning, and any degree of regularity that it is impossible to bring them into any form for performance, by any singers but those of their country" ([pp. II-III]). Of course he had to adapt these tunes to Western musical style: "it has cost him great pains to bring them into any form as to TIME, which the music of Hindostan is extremely deficient in" ([p. I]. One should not ask for "authenticity" in a modern sense. The tunes appeared "in a form in which doubtless almost every trace of their original character has been lost, except perhaps their general melodic contour" (Woodfield 1995, p. 294).  

 

But this didn't matter much. It was a start and a first step to a closer acquaintance with original Indian music and here we can see a kind of new "innocent openness to non-European culture" (see Cook, p. 17). Hamilton Bird was no ethnomusicologist. This was music for practical use, for musicians to perform and "for the entertainment of his friends, and the public" (Oriental Miscellany, [p. IV]). 

This collection also became available in London where it initiated a fashion for so-called "Hindostannie Airs". More publications by other editors would follow and Indian tunes became part of the popular music scene (see Zon 2007, p. 50). Some years later composer Edward Smith Biggs tried to make Hamilton Bird's melodies even more digestible. He published 18 of them in modern arrangements and with new poetry by popular writer Amelia Opie (Twelve Hindoo Airs, at Gallica BnF; A Second Set of Hindoo Airs, at at Gallica BnF, [n. d., c. 1800], also available at the Internet Archive). Later, in 1818, even Thomas Moore would use one of Hamilton Bird's tunes for his popular hit "All That's Bright Must Fade" (Tuppah, p. 37; Popular National Airs I, 1818, [No. 3], pp. 9-15). 

III. 

Fritz von Dalberg, eager to find out more about Indian and Oriental music, made his pilgrimage to London. It is not clear when exactly he was there and if he traveled to England one or two times. But he may have spent some time there in 1793-4 and then in 1798 and he may have also met Joseph Haydn there (see Embach & Godwin, pp. 363-6). It is also not clear if he had become familiar with Jones' article already in Germany or if he read it first in London. Of course he couldn't meet Sir William himself who was in India and died there much too early in 1794. But he made the acquaintance of Richard Johnson, "a well-known collector of Indian and Persian manuscripts and miniatures [...] who seems to have had a profound knowledge of Indian music" (Boer, p. 55). Mr. Johnson supported Dalberg with a stunning generosity and made it possible for him to produce more than only a translation of the "Musical Modes". For example he provided him with so-called ragmalas that he used to illustrate his book (pp. 85-100, and Appendix; see Embach & Godwin, p. 367).

Dalberg was not satisfied with Jones' sparse and fragmentary attempt and his more theoretical approach. He widened the perspective by also discussing the music of other oriental cultures - Arabia, Persia, China, the South Sea -, he added more relevant additional research and he also added many more musical examples, ending up with more than 50 tunes (see Kovar, pp. 42-3; Embach & Godwin, p. 369, pp. 372-4). 

For the part about India Dalberg included for example the remarks about musical instruments from Sonnerat's Voyage aux Indes Orientale et à la Chine (Vol. 1, 1782, pp. 101-3; in Dalberg, pp. 78-80), Fowke's above-mentioned description of the Vina from the first volume of the Asiatick Researches (here pp. 74-76) as well as his own "Zusätze und Bemerkungen", a critical discussion of Jones' article (pp. 44-58). Most important was the great number of additional tunes. Mr. Johnson performed one song for him (No. II; see p. IV) and also helped him out with a copy of the Oriental Miscellany. Dalberg reprinted all 30 melodies (Nos. 3-32), but without the accompanying arrangements. He also quoted explanations of the different genres (pp. XI-XIV). Interestingly he was not completely convinced of the merits of this collection, questioned the tunes' authenticity and even doubted if Mr. Hamilton Bird had really the grasped the spirit and the subtleties of Indian music. This critical attitude is characteristic of his work (see Kovar, p. 49-50) and at times he sounded like an early ethnomusicologist. 

Also some of the more recent literature was consulted. Italian missionary and Sanskrit scholar Fra Paolino da San Bartolomeo had published his Viaggio alle Indie Orientali in 1796. Here Dalberg found some songs from Malabar including one with a tune (pp. 325-30, at NB, Oslo; German edition, 1798, pp. 365-70, at the Internet Archive) and this was also dutifully added as an addendum (pp. 80-84; No. 23, p. 29). English orientalist William Ouseley (1767-1842) had started a new ambitious periodical in 1797, the Oriental Collections. Three volumes appeared until 1800 and here the interested reader could find translations of poetry, scholarly articles and the more, even some music. One text with the title "Anecdotes on Indian Music" included four tunes (Vol. 1, 1797, pp. 70-9) and the same volume also offered a "Bengalee tune" (Misc. plate before p. 383; p. 385). These were more welcome additions to Dalberg's collection (Nos. 34-38; 42) .

Besides all these information about Indian music he turned his attention also to the music of other oriental cultures and added musical examples "um sie mit den indischen Gesängen vergleichen zu können" (p. XIV). Chinese music was of course not unknown in Germany. Du Halde's Description Géographique, Historique, Chronologique, Politique, et Physique De L'Empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie Chinoise (Paris, 1735) with half a dozen tunes had been translated into German (5 Vols., 1747-56, here Vol. 3, pp. 346-8). Johann Christian Hüttner had recently made available two songs from an English publication (see Der Neue Teutsche Merkur, 1796, 1. Band, pp. 47-63 & "Canzonetta Chinese" with translation, bef. p. 47, at UB Bielefeld; Journal des Luxus und der Moden 11, 1796, pp. 35-40, at UrMEL). Dalberg instead used Amiot's Mémoire Sur La Musique Des Chinois (see there pp. 184-5) and also reprinted the only musical example from this book (pp. 119-24; No. L, pp. 41-3). Some more Chinese tunes were taken from Ouseley's Oriental Collections (Vol. 1, 1797, p. 343; Vol. 2, 1798, pp. 148-9; see Nos. 28-41). 

He also added a chapter about Arab and Persian music based on the available literature (pp. 100-19; Nos. 43-48) and used as examples the one Persian tune from Chardin's Voyages en Perse, et Autres Lieux de L'Orient (1711, here Vol. 2, plate No. 26) and the six pieces from Thomas Shaw's Travels or Observations Relating to Several Parts of Barbary and the Levant (Oxford, 1738, p. 272, French ed., 1743, Vol. 1, p. 348; German ed., 1765, pp. 180-1). Apparently he wasn't aware of the music collected by Danish traveller Georg Höst in the 1760s and published on Germany in 1781 (plate No. 32, after p. 262). These tunes would have also been a worthwhile addition to his collection. 

Not at least he also expanded to the South Pacific to show examples of the music of the less cultivated - "savage" - people . 25 years ago one Joshua Steele had studied an instrument brought to England by Captain Cooke's expedition and wrote an article for the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society with a very curious title: Remarks on a larger System of Reed Pipes from the Isle of Amsterdam, with some Observations on the Nose Flute of Otaheite (in Vol. 65, 1775, Pt 6, pp. 72-8). This was in fact an interesting treatise and Steele added two tunes. But of course these were his own compositions (see Agnew 2008, p. 114). Nonetheless Dalberg included this article as well as one of the musical examples as a "Melodie aus den Südseeinseln" (pp. 125-131; No. LIII, p. 44). More original were two tunes collected in New Zealand that he borrowed from Forster's book about Captain Cook's voyage around the world (Nos. LI & LII, pp. 43-4; f. ex. in Forster 1784, Vol. 3, pp. 303-4). 

All in all this was an outstanding work and a major contribution to the literature about oriental cultures even though it did not include original research. He "reached India only in Richard Johnson's bureau in London" (Embach & Godwin, p. 375) and had to rely on secondary literature. But it was the best that could be achieved by a German scholar who himself had never been to any of these countries. It was also the largest collection of more or less authentic "exotic" tunes available in Germany. He offered much more than the Abbé Vogler in his two above-mentioned small publications. Outside of Germany only Laborde's Essai with its numerous musical examples came close. Dalberg clearly did his best to understand and appreciate this music not from a viewpoint of European superiority but as an expression of another culture of equal value. With his critical attitude and the multi-cultural approach he may really be seen as a kind of progenitor of later comparative musicologists (see Kovar, p. 47, pp. 49-51). 

On the other hand this anthology also looks like a musical answer to Herder's Volkslieder, notwithstanding the fact no songs from these cultures had appeared there. But Dalberg had adopted - as the faithful Herderian he was - the latter's idea that songs - "Volksgesänge" - reflected a people's "Charakter und Kunstgenius" (p. XV). His reference to the tunes' "simplicity" (see also Kovar, p. 48, pp. 51-2) could have been written by Herder himself: 

"Dem bloß ausübenden Tonkünstler, der allen Reiz der Musik nur in künstliche Wendungen und Schwürigkeiten setzt, werden diese einfachen Volksgesänge nur wenig sagen [...] schätzbar sind sie dem denkenden Musiker, der voll Liebe zum Einfach-Schönen Nationalgesänge und alte Volksmelodien aussucht, um sich mit ihrem Geist vetraut zu machen" (pp. XIV-XV). 

In fact he lifted these "exotic" tunes out of their original context and adapted them anew, on his own terms, for the genre known as national airs or Volkslieder. In another related work from the same year he expressed similar sentiments. Jones had also published a prose translation of the Gitagovinda: Or The Songs of Jayadeva - written in the 12th century - in the third volume of the Asiatick Researches (1792, pp. 185-207). Dalberg translated this "delightful pastoral idyll" - "eine liebliche Hirtenidille" (p. vii) - into German as Gita-govinda oder die Gesänge Jajadeva's eines altindischen Dichters, but cleaned it up even more (p. xv; see Embach & Gallé, p. 79). This legendary poet's songs were reinterpreted as "Volkslieder" and of course he couldn't avoid a reference to MacPherson's Ossian: 

"Die Gesänge dieses Dichters werden noch heutzutage gleich den Ossianischen Liedern von den rührendsten Melodien begleitet, am Ufer des Ganges gesungen" (p. vii) 

Dalberg's impressive work was mostly well-received by the critics. The reviewer in the Neue Teutsche Merkur (1, 1802, 6. Stück, pp. 130-4, here p. 131) called it "ein Werk [...] von äußerster Wichtigkeit" and recommended it to everybody interested in this topic, not only scholars and composers but also "jedem Liebhaber und Freunde der Geschichte der Menschheit überhaupt". But not everybody shared the enthusiasm for Indian and Oriental music, especially not the more conservative musicologists who were of course convinced of the superiority of European music (see also Kovar, pp. 47-8). 

The anonymous author of a long and detailed review in the AMZ (Vol. 5, 1803, pp. 281-294, pp. 297-303) lauded Dalberg for his efforts to make all this material available. But he rejected the "now so often repeated demand for simplicity", warned not to confuse "Dürftigkeit mit Simplicität und Unbehülflichkeit mit Originalität und sinnvoller Kühnheit" and even accused him of "not doing justice to our own music to promote the interest in Indian music" (pp. 288, 292, 297). Another reviewer in the Neue Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek (Vol. 86, 1804, pp. 49-60, here p. 50) complained that both Jones and Dalberg expressed on occasion an "almost too great fondness for Indian music" and that they therefore even suggested that it had "certain advantages over our own music". This of course was not acceptable.

IV.

Later Dalberg's collection was used by the promoters and admirers of the "Volkslied". Professor Thibaut (1772-1840; see Baumstark 1841) in Heidelberg, influential music theorist and conductor of an ambitious choir, mentioned it in his Ueber Reinheit der Tonkunst (2nd. ed., 1826, p. 91). He also had one later collection at hand, Horn's Indian Melodies (c.1813; see Verzeichnis, p. 43), which was partly based on the Oriental Miscellany. Thibaut arranged some Indian tunes for his choir and they can be found in his unpublished manuscript, Alte Nationalgesänge (1820-40, see RISM, for example No. 27, "Meine Sehnsucht sie endet nimmer", i. e. Dalberg No. 22). Hermann Kestner (1810-1890; see f. ex. Hahn 2003/4) from Hannover, private scholar and collector of songbooks and songs who had spent some time in Heidelberg and had sung with Thibaut, also arranged these tunes and added German texts. Unfortunately his work was never published but at least his manuscripts have survived (see f. ex. RISM, 1831). 

Two other members of the circle around Thibaut, Eduard Baumstark and Wilhelm von Zuccalmaglio, were responsible for the very first collection of international national airs published in Germany: Bardale. Sammlung auserlesener Volkslieder der verschiedenen Völker der Erde mit deutschem Texte und Begleitung des Pianoforte und der Guitarre (1829, available at the Internet Archive). They could use his resources and apparently were particularly fond of the copy of Ueber die Musik der Inder. Besides Chardin's Persian tune - here a recent new edition of the Voyages en Perse and Rousseau's Dictionnaire were given as the source - they included five melodies from Dalberg's book, all with easy accompanying arrangements and new German lyrics: three Indian, one Chinese and "Mizmoune", the "Moorish Aria" originally published in Shaw's Travels in 1734 (see p. 75: Nos. 16, 19, 29, 30, 37, i. e. Dalberg Nos. 13, 46, 32, 41, 42). At least one of them (No. 16) had already been part of the repertoire of Professor Thibaut's choir. 

Most interesting among these pieces is an Indian tune originally published by Ouseley in the Oriental Collections that was transformed here into a "Volkslied". In his article "Anecdotes of Indian Music" he reprinted a piece of music from a Persian translation of an Indian book  from the early 18th century (plate after p. 78, see p. 75): 

After an analysis of the scale used here and some theoretical explanations he then attempted a transcription in a quite unusual letter-code (pp. 76-8): 

Dalberg transformed it into then into a tune in modern musical notation and called it "Persisches Lied" (No. 42, p. 37): 

Baumstark and Zuccalmaglio added a new text "nach einer persischen Originaldichtung" - although they didn't tell which one they used - and turned it into a song: "Die Erwartung", to be sung "mit Sehnsucht" (No. 37, p. 67, note, p. 76): 

That way an old Indian tune ended up in German living-rooms. At this point it of course had barely anything to do with the original version but still was regarded as an "authentic" representation of a foreign culture. In the book it was placed between an "Hebrew" song and a "Hirtenlied. Alt-Englisch" and a singer performing these pieces one after another made a trip around half the world and several centuries back into the past. Nonetheless we can see here again - with this this rather naive appropriation of this and the other tunes - still a kind of "innocent openness" to foreign music. 

But on the other hand these songs had a rather self-serving ideological function. They represented - thanks to Rousseau and Herder - a dreamland, a more natural, much simpler world. India - or Persia, Old England etc - in the living-room was the antidote to the "nervous" modern music like Beethoven's and instead offered "pure, and often truly heavenly delights" (Vorrede, p. I). Let's hope it worked. But at least some reviewers didn't take this kindly - especially not the rude attack on Beethoven - and had serious problems finding these "delights" (see AMZ 31, 1829, pp. 733-742; BAMZ 7, 1830, pp. 283-5). 

A couple of years later a rival collection of international national airs appeared, Friedrich Silcher's Ausländische Volksmelodien (4 Vols, 1835-41). Silcher also used some exotic tunes but apparently he didn't know Dalberg's anthology. Instead he borrowed two Indian tunes from Thomas Moore's Popular National Airs, his major source. One of them was "All That's Bright Must Fade", as mentioned above also with a melody taken from Hamilton Bird's Oriental Miscellany ("Alle Lust hat Leid", in Vol. 3, 1839, No. 5, pp. 6-7). This tune was of course already available in Germany since 1802 in Dalberg's book (No. 28, p. 26), but up until then it hadn't made any deeper impression. Only with Silcher's German version of Moore's great hit it became established as well-known Indian song. This shows that the same tune could migrate to Germany on different routes and become popular only with its second attempt. 

But this doesn't mean that Dalberg's Ueber die Musik der Indier was forgotten. In fact it remained on the shelf and was regularly used by orientalists and musicologists. Peter von Bohlen referred to Dalberg in his Das alte Indien (1830, Vol. 2, p. 195) as did Gottfried Wilhelm Fink in Erste Wanderung der ältesten Tonkunst (1831, pp. 56-7, 253, 266). Of course it was mentioned in articles about Indian music in dictionaries, for example in the Encyclopädie der gesammten musikalischen Wissenschaften (1840, Vol. 3, p. 693) and the Universal-Lexikon der Tonkunst (1849, p. 452). Kiesewetter relied on Dalberg's work for his Musik der Araber (1842, see pp. xv, 18, 23, 68, 78) and Ambros mentioned him in the chapter about India in the Geschichte der Musik (Vol. 1, 1862, f. ex. p. 43). Carl Engel in England was still familiar with this book and included it in the bibliography of his important Introduction to the Study of National Music (1866, p. 397), François-Joseph Fétis in France reprinted one tune in the Histoire Générale de la Musique (Vol. 2, 1869, p. 272) and so did Danish composer A. P. Berggreen in his outstanding collection of non-European national airs, the Folke-Sange og Melodier Fra Lande Udenfor Europa (1772, here No. 121, p. 96, see p. 102) although in the latter case it was only Steele's self-made "Melodie aus den Südseeinseln" (Dalberg, No. 53, p. 44). 

At this point most of the content was surely outdated. But at least some of the tunes survived and there is good reason to assume that some of them were still sung and performed in some living-rooms. In 1896 Breitkopf & Härtel published a songbook, a Volksliederbuch (available at the Internet Archive), by the late Victorie Gervinus (1820-1893), wife of historian and politician Gottfried August Gervinus (1805-1871) and also a well-respected music scholar who had edited a collection of vocal pieces from Händel's operas and oratorios and written an instruction book for singing (available at BSB). This collection of international national airs was put together posthumously from her personal manuscripts. From the introductory remarks we learn that these were the songs she used to sing at home, with her friends and family. 

Here we can find "Volkslieder" from Denmark, England, Scotland, France and other countries, but also some of the more "exotic" kind. There are three "Indian" songs of which at least one - with a text apparently added by Thibaut - can be traced back to Dalberg's anthology (No. 37, p. 34, i. e. Dalberg No. 22, p. 20; Thibaut, RISM). Additionally there are also two versions of "Mizmoune", the Moorish aria from Shaw's Travels (No. 55-6, pp. 60; Dalberg, No. 46, p. 39): the one from Bardale (No. 19, p. 33) and another originally from Thibaut's repertoire (see RISM) but most likely received from Kestner (see RISM) whom they knew personally. Not at least she also used to sing "Die Erwartung" (here No. 57, p. 61) as published in Bardale. This means that some of the tunes made available by Dalberg in 1802 were still known by the end of the century: they were part of the singing tradition in an educated household. And by publishing them again in this songbook their life-span as "Volkslieder" was once again prolonged. 

Literature:

• Vanessa Agnew, Enlightenment Orpheus: The Power of Music in Other Worlds, Oxford & New York, 2008 
• Eduard Baumstark & Wilhelm von Waldbrühl, Bardale. Sammlung auserlesener Volkslieder der verschiedenen Völker der Erde mit deutschem Texte und Begleitung des Pianoforte und der Guitarre, herausgegeben und dem Herrn Geheimen Rathe und Professor Dr. A. F. J. Thibaut hochachtungsvoll gewidmet, I. Band, Friedrich Busse, Braunschweig, 1829 (available at BSB: Mus.pr. 2623-1, Google Books & the Internet Archive) 
• Eduard Baumstark, Ant. Friedr. Justus Thibaut. Blätter der Erinnerung für seine Verehrer und für die Freunde der reinen Tonkunst, Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig, 1841 (at the Internet Archive) 
• Garland Cannon, The Life and Mind of Oriental Jones. Sir William Jones, the Father of Modern Linguistics, Cambridge & New York, 1990 
• Joep Bor, The Rise of Ethnomusicology: Sources on Indian Music c.1780 - c.1890, in: Yearbook for Traditional Music 20, 1988, pp. 51-73 
• Nicholas Cook, Encountering the Other, Redefining the Self: Hindostannie Airs, Haydn's Folksong Settings and the 'Common Practice' Style, in: Martin Clayton & Bennett Zon (eds.), Music and Orientalism in the British Empire 1780s - 1940s. Portrayal of the East, Aldershot & Burlington, 2007, pp. 13-38 
• Michael Embach & Joscelyn Godwin, Johann Friedrich Hugo von Dalberg (1760-1812). Schriftsteller - Musiker - Domherr, Mainz, 1998 (= Quellen und Abhandlungen zur Mittelrheinischen Kirchengeschichte 82) [pp. 366-375 about 'Ueber die Musik der Indier'] 
• Michael Embach & Volker Gallé (eds.), Fritz von Dalberg zum 200. Todestag. Vom Erfinden und Bilden, Worms, 2002 [here pp. 59-85: Gallé, Dalberg und die Indische Kultur]
• Gerry Farrell, Indian Music and the West, Oxford, 1997
• Johann Reinhold Forster's [...] Reise um die Welt während den Jahren 1772 bis 1775 [...] Geschrieben und herausgegeben von dessen Sohn und Reisegefährten George Forster, Haude & Spener, Berlin, 1784, 3 Vols., at the Internet Archive 
• Alexa Frank, Sanftes Gefühl und stille Tiefe der Seele. Herders Indien, Würzburg, 2009 
• Victorie Gervinus, Volksliederbuch. 80 Volkslieder (deutsche, dänische, englische, französische, hebräische, indische, irische, italienische, maurische, persische, portugiesische, schottische, schwedische, spanische, ungarische, wälisische) mit deutschem Text und Klavierbegleitung, Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig, Brüssel & New York, n. d. [1896] (available at the Internet Archive) 
• Gerlinde Hahn, "Ich möchte, Du gäbest alles nach Hannover" - Die "Sammlung Kestner" in der Stadtbibliothek Hannover, in: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter, Neue Folge, Band 67/68, 2003/4, pp. 27-36
• Helmut Kowar, Einige Bemerkungen zu Dalbergs "Über die Musik der Inder", in: Musicologica Austriaca 12, 1993, pp. 41-58 
• [Thomas Moore], A Selection of Popular National Airs with Symphonies and Accompaniments by Sir John Stevenson MusDoc; [Henry R. Bishop]. The Words by Thomas Moore, Esq., 6 Volumes, J. Power, London, 1818-1828 (first 3 Vols. digitized by BStB: 4 Mus.pr. 35243-(1-3) [click on Einzelbände])
• [William Ouseley (ed.)], Oriental Collections. Consisting Of Original Essays And Dissertations, Translations And Miscellaneous Papers; Illustrating The History And Antiquities, The Arts, Sciences, And Literature, Of Asia, 3 Vols., Cadell & Davies, London, 1797-1800 (at the Internet Archive) 
• Friedrich Silcher, Ausländische Volksmelodien, mit deutschem, zum Theil aus dem Englischen etc. übertragenem Text, gesammelt und für eine oder zwei Singstimmen mit Begleitung des Pianoforte und der Guitarre gesetzt, 4 Hefte, Fues, Tübingen, 1835-1841 (available at the Internet Archive) 
• [A. F. J. Thibaut], Ueber Reinheit der Tonkunst, 2. vermehrte Ausgabe, Mohr, Heidelberg, 1826 (at the Internet Archive) 
• Verzeichnis der von dem verstorbenen Grossh. Badischen Prof. der Rechte und Geheimrathe Dr. Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut zu Heidelberg hinterlassenen Musiksammlung, welche als ein ganzes ungetrennt veräussert werden soll, Karl Groos, Heidelberg, 1842 (at the Internet Archive) 
• A. Leslie Willson, A Mythical Image. The Ideal of India in German Romanticism, Durham, 1964 
• Ian Woodfield, The 'Hindostannie Air': English Attempts to Understand Indian Music in the Late 18th Century, in: Journal of the Royal Musical Association 119, 1994[a], pp. 189-211 
• Ian Woodfield, Collecting Indian Songs in Late 18th-Century Lucknow. Problems of Transcription, in: British Journal of Ethnomusicology 3, 1994[b], pp. 73-88 
• Ian Woodfield, English Musicians in the Age of Exploration, Stuyvesant NY, 1995 (= Sociology of Music 8)
• Ian Woodfield, Music of the Raj. A Social and Economic History of Music in Late Eighteenth-Century Anglo-Indian society, New York, 2001 
• Bennett Zon, From 'very acute and plausible' to curiously misinterpreted': Sir William Jones's 'On the Musical Mode of the Hindus' (1792) and its Reception in Later Musical Treatises, in: Michael J. Franklin (ed.), Romantic Represantations of British India, London, 2006, pp. 197-219 
• Bennett Zon, Representing Non-Western Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Rochester, 2007

The Collection and Publication of National Airs in Finland 1795-1900

I. 

Since the 18th century efforts were underway in Europe to define, collect and and publish what was regarded as the national song tradition. Every country had a different history in this respect. Some were very early, like Scotland, others were latecomers, like for example Norway, where the systematic collection of "national airs" only started in the 1840s (see in this blog: Some Early Song Collections from Denmark & Norway). Here I will discuss the development in Finland until the end of the 19th century. 

This is only an attempt at a short bibliographical survey for comparative purposes. When did the collection and publication of Finnish national airs, - in German "Volkslieder" - start? Who collected them? When did the first relevant anthologies appear and who published them? What was the reception outside of Finland, particularly in Germany and England? I am interested here in the songs including the music, not in collections of only the texts. I can't discuss the different genres of the Finnish song tradition here, but it will become clear what kind of songs were predominantly collected and published. Also the music of Finland's Swedish minority has been left out. This is a different problem that would deserve an own article. 

And besides that I also wanted to know which of the relevant publications are now available online. Much to my surprise most of them have been digitized and can easily be used. Particular thanks go to the Suomen Kirjallisuuden Seura (Finnish Literature Society). Their small but excellent Digital Library (SKS Digikirjasto) offers nearly all the early collections with helpful introductory notes. Of great help was also the repository of the Finnish libraries at Doria.fi where additional important works are available. 

II. 

Bits and pieces of information about Finnish folk culture were already published in the 16th century. For example reformator Michael Agricola (1509-1557) included a poem made up of names of pagan deities in the preface of his psalm-book (Dauidin Psaltari, 1551, [p. 22], available at Doria.fi; see Sarajas, pp. 10-11). The earliest reference to music in Finland may be an interesting vignette in Olaus Magnus' famous Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (1555, p. 141, at the Internet Archive & Google Books):

Here we can see six people dancing and two musicians playing fiddle and bagpipe. It is claimed that this is from Lapland but there is good reason to assume that these were really Finns (see Bartens, pp. 8-9). In fact in the older literature Lapps and Finns were often mixed up. 

At first most of the relevant knowledge about the old Finnish culture was collected and published by clergymen who of course also fought against paganism and superstitions. Jaakko Finno complained in the preface to his hymnal - the first in Finnish (Yxi Wäha Suomemkielen Wirsikirja, 1583) - about the "godless, shameful, bawdy and ridiculous songs" of the bards (quoted from Hautala 1968, p. 12; see Sarajas, pp. 16-7). And they taught the people the new hymns, most of them with tunes imported from the continent. The year 1605 saw the publication of Hemming Maskulainen's expanded new hymnbook with the same title (see a later ed., Rostock 1607, at SLUB Dresden).

From the first half of the 17th century we have two manuscripts of tunes, the one from Kangasala (1624) and one called Liber Templi Ilmolensis (see Old Hymn Tunes from Finland, Sibelius Akatemia; also Haapalainen 1976). In 1701 the "New Finnish Songbook" (Uusi Suomenkielen Wirsi-kirja; a later print, 1730, at BB, München, Liturg. 1331 o) was published. It became later known as Vanha Visikirja, the "old songbook". A year later, in 1702, the corresponding book of hymn tunes, Yxi Tarpelinen Nuotti-Kirja, was printed. This was what the people sang and these hymns of course competed against the old popular indigenous tunes. These melodies were then also often used for secular broadside songs and became part of the popular singing tradition (see Niinimäki 2007). 

Already before the end of the 17th century one supposedly old "Finnish" song - but only the text, not the tune - found its way into a German publication. Daniel Georg Morhof included in his groundbreaking Unterricht von der teutschen Sprache und Poesie (1682, here new ed., 1700, pp. 374-6) a bear song, "ein so genanntes Bärenlied [...] welches die Finnen bey ihrer Bärenjagt haben pflegen zu singen". He printed a Finnish text and his own German translation.

 

Morhof had found it in a recent work by Petrus Bång, professor of theology in Åbo, the Historia Ecclesiae Sveo-Gothicae (1675, pp. 213-4). Prof. Bång's source for the Finnish and Swedish texts was an unpublished report from 1673 by another clergyman, Gabriel Tuderus, about a trip to the Lapps in 1669 (later printed in Twå Berättelser..., 1773, here pp. 15-17) and it seems that this was not a Finnish but a Lapp song (see also Sarajas, pp. 76-82). But nonetheless this piece lived on in Germany as "Finnisches Bärenlied". A century later Johann Gottlieb Georgi included his own new translation in Beschreibung aller Nationen des rußischen Reiches (1776, p. 21, see also the English translation, in: Russia: Or A Compleat Historical Account [...], London, I, 1780, pp. 50-1) and even Herder referred to the song in his Volkslieder (II, 1779, notes, p. 304). 

The 18th century saw a growing interest in Finnish language and culture, the first fennophiles and some attempts at collecting indigenous "folk poetry". MacPherson's Ossian and Herder's ideas became known among Finnish scholars and intellectuals. This culminated in two very influential major works: Gabriel Henrik Porthan's De Poësi Fennica (5 Vols, 1766-1788, at the Internet Archive) and Christfried Ganander's Mythologia Fennica (1789, at the Internet Archive & Hathi Trust; see Sarajas, pp. 112- 320, Hautala, pp. 13-18, Laitinen 1998, pp. 40, 43-49). 

But they all discussed only the texts, there was for a long time apparently no interest in the music. This is a little bit surprising. We should remember that for example the very first Latvian and Estonian tunes were printed as early as 1635, in Friedrich Menius' Syntagma de Origine Livonorum (see the reprint in Scriptores Rerum Livonicarum II, 1848, p. 525). In the latter part of the 18th century music from even the most exotic places like China or America was available in Europe, thanks to travellers, scholars, musicians and not at least the new fascination with national airs since the 1720s. 

III. 

By all accounts the first one who actually discussed Finnish traditional songs was Jacob Tengström (1755-1832; see Wikipedia), scholar, public intellectual, professor of theology in Åbo and later bishop there. In July 1795 he held a lecture at the Royal Academy in Stockholm: "Om de Forna Finnars Sällskapnöjen och Tidsfördrif". This was only published 7 years later in the Kongl. Vitterhets Historie och Antiquitets Academiens Handlingar (Vol. 7, 1802, pp. 265-287, at the Internet Archive). A part of this lecture is dedicated to the poetry and music (here pp. 277-87). He offered information about the old "rune songs" including some musical examples and noted their "mycket enkel och monotonisk melodie" and "melankolisk expression". He also mentioned the songs imported from Sweden and Russia as well as the influence of the hymn tunes. 

 

This was a good start but the next contributions to this topic by Finnish writers were slow in coming. During the following decades it were usually foreign musicians and travellers who cared about music from Finland. The first one to publish a Finnish tune was the legendary Abbé Georg JosephVogler (1749-1814), a composer, music educator, musicologist and organ virtuoso and also one of the most controversial music stars of his time. He was working in Stockholm at the Swedish court as the direktör för musiken since 1786 (see Veit, p. 407) and since 1790 he was busy with an interesting and groundbreaking "project": the collection, performance and publication of foreign national airs. One may say that in some way he tried to do for the tunes what Herder had done for the lyrics of what was called "Volkslieder" in Germany even though he of course was not yet a systematic collector of international tunes (see also my earlier blogpost about Vogler' Polymelos). 

His first publication of national airs, Polymelos ou Caractères de Musique de differentes Nations (Bossler, Speyer, 1791; online at BLB Karlsruhe, DonMusDr 272), offered 6 tunes: from Sweden, Russia, Italy, Scotland respectively Poland but not yet one from Finland. But over the years he expanded his repertoire and he used to play these kind of pieces in his spectacular organ concerts. In two shows in Stockholm in November 1794 he performed one called "Finsk nationalmusik". But it is not possible to identify this tune. In November 1796 - also in Stockholm - Vogler played another song: "Finsk Aria: 'Ak minan...'" (dates from Vretblad 1927, pp. 96-7). These are his earliest known performances of Finnish tunes in Stockholm but of course it is possible that he had played them even earlier in other towns. 

The second of these tunes was then also published in a small collection of piano pieces with variations that was a part of an instruction book for pianists. He used predominantly foreign national airs for this work. We find here also tunes from Sweden, Morocco, Africa, China, Russia and Venice: 

• "Ak minan rakas linduisen. Air Finois", in: Pieces de Clavecin faciles, doigtées, avec des Variations d'une difficulté graduelle pour servir d'exemple à l'ecole de Clavecin. Par L'Abbé Vogler, Stockholm, n. d. [1798], pp. 12-15 (at the Internet Archive; the Clavér-Schola - with notes about the tunes on pp. 34-49 - is available at the UB Greifswald)

Interestingly this one was not an indigenous Finnish melody but one of those imported hymn tunes that were borrowed for secular popular songs on broadsides (the following summarized from Ninimääki 2007, pp. 108-10, p. 263; Haapalainen 1976, No. 43, pp. 108-10). This particular tune was already known in Bohemia in the 15th century and later also used in Poland and Germany. In Finland it became associated with two spiritual texts: "Armon lijton Engell" and "Ihminen jong Jumal loi". The former was first published in Hemming Maskulainen's hymn-book in 1605 (No. 179). The tune can be found in the Kangasala manuscript and the Liber Templi Ilmolensis (see Old Hymn Tunes, No. 172). The new hymn-book published in 1701 included both texts (No. 193, p. 215; No. 407, pp. 521, in a later ed., 1730, at BSB) and melody was first printed in 1702 in the above-mentioned collection of hymn tunes (Yxi Tarpelinen Nuotti-Kirja, 1702). 

A secular text to the tune of "Ihminen jong Jumal loi" was published in 1764 in Turku on a broadside with the title Yxi lystillinen ja kaunis Rackauden Weisu (["One entertaining and beautiful love-song"], reprint 1828 available at BSB & Google Books): "Ah mun rakas lintusein" ["Oh, my dear birdie"], a song with 28 verses. Vogler must have heard it somewhere and I really wonder if he was aware of the tune's history. Nonetheless this tune happened to be the very first printed Finnish national air. By the way, it should be noted this was a very popular song and reprints of the broadside appeared as late as 1876 (see catalog, KK Helsinki). 

Abbé Vogler had at least one more tune but he only used it some years later when he was back in Germany. In 1806 he staged a very spectacular show in Munich where he played organ and was supported by a great choir. The program consisted of Bavarian tunes and foreign national airs. He performed there - on the organ, of course - a flute concert: the Allegro was a Swiss tune, the Andante an "African Romance" and the Rondo "ein finnischer Gesang" (see the program in Königlich-Bairisches Intelligenzblatt 11, No. XII, 22.3.1806, p. 190, at BSB). This was then published as sheet music, but arranged for piano. At least one reviewer liked it very much and noted that it was "Unter allen Originalstücken das Originellste" (in AMZ 9, 1807, p. 386):

• No. 8: "Rondo. Ein finnischer Gesang", in: Polymelos. Ein nazional-karakteristisches Orgel-Koncert, in zwei Theilen, zu 16 verschiedenen Original-Stücken, aufgeführt, mit Zustimmung eines Chores von 80 Sängern im evangelischen Hofbethaus zu München, den 29. und 31sten März 1806, für's Fortepiano, mit willkürlicher Begleitung einer Violine und Violonzell gesetzt, variiert, und Ihro Majestät der regierenden Königin b. Baiern zugeeignet vom Abt Vogler, Falter, München, n. d. [1806] (see Verzeichnis Falter, 1810, col. 42 [p. 22]; Schafhäutl, No. 185, pp. 267-8; see the incipit in Denkmäler der Tonkunst 16/2, p. LIX)

While the Abbé Vogler was busy with his Polymelos some musically interested travellers visited Finland and brought back more songs and tunes. Giuseppe Acerbi (1773-1846) and A. F. Skjöldebrand (1757-1834; see Svensk Biografiskt Lexikon) were there in 1799. The latter was an officer of the Swedish army but also very much interested in arts and music. He happened to be a pupil and friend of the Abbé Vogler and even wrote the libretto of an opera for him (Schück 1903, f. ex, pp. 18-9, 38-9, 44-5). 

In Åbo they met both Porthan and Frans Michael Franzén, a professor and popular poet. Franzén gave them a "song, composed by a simple Finnish peasant girl". Skjöldebrand was very impressed. He included this piece - the words with a translation and also the tune - in his Voyage Pittoresque au Cap Nord (Stockholm, 1801, pp. 3-4; German ed., Weimar 1805, pp. 77-9; quotes from English ed., London, 1813, pp. 11-2) and noted that it "proves that the germs of so rare a talent are to be found in the blood of that nation":

His partner and companion Acerbi, himself an accomplished musician, published his own report with the title Travels Through Sweden, Finland, And Lapland in The Years 1798 and 1799 in London in 1802. He added some interesting information about the Finns' music and poetry and even used an original Finnish tune in one of his own compositions which he performed there to a very impressed audience: "the moment we began to play their runa every eye was drowned in tears, and the emotion was general" (see f. ex. Vol. 1, pp. 219-20, pp. 281-4, pp. 300-306; quote p. 283). 

 

The second volume (pp. 325-336) included an appendix with some Finnish (and Lapp) tunes, for example a "Runa of the Finlanders" with variations  in 5/4 - it is partly identical to one of the musical examples published by Tengström the same year and nearly completely the same as the tune from Åbo in Skjöldebrand's book, even though the latter noted it in 3/4 time -, "the Tune of a Song of a Finlandish Peasant Girl, who sung at our particular request at Uleaborg" and a "Finlanders Dance [...] played by a blind Fiddler". This was the very first - albeit small - collection of Finnish music published outside of Finland and Sweden. A German edition of this book appeared in 1803 but unfortunately the musical examples were left out (available at BSB). 

Another traveller, Edward Daniel Clarke (1769-1822; see Wikipedia) from England, had just started a great trip through Europe and he happened to be in Finland at the same time as Acerbi. He met him, heard him play and was very impressed by his musical abilities. But he disagreed with him on the quality of Finnish music. Clarke's remarks were only published in 1819 in the third part of his Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa but they are worth quoting nonetheless (pp. 503): 

"Acerbi had taken great pains to ascertain the history of Finnish music. He told us, that the instrument of five strings, which we had seen, was the genuine harp of Finland, adapted to their five notes; that all their musical compositions, dances and songs, were only so many changes upon these five notes. To prove how these five notes might be varied so as to form a beautiful concerto, he sate down to his harpsichord, and began to play one of his own compositions in the Finnish style; introducing in the midst of it a Finnish national air. With all deference, however, to his superior judgment and skill in music, we thought that he was deceived in ascribing any thing beyond a mere humdrum to the national music of the Finns. All the popular airs that we heard in Finland, were either translations from the Swedish, or they were borrowed from Russia: this we took some pain to ascertain. Their convivial songs, for the most part obscene, were of the same nature. The purely national music of Finland is confined to a few doleful ditties, or it is adapted to the hymns and psalms of their churches. Even their dances are not national; they have a coarse kind of waltz, common in the country, but this was originally taught them by the Swedes". 

Besides his dislike for original Finnish tunes this sounds like a reasonable description of the popular music scene there, especially as he also mentioned the imported Swedish and Russian songs as well as the importance of the hymn tunes. Naturally Mr. Clarke did not note any music but confined himself to a few more short remarks (see p. 522, p. 531). 

Interestingly one tune from Acerbi's small collection won a certain popularity in England. The "Runa of the Finlanders" was reprinted by William Crotch in the Specimens of Various Styles of Music (1808, No. 290, p. 139) and also in an unidentified songbook from that time (No. 34, no title page, bound together with some vols. of the Vocal Magazine, at the Internet Archive). That was a very interesting collection with not only songs from Britain but also from Germany, Russia, France and other countries, a nice example for the growing interest for foreign national airs at that time. 

But also popular composer and piano virtuoso Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838; see Wikipedia) made use of the tune. He was originally from Bonn in Germany, had been a pupil of Beethoven and had already traveled through half of Europe. Since 1813 he lived in London and in 1815 he included this Finnish melody with variations in his Selection of Trifles for the Pianoforte (Op. 58, London, n. d., No. 4, pp. 12-3, at SBB Berlin [with wrong date]; see the review in the European Magazine 67, 1815, p. 436). In Germany it was published a year later (No. 4, in: Douze Bagatelles pour le Pianoforte, op. 58, Simrock, Bonn & Köln, n. d. [1816], pp. 14-5, at BSB). Strangely he called this piece "One of the oldest Norwegian Airs" (or "Vieux Air Norwegien" in the German edition). Ries had spent some time in Sweden and surely knew the difference between Norway and Finland. But perhaps his source wasn't Acerbi's book and he had received the tune by personal communication together with the wrong information about its origin. 

But in the other hand: there was a kind of fashion for Norwegian tunes at that time. Carl Maria von Weber had published one in 1812 (IX Variations sur un Air Norvégien, op. 22) as did Ludwig Berger (Air norvégien avec douze Variations pour le Piano-forte, op. 1812) and Friedrich Kuhlau (Variations sur un ancien air Norvégien, op. 15, c. 1815). I wonder if Ries helped himself a little bit by renaming this tune to jump on this particular band-wagon. His piece "became part of English middle-class piano repertory" (Saari 2009) and in fact this was the first Finnish melody that became more widely known outside of Finland. But unfortunately it remained incognito and was - thanks to Ferdinand Ries - taken for a Norwegian tune. 

IV. 

In the meantime Sweden had lost another war and also lost Finland which became part of the Russian empire in 1809. The same year German scholar Friedrich Rühs (1781-1820; see Wikipedia; see Schröder 2001), an expert for Scandinavia - he would later translate the Edda - published his Finnland und seine Bewohner. This was a very interesting work, a concise overview of the country's history and culture. He also discussed songs and poetry (pp. 323-42) but did not include any musical examples. 

10 years later Hans-Rudolf von Schröter (1798-1842) published his work Finnische Runen. Finnisch und Deutsch. Mit einer Musikbeilage (Uppsala, 1819, available at Google Books & HU, Berlin). This was the first collection of German translations of original Finnish "rune songs". A part of the pieces he used he had taken from the available literature, especially Porthan's De Poësi Fennica and Ganander's Mythologia Fennica. But in Uppsala he got the help of some Finnish students who supplied him with some more, up to then unpublished texts. He even included one complete song (Musikbeilage, at UB HU Berlin, text & translation pp. 82-5, at Google Books) that he called "Finnische Rune" ("En ole runun sukua"):
 

These students, among them Carl Axel Gottlund, Johan Josef Pippingsköld and Abraham Poppius - all would play later important roles in Finland's cultural life - showed great interest in their own "folk poetry". The first groundbreaking Swedish collection, Svenska Folk-Visor från Forntiden by Afzelius and Geijer, had just been published (3 Vols., Stockholm, 1814-16) and it also served as an inspiration for them: "I Uppsala var atmosfären alldeles särskilt laddad med folkvisor [...] Deras tankade kretsade kring den Finska folkdiktningen [...] Inom den pippingsköldska kretsen hörde runor till programmat för den kamratliga sammankonsterna" (see Andersson 1921, pp. 74-87; quotes pp. 74-5). Schröter surely learned this song from his Finnish friends. The words can be found in Gottlund's small anthology Pieniä Runoja Suomen Poijille Ratoxi (1818, No. I, at SKS Digikirjasto). The tune - a variant of the "Runa of the Finlanders" in Acerbi's book (1802, Vol. 2, p. 325) - may have been collected by Gottland or by Abraham Poppius. The latter taught Pippingsköld to sing and play these kind of songs (Andersson, p. 75). 

Back home in Turku, Pippingsköld (1792-1832), a jurist and hobby musician, founded a choir and its repertoire included some Finnish traditional songs like this one. He also set out to collect some more folk tunes but never managed to publish them. 21 tunes - all that could be found in his papers - were only printed a century later. But it is not clear where or when exactly he had noted these melodies. At least we can find here also the one used by Schröter which he already knew in Uppsala (see Andersson 1921, pp. 170-75, 263-4, tunes: pp. 265-72, "Finsk Runa", No. 9, p. 267; see also Laitinen 2003, pp. 118-9). 

Only more than a decade later the very first collection of Finnish songs was published: 

• Carl Axel Gottlund, Suomalaisia Paimen-Sottoja Kantellele ja Sarvella Soitetteva, Stockholm, n. d. [1831?] (Supplement to Gottlund, Otawa eli Suomalaisia Huvituksia I, Stockholm, 1831, complete songtexts there on pp. 283-309, at the Internet Archive; booklet with tunes also available at SKS Digikirjasto) 

Gottlund (1796-1875; see Wikipedia), a multi-talented and somewhat controversial writer, scholar, editor, political and cultural activist, teacher and collector of Folklore, published his Otava eli Suomalaisia Huvituksia, a very interesting anthology of poetry and articles in Finnish, during the years 1828 to 1832. The collection of "shepherd-songs" was included in Otava as a supplement to an article about Finnish music instruments (pp. 267-282). There were only 13 tunes respectively songs, but with this little booklet a new era in the publication of Finnish tunes had begun. Up to that point all available music had been published by foreigners. Henceforth this task would be overtaken by Finnish collectors and editors. 

Outside of Finland there was at this time not a particularly great interest in Finnish tunes. In England Skjöldebrand's and Acerbi's publications with their musical examples were of course known and - as mentioned above - the latter's "Runa of the Finlanders" was reprinted a couple of times . Otherwise English publishers and editors remained rather reluctant even though foreign national airs were immensely popular and tunes of even the most exotic origin were easily available. But as far as I know not a single Finnish melody can be found in any these publications, for example in Edward Jones' tune collections, Thomas Moore's Popular National Airs or Thomas H. Bayly's Melodies of Various Nations, to name only a few. On the other hand a certain interest for the words of Finnish songs was there. In 1827 one John Bowring wrote an article "On the Runes of Finland" for the Westminster Review (available at SKS, Digikirjasto).

In Germany the situation was only slightly better. Some poets became interested in Finland. Goethe knew the original edition of Skjöldebrand's book and he translated the French text of the song of the peasant girl into German ("Finnisches Lied", 1810, see Hennig 1987, p. 288). Schröter's book surely stimulated the interest for Finnish culture. Ganander's Mythologia Fennica was even translated into German (Reval 1821, at the Internet Archive). But original Finnish traditional tunes remained scarce. In 1834 a new edition of Schröter's Finnische Runen became available and the following years O. L. B. Wolff included the text, tune and translation of "En ole runun sukua" in his Braga, the most comprehensive collection of international "Volkslieder" in Germany at that time (Vol. 14, pp. 10-11). Otherwise not one Finnish tune can be found in the other relevant publications from this time, like Zuccalmaglio's and Baumstark's Bardale (1829) and Friedrich Silcher's Ausländische Volksmelodien (1835-1841). 

Meanwhile in Finland a new era had started. The year 1831 saw the establishment of the Finnish Literature Society (Suomen Kirjallisuuden Seura, SKS) that became instrumental for the further development of the collection of and research into Folklore. Even more important was that Elias Lönnrot (1802-1884), folklorist and country doctor, began to step forward as the most important collector, editor and popularizer of Finnish "folk poetry". His first attempt - Kantele taikka Suomen Kansan, sekä Wanhoja että Nykysempiä Runoja ja Lauluja (available at SKS, Digikirjasto) - had been published in four parts between 1829 and 1831. In 1835 the first version of the Kalevala, the future Finnish national epic, came out: Kalewala taikka Wanhoja Karjalan Runoja Suomen Kansan muinosista ajoista (available at Hathi Trust & Doria.fi, see Branch 1998). Five years later his second major work, the Kanteletar. Suomen Kansan Wanhoja Laulujar ja Wirsiä - "the old Songs and Hymns of the Finnish People" - became available (at BSB, München). I can't discuss his collections of texts here. It should be noted that these pieces were of course songs that were sung. Lönnrot turned them into literature to read. 

But he was also an accomplished musician and could play the Kantele. Besides all these numerous texts he managed to collect some tunes (see Laitinen 2003, pp. 107-160). A small booklet of melodies - only 9 pages with 42 pieces - was added to the third volume of the Kanteletar: 

• Elias Lönnrot, Suomen Laulujen ja Runojen Nuotteja, [Suimen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Helsinki, 1840] (available at SKS, Digikirjasto; the complete texts of the tunes Nos. 1-22 can be found in Kanteletaar 1, pp. ix-xli) 

This should remain Lönnrot's only musical publication. But during the next decades some more tune collections were published, most of them initiated and sponsored by the SKS: 

• [Henrik August Reinholm (ed.) & Karl Collan (arr.)], Suomen Kansan Laulantoja. Pianolla Soitettavia, Suomem Kirjallisuuden Seura, Helsinki, 1849, available at SKS Digikirjasto; BSB, München, 4 Mus.pr. 480-1 [now also at the Internet Archive]; HU Berlin, Zr 54850) 
• Valituita Suomalaisia Kansan-Lauluja, 4 Vols, Öhman [2-4: G. W. Edlund], Helsinki, 1854
  1: Pianon muka-soinolle sovittanut Karl Collan, 1854
  2: ko'onut Wilhelm Poppius, Pianon muka-soinolle ja moni-äänisiksi sovittanut Rudolf Lagi, 1855
  3: Pianon muka-soinolle ja moni-äänisiksi sovittanut Karl Collan, 1855
  4: ko'onut Joh. Filip von Schantz, Pianon muka-soinolle ja moni-äänisiksi sovittanut, 1855
  (available at SKS Digikirjasto; 2 sets made up of copies of the 2nd resp. 3rd ed. of this work are available at Sibley Music Library: http://hdl.handle.net/1802/14129; http://hdl.handle.net/1802/14153; the latter now also at the Internet Archive) 
• F. V. Illberg, Suomalaisia Kansan-Lauluja ja Soitelmia. Finska Folkvisor och Melodier, F. W. Liewendal, n. d. [1867] (available at SKS Digikirjasto) 
• Lauri Hämäläinen, Suomalaisia Kansanlauluja ja Tanssia, G. W. Edlund, Helsingfors, 1868 (not yet digitized; see Happanen, p. 231; catalog KBK) 

Henrik August Reinholm (1819-1883; see Wikipedia), a clergyman interested in ethnography, went on a field-trip in 1847 - together with David Europaeus (1820-1884), another notable collector and scholar - and managed to note some tunes. 20 songs including the melodies can be found in his little booklet published by the SKS. The arrangements - for piano and vocals - were written by Karl Collan (1828-1871; see Hillila 1997, pp. 46-7; Wikipedia), a young man who would later become known as a composer of songs. But he also made himself a name as scholar, editor, librarian and translator. His dissertation was about Serbian Folk ballads (1860) and he translated the Kalevala into Swedish (1864-1868, at the Internet Archive). 

In 1854 Collan as well as two other young students - Wilhelm Poppius and Filip von Schantz (1835-1865; see Hillila 1997, pp. 365-6) - set out to collect more songs and tunes. This field-trip was also sponsored by the SKS. Their four booklets with "selected Finnish national songs" arranged for vocals and piano or for choirs seem to have been quite successful. A third edition appeared in the 70s. Interestingly we can find here a version of "Ah! mun rakas lintuisen" (Vol. 2, p. 10), the tune of which had been first published by the Abbé Vogler in 1798. This means that this particular song was still in use at that time. 

 

During the 60s both Frederik Wilhelm Illberg (1836-1904), a singing teacher, and young composer Lauri Hämäläinen (1832-1888; see Wikipedia) also collected tunes and expanded the repertoire with their publications. At this point a reasonable amount of traditional melodies had become available.

It is also interesting to have a look at a representative collection of Finnish songs published at that time:

• Det Sjungande Finland. 50 Inhemska Sånger vid Pianoforte, 3 Vols., K. E. Holm, Helsingfors, 1869-76 (available at Doria.fi: Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3; also at the Internet Archive) 

Here we can find not only works by popular composers like Karl Collan and Frederik Pacius but also some traditional songs, all apparently taken from the aforementioned publications. The first volume includes for example "Ah! mun rakas lintuisen" (No. 41, p. 60), "Suomen salossa" (No. 44, p. 64) and the famous "Minun kultani kaunis on" ("Kultaselle", No. 9, p. 12), the latter one of the most popular Finnish Folk songs. 

 

Since the publication of Lönnrot's Kalevala the interest for Finnish folk poetry had also grown considerably outside of Finland. For example in 1845 German scholar Jacob Grimm held a lecture Über das finnische Epos (publ. in: in: Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft der Sprache 1, 1846, pp. 13-55). A German translation of the second edition of Kalavala (1849) by Anton Schiefner was published in 1852 (both bound together, at the Internet Archive). Another book with the title Runen finnischer Volkspoesie by Julius Altmann appeared in 1856 (available at the Internet Archive). But original music from Finland still played a minor role even though foreign "national airs" were highly popular in Germany. A look into Hofmeisters Monatsberichte shows that only very few Finnish tunes found its way to German music fans. 

In 1844 composer Carl Schwencke published one tune in an arrangement for piano, but including the original text: Rondoletto, dans lequel est introduit un Air Finois, pour Piano á 4 Mains (see Musikalische-kritisches Repertorium 1, 1844, p. 181; DonMusDr 4421, BLB Karlsruhe, not yet digitized). Text and tune were taken from Lönnrot's Kanteletaar ("Minun kultani kaukana kukku aina Sajmen ranala", in: Vol. 1, No. 7, pp. xx-xxi, tunebook, No. 7, p. 2). Schwencke spent some time in Finland that year (see Benrath 1902, pp. 158-60) and one may assume that he became familiar with this song when he was there. 

In 1851 composer and scholar Carl Friedrich Weitzmann (1808-1880; see Wikipedia) wrote a very interesting three-part paper about Finnish songs for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik: 

• Volksmelodien, II. Finnen, in: NZM 34, 1851, No. 20, pp. 205-209, No. 21, pp. 217-222; No. 22, pp. 229-233; Beilage: Melodien aus Finnland; at the Internet Archive). 

Weitzmann had worked for some years in Riga, Reval and St. Petersburg. He had given concerts in Finland and even in Lapland and also was some kind of expert for more exotic music traditions. Some years later he published a little book about Greek music (Geschichte der griechischen Musik, Berlin, 1855, at BSB, München & the Internet Archive). His article is mostly about the so-called rune-songs but he also discussed other genres. The supplement with tunes from Finland is particularly worthwhile and shows that Weitzmann was familiar with most of the relevant publications so far. Here we find pieces for example from Acerbi's and Schröter's books and even from Gottlund's rather rare collection. 

The 1860s then saw the publication of two works that helped spread some more knowledge of Finnish songs, one in England and the other in Denmark. Carl Engel in his important and influential Introduction to the Study of National Music (London, 1866, at the Internet Archive) discussed Finnish songs, especially the "rune tunes" in 5/4, and also the musical instruments. He knew some of the important literature: Clarke, Acerbi, Schröter, Reinholm's collection as well as Weitzmann's article (see pp. 59, 86-8, 243, 292, 359, 387-8). 

A. P. Berggreen (1801-1880), Danish composer, editor, writer and scholar, was since the 40s busy with his Folke-Sange og Melodier, Fædrelandske og Fremmede, a multi-volume collection of international "national airs" ("Volkslieder") with Danish translation. From the start this happened to be an excellent publication. Unlike many others he did not forget to mention his sources and he also was able to add interesting and helpful notes. The first edition - published between 1842 and 1847 (partly available at Hathi Trust) - did not include a single Finnish song. Neither did a reprint with additions from 1855 (at the Internet Archive & Google Books). This is a little bit surprising, especially for a Scandinavian scholar. 

Only in the 60s he began to make himself familiar with what was available at that time and in 1868 he published a collection of songs from Finland: Finske Folke-sange og Melodier udsatte for Pianoforte. Suomalaisia Kansan-lauluja ja Soitelmia ko’onnut ja pianolle sovittanut (title-list on catalog KK, Helsinki). But apparently these 56 songs were not enough for complete volume of his series and the following year he combined them with Lithuanian, Ungarian, Greek and Turkish songs for the 9th book of the new edition: 

• A. P. Berggreen, Litauiske, Finske, Ungarske og Nygræske Folke-Sange og Melodier, Samt Nogle Fra Tyrkiet og Forhenværende Provindser, Samlade og Udsatte for Pianoforte (= Folke-Sange og Melodier, Fædrelandske og Fremmede 9, Anden Utgave), C. A. Reitzel, Köbenhavn, 1869 (Finnish songs on pp. 23-82, notes pp. 202-5; available at the Internet Archive) 

Berggreen, one of the most knowledgeable scholars of this genre, offered a good selection of songs from the earlier Finnish publications like Lönnrot's, Reinholm's, Collan's and Illberg's. In some cases he combined tunes with different texts from the Kalevala and the Kanteletaar. All in all this was at that time the most comprehensive and entertaining collection of "kansanlauluja" from Finland. In fact was even better and more informative than all the original Finnish collections, not at least because of Berggreen's helpful notes - in Danish of course but nonetheless worth reading. 

From this point on Finnish songs occasionally appeared in anthologies of "Volkslieder" in Germany. Wilhelm Meyer included three songs - all taken either from Berggreen or from Det sjungande Finland - with German translations in his excellent Volks-Liederbuch. Auserlesene ältere und neuere Volkslieder und Nationalgesänge des In- und Auslandes mit ihren eigenthümlichen Sangweisen (Hannover, 1873, No. 34, p. 34; Nos. 44-5, pp. 45-6). Two of these three pieces can also be found in O. H. Lange's Ausländischer Liederschatz (Leipzig, n. d. [1886], Nos. 66-7, pp. 79-80).

 

Hans Reimann used some more - all in all 10 pieces - in his Internationales Volksliederbuch. Eine Sammlung ausländischer Volkslieder (Berlin, n. d. [1894], I, pp. 65-8; II, pp. 58-63; III, pp. 48-54). But these were exceptions. For reasons I don't understand editors of songbooks in Germany rarely cared about "Volkslieder" from Finland. In Britain it was not much different. There is one lone Finnish piece in James Duff Brown's and Alfred Moffat's Characteristic Songs and Dances of all Nations (London, 1901, p. 147), "Finland's Forest", which is a translation of "Suomen salossa". 

Meanwhile in Finland more collections were published: 

• Suomalaisia Kansan-Lauluja. Koonut A. A. Borenius. Pianon myotäilykselle sovittanut G. Linsén, K. E. Holm, Helsinki, 1880 (available at SKS Digikirjasto) 
• Sydän-Soumesta. 18 Kansanlauluja kesällä 1890 kokosivat Ilmari Krohn ja Mikko Nyberg sekä-Köorille sovitti Ilmari Krohn, 2 Vols., Porvoo, 1891-2 (available at SKS Digikirjasto) 
• Johan Victor Tenkanen, Sävelsointuja. Uusia Suomalaisia Kansanlauluja y. m. Koonnut, Kvartetille ja sekä-ääniselle köörille Sovittanut, Mikkeli, 1898 (available at SKS Digikirjasto)

Most interesting here is the very first work by Ilmari Krohn (1867-1960) who would become the most important scholar, collector and editor of Finnish traditional music and songs. At that time Finnish folkloristics happened to be some kind of family business. His father Julius Krohn was an influential scholar in this field and his brother Kaarle Krohn became even more important. Everyone who ever studied folk narrative research knows their names and their work. Ilmari Krohn decided for musicology and took care of musical side of Finnish folk culture. Among his works were a groundbreaking dissertation about religious folk tunes, Über Art und Entstehung der geistlichen Volksmelodien in Finnland (in: Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Aikakauskirja 16, Helsinki, 1899, pp. 1-98) and an influential article about the classification of traditional melodies (in: Sammelbände der Internationalen Musik-Gesellschaft 4, 1902-1903, pp. 634-645). 

Together with his colleagues Armas Launis - author of another standard work: Über Art, Entstehung und Verbreitung der Estnisch-Finnischen Runenmelodien, Helsinki, 1910 (available at the Internet Archive) - and A. O. Väisänen he edited Suomen Kansan Sävelmiä [Tunes of the Finnish People], published in five massive volumes between 1893 and 1933, with around 9000 pieces (see f. ex. Vol. 2, 1904, available at the Internet Archive; see Suomem Kansan eSävelmät, About the Digital Archive of Finnish Folk Tunes). 

But this is another story I can't discuss here (see Haapanen 1939, pp. 232-6, a short overview). Nonetheless it should be noted that in 1917 Väisanen reported that up to that year more than 15000 tunes had been collected (dto. p. 231). This is an impressive number and it shows that the interest in these tunes had been steadily growing since the earliest attempts at collecting a century ago. But the focus has always been on the texts and they were collected in much greater numbers. The quasi-official edition of Finnish Kalevala-meter poetry - Suomen Kansat Vanhat Runot - was published between 1908 and 1948 in 33 volumes (see some early vols. at the Internet Archive). And outside of Finland Lönnrot's Kalevala left a much greater and much more lasting impression than the musical tradition or any particular song, at least during the 19th century. 

Literature:

• Joseph [i. e. Giuseppe] Acerbi, Travels Through Sweden, Finland, Lapland, to the North Cape, in The Years 1798 and 1799, 2 Vols., J. Mawman, London, 1802 (available at the Internet Archive: Vol. 1, Vol. 2)
• Joseph [i. e. Giuseppe] Acerbi, Reise durch Schweden und Finnland, bis an die äußersten Gränzen von Lappland, in den Jahren 1798 und 1799. Aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Ch. Weyland. Nebst berichtigenden Bemerkungen eines sachkundigen Gelehrten. Mit zwei Kupfern und einer Landkarte, Voss, Berlin, 1803 (available at BStB, München) 
• Otto Andersson, Johan Josef Pippingsköld och Musiklivet i Abo 1808-1827, Helsingfors, 1921 (available at the Internet Archive) 
• Anneli Asplund, The Oldest Finnish Broadside Ballads and Their Influence on Oral Tradition, in: Pentti Leino (ed.), Finnish Folkloristics II, Helsinki, 1975 (= Studia Fennica 18), pp. 116-138 
• H. Benrath (ed.), Carl Schwencke, Erinnerungen, Hamburg, 1901 (available at the Internet Archive) 
• Michael Branch, Finnish Oral Poetry, Kalevala, and Kanteletar, in: George C. Schoolfield (ed.), A History of Finlands Literature, Lincoln, 1998, pp. 4-33 
• Hans-Hermann Bartens, Der Joik und die Musik der Lappen im Urteil älterer Quellen, vornehmlich Reiseberichten, in: Evgenji A. Chelimskij, Wŭśa wŭśa - sei gegrüßt! Beiträge zur Finnougristik zu Ehren von Gert Sauer dargebracht zu seinem siebzigsten Geburtstag, Wiebaden, 2002, pp. 1-64 
• Edward Daniel Clarke, Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa, Part the Third, T. Cadell & W. Davies, London, 1819 (available at Doria.fi & the Internet Archive) 
• William Crotch, Specimens of Various Styles of Music referred to in A Course of Lectures, read at Oxford & London and Adapted to keyed Instruments, Vol. 1, London, n. d. [1808] (available at the Internet Archive) 
• Denkmäler Deutscher Tonkunst. Zweite Folge. Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Bayern 16. Mannheimer Kammermusik des 18. Jahrhunderts, 2. Teil, eingel. und hg. v. Hugo Riemann, Leipzig 1915 (at BSB) 
• Carl Engel, An Introduction to the Study of National Music Combining Researches into Popular Songs, Traditions, and Customs, London, 1866 (available at the Internet Archive) 
• T. I. Haapalainen, Die Choralhandschrift von Kangasala aus dem Jahre 1624. Die Melodien und ihre Herkunft, Åbo, 1976 (Acta Academia Aboensis. Ser. A: Humaniora 53) 
• Toivo Happanen, Die musikwissenschaftliche Forschung in Finnland, in: Archiv für Musikforschung 4, 1939, pp. 230-243 (available at the Internet Archive) 
• Jouko Hautala, Finnish Folklore Research 1828-1918, Helsinki, 1968 (The History of Learning and Science in Finland 1828-1918) 
• John Hennig, Goethes Schwedenlektüre, in: ibid., Goethes Europakunde. Goethes Kenntnisse des nichtdeutschsprachigen Europas. Ausgewählte Aufsätze, Amsterdam, 1987, pp. 275-291 (first publ. in Zeitschrift für Religions-und Geistesgeschichte 28, 1976, pp. 324-340) 
• Ruth-Esther Hillila & Barbara Blanchard Hong, Historical Dictionary of the Music and Musicians of Finland, Westport & London, 1997 
• Kai Laitinen, Literature of Finland. An Outline, Helsinki, 1985 
• Kai Laitinen & George C. Schoolfield, New Beginnings, Latin and Finnish, in: George C. Schoolfield (ed.), A History of Finlands Literature, Lincoln, 1998, pp. 34-62 
• Heikki Laitinen, Matkoja musiikiin 1800-luvun Suomessa, Hum. Diss., Tampereen Yliopisto, Tampere, 2003 (Acta Universitatis Tamperensis 943) (at Tampereen Yliopisto, Julkaisoarkisto) 
• Ernest J. Moyne, Raising The Wind. The Legend of Lapland and Finland Wizards in Literature, Edited by Wayne T. Kime, Newark, 1981 
• Pirjo-Liisa Niinimäki, Saa Veisata Omalla Pulskalla Nuottillansa. Riimillisen laulun varhaisvauhet suomalaisissa arkkiveusuissa 1643-1809, Hum. Diss., Tampereen Yliopisto, 2007 (Suomen Etnomusikologisen Seuran Julkaisuja 14) (available at Tampereen Yliopisto, Julkaisuarkisto) 
• Friedrich Rühs, Finnland und seine Bewohner, Göschen, Leipzig, 1809 (available at the Internet Archive)
• Annamari Sarajas, Suomen Kansanrunouden Tuntemus 1500 - 1700-lukujen kirjallisuudessa, Helsinki, 1956
• Henrik Schück (ed.), Excellensen Grefve A. F. Skjöldebrands Memoarer. Andra Delen, Stockholm, 1903 (available at the Internet Archive) 
• Karl Emil von Schafhäutl, Abt Georg Joseph Vogler. Sein Leben, Charakter und musikalisches System. Seine Werke, seine Schule, Bildnisse &c., Augsburg, 1888 (also as a reprint: Hildesheim & New York, 1979) 
• Stephan Michael Schröder, 1809 aus deutscher Perspektive: Rühs' Finnland und seine Bewohner, in: Jan Hecker-Stampehl et al. (eds.), 1809 und die Folgen. Finnland zwischen Schweden, Russland und Deutschland, Berlin, 2001, pp. 229-248 
• Hans Rudolf von Schröter, Finnische Runen. Finnisch und Deutsch. Mit einer Musikbeilage, Palmblad, Uppsala, 1819 (available at Google Books [musical supplement not scanned correctly] & HU, Berlin; a new edition was published by Cotta in Germany 1834, available at Google Books) 
• A. F. Skjöldebrand, Voyage Pittoresque au Cap Nord, Cahier 1-4, Charles Deleen & J. G. Forsgren, Stockholm, 1801 & 1802 (available at Doria.fi & the Internet Archive)
• A. F. Skjöldebrand's Beschreibung der Wasserfälle und des Kanals von Trollhätta in Schweden und Reise nach dem Nordkap im Jahre 1799. Aus dem Französischen. Herausgegeben von T. F. Ehrmann, Weimar, 1805 (available at the Internet Archive) 
• A. F. Skjöldebrand, Picturesque Journey to the North Cape. Translated from the French, London, 1813 (available at the Internet Archive) 
• Seppo Saari, Sleep On, Sweet Bird: Strange Travels of an Ancient Finnish Folk Tune, in: College Music Symposium 49, 2009  
• Suomen Kansan eSävelmät - Digital Archive of Finnish Folk Tunes (University of Jyväskäla & SKS) 
• Twå Berättelser om Lapparnes Omwändelse Ifrån Deras fordna Widskeppelser, och Afguderi, Stockholm, 1773 (available at the Internet Archive) 
• Joachim Veit, Der junge Carl Maria von Weber. Untersuchungen zum Einfluß Franz Danzis und Abbé Georg Joseph Voglers, Mainz 1990 (online at Universität Paderborn, Digitale Sammlungen, urn:nbn:de:hbz:466:2-6908 ) 
• Patrick Vretblad, Abbé Vogler som Programmusiker, in: Svensk Tidskrift for Musikforskning 9, 1927, pp. 79-98 
• O. L. B. Wolff, Braga. Sammlung Österreichischer, Schweizerischer, Französischer, Englischer, Spanischer, Portugiesischer, Brasilianischer, Italienischer, Holländischer, Schwedischer, Dänischer, Russischer, Polnischer, Litthauischer, Finnischer, u. s. w. Volkslieder mit ihren ursprünglichen Melodien mit Klavierbegleitung u. unterlegter deutscher Uebersetzung, 14 Hefte, N. Simrock, Berlin/Bonn, n. d. [1835] (available at the Internet Archive & Google Books)