Robert Burns's Songs for George Thomson

During the last four years of his life Robert Burns worked tirelessly for two major Scottish song collections, James Johnson’s The Scots Musical Museum and George Thomson’s Select Collections of National Airs. An Edinburgh civil servant, Thomson’s masterplan was to create a repository of fine poetry with arrangements of national airs by the best of contemporary European composers, including Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven. For the first time since their original appearances, this new edition brings together the texts and musical settings of over 170 songs written, edited and collected by Burns for Thomson’s project. Its expansive introduction examines the poet/editor relationship in detail, presenting new information about their collaboration and the notes to each song provide detailed information on the creative context of each of Burns’s songs, their tunes and the musical settings Thomson chose to publish with them