Joseph Haydn; Folk Hero

​Joseph was an innovator and with this ability he was able to arrange folk music into his own musical form. His prolific arrangements of 550 Folk Songs demonstrates how he listened to the sounds that surrounded him and sympathetically converted those sounds into structured music, incorporating passages of folk music in his symphonies.

On his arrival in London in 1792 Haydn was greeted as a folk hero and acknowledged by the King for his prolific output of inspirational music that encompassed the thoughts of a community of people. The Scottish music publisher George Thompson seized on the opportunity and commissioned Haydn to arrange original folk music for Robbie Burn's poems.  One such song is "Green Grow the Rashes". 

​Green Grow the Rashes, Hob. XXXIa:8bis

Here is a modern version by folk singer Siobhan Miller