Bernard Chasan to Steve Schwartz's question: >>When Beethoven and Haydn arrange British folk songs, do they >>change from classical to popular? > >And the answer is- of course he changed. I assume that when Beethoven >wrote a string quartet or a symphony his approach and his intent was quite >different from his approach to his song settings. Which does not make the >settings inferior- just small scale. I would response the opposite way. The fact itself that those songs need to be arranged proves that Beethoven was working there on a product especially modified for his own social class (and/or higher). Any of Beethoven's work came to us from oral tradition (that would surely happened if Beethoven would ever change from classic to popular:-) Pablo Massa [log in to unmask]