Bernard Chasan replies to me: >>When Beethoven and Haydn arrange British folk songs, do they >>change from classical to popular? > >And the answer is- of course he changed. But from classical to popular? >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. Sure, but I'm not certain that it was a classical/popular distinction in its later sense. Beethoven did distinguish between music for the public and music for the connoisseurs. He felt that his Grosse Fuge had one audience and that his music for Die Ruinen von Athens had another. But he *never* considered himself a pop artist. Indeed, he got angry when something of the sort was suggested. >Which does not make the settings inferior- just small scale. True enough. Now, consider the case of Johann Strauss II. It seems to me here the line becomes even more blurred. Brahms, after all, loved Strauss's music and, for all I know, may have modeled certain of his works on them. Strauss is obviously not a folk musician. He *is* popular, but he also knows more music than he needs to in order to write a waltz, and this shows in his works. Steve Schwartz