The Bard's a songwriter for all that

IT WAS ROBERT BURNS HIMSELF WHO ONCE observed: "Those who think that composing a Scotch song is a trifling business - let them try." The Ayrshire poet was a master of the craft, but while old favourites such as Ae Fond Kiss and Auld Lang Syne sound out yet again over the seasonal plop of eviscerated haggises, the magnitude of our national bard's achievement as a songsmith tends to remain under-appreciated.

It's fair to argue that even if he had never written a stroke of poetry, Scotland would still be hugely in Burns's debt for his indefatigable songwriting and collecting activities, sometimes dismissed as somehow less "serious" than his poetry, but which not only left us a rich legacy of songs, but rescued an incalculable heritage of traditional material which otherwise may well have disappeared.

One only has to listen to the free CD in today's Scotsman to appreciate the artistry of Burns the songwriter. Remarkable enough, if he had confined his output to an egalitarian anthem as stirring as A Man's a Man, matched words to melody as eloquently as in Ae Fond Kiss or, in Auld Lang Syne, composed a song so widely known that its lyrics are churned into linguistic mincemeat the world over. But during his short life Burns wrote, collected and reconstructed more than 360 songs, leaving a legacy of fine lyrics and preserving a wealth of traditional music.

Not a composer of music as such, Burns did play the fiddle and was immersed in his native traditional music and song - as well as being aware of the contemporary fiddle and "art music" composers of the time. He also had a finely tuned ear that could seamlessly stitch his own or other lyrics to the pre-existing tunes he used for them.

"Untill I am compleat master of a tune, in my own singing (such as it is), I never can compose for it," he wrote in 1793. Popular fiddle strathspeys and reels of the day, Lowland pipe jigs which might otherwise have become as defunct as the recently revived Border pipes they were played upon, even Gaelic airs ... all were seized upon by Burns, who may well have been quite conscious that, amid a fast-changing 18th-century society, he was giving them a new lease of life.

Take, for instance, My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose, beautifully sung on the sampler by the late Davy Steele. The tune widely associated with it today, as sung on the disc, is a somewhat altered version of that originally employed by Burns, who chose a slowed-down version of the popular strathspey Major Graham of Inchbrackie, now being taken up again by some of today's singers. As Thomas Crawford writes in his definitive Burns: A Study of the Poems and Songs: "A Red, Red Rose is a lyric of genius, made out of the common inherited material of folk song by an author whose name we happen to know." On the other hand, Auld Lang Syne is sung on the CD by the remaining Corrie member, Ronnie Browne, to Burns's original tune - which, again, is regaining its popularity.

"It tends to be only a select two dozen songs that have lasted in common currency," says Dr Fred Freeman, musical director for Linn Records' Complete Songs Of Robert Burns series, which recruited some of Scotland's finest traditional musicians to record all the songs, from which today's sampler is taken. "The rest went underground, but Burns felt a lot of them were better, and I feel they're better, than those that are well-known."

Freeman, in fact, regards Burns primarily as a songwriter: "He wrote many more songs than he did poems, after all. In a way, he saved a whole instrumental tradition via the songs but he did more than save it, he elaborated on it and embellished it."

Freeman argues that Burns unified Scotland, culturally, through his extensive collecting: "He went to the Borders and collected the old double-hornpipes; he went into Gaelic-speaking areas for many tunes, he drew upon the North-East tradition from his father's Kincardineshire background, and he knew the great fiddlers like Gow."

Just as Burns's reputation has been hijacked since his death by everyone from republicans to loyalists, folkies to freemasons, so his songs have weathered all manner of treatment, from trilling sopranos to Red Army choirs, not to mention some incongruous settings by Haydn and Beethoven, commissioned by the Edinburgh music publisher George Thomson. Thomson's gentrifying ways didn't sit easily with Burns, who disagreed with the publisher's favouring of English, rather than Scots, lyrics. "These English songs gravel me to death," Burns wrote. "I have not that command of the language that I have of my native tongue ... I have been at Duncan Gray to dress it in English, but all that I can do is deplorably stupid ..."

He enjoyed a happier relationship with another publisher, James Johnson, with whom he co-edited three volumes of the Scots Musical Museum, a fruitful partnership curtailed only by the poet's death in 1796. Unlike the compulsively "improving" Thomson, Johnson was happy to accept as much as Burns could provide, and without any alteration of words.

The current folk revival embraced Burns songs with gusto, retrieving them from the hands-clasped-to-the-bosom formality or whisky-fuelled lachrymosity with which they were too often rendered. Other projects have attempted to do justice to Burns's legacy, notably folk singer Jean Redpath's collaborations with the extraordinary American composer Serge Hovey.

Another development has been the "authentic early music" approach taken by the likes of composer and author David Johnson, in two Art of Robert Burns CDs on the Scotstown label, which restored the songs, albeit with vigour and musicality, to the 18th-century salon. Johnson, an authority on 18th-century Scottish music, agrees that the enduring nature of Burns's songs is at least partly due to his ear for a good tune. "The words are wonderful, but they do also depend on his selection of tunes, and he certainly knew his way round an awful lot of popular tunes, and indeed, a certain amount of 'art music' as well."

Johnson reckons changing attitudes are bringing fresh approaches to Burns's legacy. "One is what's happening to traditional music in Scotland at the moment - the folk revival approach, rather than the older, more oral and traditional folk," he says. "And the other angle, the one I'm involved in, is the developments in authentic baroque performance and editing, which, again, present a completely new window on Burns." And whatever creative tensions there may be between today's "folk" and "classical" approaches, he adds, "they simply reflect tensions and contradictions within Burns himself".

Whatever the approach, the universal appeal of Burns's songs remains undiminished, as it was a century and a half ago in 1859 when, at a centenary celebration in Boston, the American philosopher-poet Ralph Waldo Emerson was moved to versify: "His was the music to whose tone / The common pulse of man keeps time."

Burns might have put it more pithily.

The Music of Burns CD, which is given away free with today's Critique, is produced in association with Linn Records. This vibrant selection of seven of the Bard's songs just scratches the surface of some 365 verses. For more information and to purchase additional Burns music visit the website, at www.linnrecords.com or tel: [phone] during office hours, 8:30am - 4:30pm.