Home Indexes Conclusion Statistical Summary Bibliography Profile Contact

The Music of Robert Louis Stevenson

Bach's Pentecostal Air

By J.F.M. Russell ©2019

Robert Louis Stevenson began studying the piano and composition at age 36 and learned the penny whistle two years later. He played the flageolet, a version of the whistle equipped with keys, almost until the end of his life. His arrangements and compositions include more than 120 pieces. This site describes his complete works through facsimiles, transcriptions, recordings, quotations and commentary.

"An interesting chapter in his life will be written when all his scattered pieces are brought together, and the musical side of his character unexpectedly revealed to the vast public that knows him now only as the winsome versifier and the accomplished romancer."

Robert Murrell Stevenson in Robert Louis Stevenson's Musical Interests, 1957.

Facsimiles:

Transcription:

Recording:

Manuscript Locations:

First facsimile:

National Library of Scotland MS.9756, f1.

Second and third facsimiles:

University of Rochester River Campus Libraries

Melodies for the flute by RLS, CX 22

Source:

Les classiques de l' enfance, v. 1, Braunschweig: Litolff:

Significant References in Works of R.L.S.:

Selected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson:

Booth, Bradford A. and Ernest Mehew. The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, v. 5:

Comments:

In the first letter, Stevenson mentions sending for Litolff's Classiques de l'Enfance, and he apparently received it because it's the source of this piece.

He has transposed his arrangement up a step so that the second part doesn't go below D. He and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne must have played this on D penny whistles. He has halved the note values of the original and provided a completely new and rather challenging second part.

The second and third facsimiles are from a much shorter solo arrangement of the piece.