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The Music of Robert Louis Stevenson
Birks of Aberfeldy
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:
Solo part:
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Call Number: Manuscript Collection MS-4035
Series Works
Identifier Box 2, Folder 4
Finding Aid http://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadid=01015
File Name index.cpd
Piano and solo:
Huntington Library
HM 2397
Dick, James C. The Songs of Robert Burns. London: Frowde, 1903:
Significant References in Works of R.L.S.:
None.
Comments:
This is an arrangement of Burns' version of the Scottish folk song Now Simmer Blinks on Flow'ry Braes, also known as Birks of Aberfeldy (the birch trees of Aberfeldy, a forest in Perthshire).
The manuscript of the solo part follows almost exactly the printing in Songs of Scotland, while the solo part in the piano manuscript contains several inaccuracies in the melody. The transcription and recording use the printed version, which RLS transposed to the key of G.