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The Music of Robert Louis Stevenson
The Bonnie House of Airlie
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.
Facsimile:
Transcription:
Recording:
Manuscript Location:
Washington University in St. Louis Libraries
Register of the William Keeney Bixby Papers (WTU00013)
Box/folder 16/140
Source:
Brown & Pittman. Songs of Scotland. London: Boosey, [1877].
Significant References in Works of R.L.S.:
Comments:
Stevenson leaves some dotted-eighth-sixteenth-note rhythms as equal eighth notes, and sets his version in the key of C, which makes the highest note two lines above the staff. The high range of his version suggests that either he was trying to learn the upper range of the flageolet, or it was intended for some other instrument.
He knows he has made a mistake in the second full bar, because there is an ink blot on the page, but his correction is wrong. The next to the last note in the measure should be G, not F.