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The Music of Robert Louis Stevenson
Carnival of Venice
(and song settings for O Pilot! and To the Muse)
By J.F.M. Russell ©2022
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:
Recordings:
Arranged as an instrumental trio:
Arranged as the song To the Muse:
Arranged as the humorous song O Pilot!
Manuscript Locations:
First facsimile:
William Doyle Galleries, lot 181, auction 09/30/2020
Second facsimile:
Yale University Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Stevenson Library of E.L. Beinecke 6599
Third facsimile:
Library of Congress
ML96 .S895 Case
Sources:
moore oh come to me carnival another.pdfSignificant References in Works of R.L.S.:
Comments:
Influence of Thomas Moore and Thomas Haynes Bayly
In a letter from Saranac, New York, December 6, 1887 to his friend Henley, Stevenson wrote, "I wish if you came across any very good airs, without good words, you would send them to me; the notes only, not the words, as I now spend my spare hours setting words to music." Among the airs Stevenson used were many from songs by the Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779-1852) and included Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms, Brown Maid , Harp that once, Lass of Richmond Hill and others.
Thomas Moore wrote in his journal on December 12, 1819, "Went to Galignani and read the newspapers. Dined at Beauvilliers', and went afterwards to the Opera : my old acquaintance, the Carnival de Venise." Moore was probably referring to the Opéra Théâtre des Arts, where Louis-Luc Loiseau de Persuis (1769-1819) conducted from 1817-1819. Persuis was also a composer and along with Rodolphe Kreutzer (1766-1831) wrote a ballet, not an opera, called Carnaval de Venise (1816) which contains the famous tune. Moore was so fond of his "old acquaintance" that he wrote a poem to its melody:
Oh, then’s the hour for those who love,Sweet, like thee and me;When all’s so calm below, above,In Heaven and o’er the sea.When maiden’s sing sweet barcarolles,And Echo sings againSo sweet, that all with ears and soulsShould love and listen then.So, come to me when daylight sets;Sweet! then come to me,When smoothly go our gondoletsO’er the moonlight sea.
The poem was published in Moore’s Selection of Popular National Airs (London: J. Power, 1818) and set to Sir John Stevenson's (1761-1833) arrangement of the melody Carnival of Venice. The score for Oh Come to Me appears in the Source section above in two versions. The first is the 1818 printing from National Airs, and below that is a pdf of an edition of the song alone published in Australia in 1855. That arrangement is the same as the 1818 work and is merely a separate reprint.
Oh, Come to Me is generally in iambic tetrameter (ta tum ta tum ta tum ta tum), as is the musical rhythm of Carnival of Venice, and so it and all the poems discussed below work as lyrics for the same tune.
Thomas Moore also wrote a poem called My Heart and Lute:
An Ironic Response
That poem is also in iambic tetrameter, and Sarah Scudgell Wilkinson (1779-1831) took advantage of this fact to set her ironic poem A Bachelor’s (Lady’s) Answer to My Heart and Lute (1820?) to Carnival of Venice:
Stevenson's Carnival of Venice Settings
It is unknown whether RLS was aware of Wilkinson's arrangement, but he himself produced a similar parody.
He owned the Poetical Works of Thomas Moore (London: Warne, 1872?), which contained only texts but no music, and so may have known the poem Oh Come to Me. Apparently RLS did not consider Moore's words to the tune to be very good and perhaps copied the melody directly from Sir John's arrangement with the intention of writing better ones. In fact, at least five of RLS's poems fit with the tune, including She Rested by the Broken Brook, Madrigal, You Looked So Tempting in the Pew, To Harriet Baker, and O Pilot! In Booth-Mehew letter 2211 (February or March 1890) RLS said that he had around a thousand verses ready for Songs of Travel, and that “a good many of these are to music”. Carnival of Venice is probably one of the melodies he set. It is especially appropriate for O Pilot!, although it is not included in the posthumous publication of Songs of Travel.
Letter 2328 to Henry Clay Ide (June 19, 1891) contains the document in which RLS gives his birthday (November 13) to Ide’s daughter Anne, who was born on Christmas Day. In it he mentions Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797-1839), who wrote the following poem:
In Booth-Mehew letter 2178, shown above, RLS writes in June 1889 from Honolulu that his family band will give a concert and a lantern show. He says, "We shall give them several Hawaiian songs, Freut euch des Lebens, Il segretto, Carnival of Venice, Nights of Seville, etc.; and if the natives are not pleased, you bet the performers will enjoy themselves." This implies that his MS of Carnival was ready by June, 1889.
RLS left Honolulu on June 24 in the schooner Equator, bound for the Gilbert Islands. Bad weather during that journey may have inspired him to write the following poem:
O pilot! ‘tis a fearful night,
And I am fearful too;
The billows are a bloody height,
The vessel far from new,
You strike me as a trifle tight,
The Captain’s worse than you,
I’m sure there’s nothing really right
In either ship or crew.
RLS's MS of the music to Carnival is not the same as Wilkinson's, so he apparently did not know it. However, it is almost exactly the same as the melody in Moore's publication, and RLS's comic lyrics fit perfectly:
Music suggesting the image of a gondola gently undulating on the peaceful waters of a Venetian canal, in contrast to the violent heaving of the Equator in a sudden storm, must have appealed to RLS's sense of irony.
Another Setting of Carnival
O Pilot! was probably written in December of 1889, but apparently it was not Stevenson’s first or only setting of his own lyrics to the Carnival melody. The Equator arrived at Apemama in the Gilbert Islands on the 30th of August and Stevenson stayed there until October 25th, while Captain Reid made some trading expeditions elsewhere. At Apemama, Stevenson befriended the ruling King Tembinok', tyrant, poet, trader and historian, who provided Stevenson with housing and a cook who was unfortunately lazy and incompetent. Stevenson complained of this to the King, Stevenson’s living quarters were made tabu and for a time the cook vanished.
One evening Stevenson strolled on the beach while playing his flageolet and enjoying his beautiful surroundings. When he returned, his wife Fanny asked,
who it was that followed me, I thought she spoke in jest. “Not at all,” she said, “I saw him twice as you passed, walking close at your heels. He only left you at the corner of the maniap’; he must be still behind the cook-house.” Thither I ran -like a fool, without any weapon—and came face to face with the cook. He was within my tapu-line, which was death in itself; he could have no business there at such an hour but either to steal or to kill; guilt made him timorous; and he turned and fled before me in the night in silence. As he went, I kicked him in that place where honour lies, and he gave tongue faintly like an injured mouse. At the moment I daresay he supposed it was a deadly instrument that touched him. What had the man been after? I have found my music better qualified to scatter than to collect an audience. Amateur as I was, I could not suppose him interested in my reading of the Carnival of Venice, or that he would deny himself his natural rest to follow my variations on The Ploughboy.
In the 1896 edition of Stevenson’s works several poems written during his South Sea journeys were grouped together, beginning with To an Island Princess (XXIX, Tahiti, 1888) and ending with Evensong (XLVI, Vailima). Within this group are four poems with captions stating they were written in Apemama; To the Muse (XXVIII), To my old Familiars (XXXV), The Tropics Vanish (XXXVI) and To S.C. (XXXVII). Of these four, only To the Muse is in iambic tetrameter. As a result, its lyrics fit perfectly with the melody of Carnival of Venice.
To the Muse is preceded by five poems previously identified with music; Vagabond, We have lived and loved, Ditty, To the tune of Wandering Willie, and Stormy Evening. This proximity to other South Sea poems set to music indicates that To the Muse may also have been intended as lyrics, while the anecdote of the cook suggests that the intended music was Carnival of Venice.
To the Muse enjoins us to be true to ourselves, keep art simple and leave large works to those who are able. Stevenson’s words are in ironic contrast to the actual practice of the Venetian Carnival, where people originally wore elaborate masks of leather, porcelain or glass to hide their identities.
Music for Shell Ocarina
Stevenson's instrumental arrangement of Carnival is for a trio of two flageolets (or transverse flute and flageolet) and shell ocarina. He can be seen playing flageolet in the image at the top of this page. His Drink to me, Garb of Old Gaul, and The Winter it is Past also contain parts for shell ocarina.
Although the two top parts are marked only for "fl." (flute or flageolet), it is likely that the first part was played by Joe Strong on transverse flute with RLS on flageolet and Lloyd on the ocarina. The accompanying parts are by RLS.
Stevenson's Source for the Carnival Melody
Besides the Sir John Stevenson arrangement in Moore’s National Airs, and Sarah Wilkinson’s parody, there were many different arrangements of Carnival of Venice in the 19th century, the most famous probably being that of the violin virtuoso Paganini (1829).
Rather than Paganini's version, Sir John Stevenson’s arrangement appears to be RLS’s source, based on many similarities and especially on one particular measure in the ms. Below is a comparison between that one highlighted measure and the same in Paganini and in Moore’s version of Oh come to me in National Airs.
The highlighted part of the MS twice shows the sequence of notes D#, E, D natural. The highlighted part of Oh come to me shows the same sequence in the key of F as B natural, C, Bb. Oh come to me is in the key of F and the MS is in the key of A, so, transposing from F to A the sequence becomes the same. In addition, the same sequence in both arrangements starts on the first beat of the measure and is in the same rhythm.
In Paganini, the sequence appears twice as E, D#, E and begins just before the second beat of the measure. So Paganini is notably different than RLS, while Oh come to me is exactly the same.
In addition, the same sequence and rhythm that RLS and Oh come to me use is also in the 1820 piano arrangement of the Kreutzer/Persuis Carnaval. The untitled piece is in the key of G, and the sequence in the highlighted sections is C#, D, C natural.
Other 19th century versions of Carnival (1853, 1879) contain this same sequence but differ more considerably from RLS in other ways than does Oh come to me.
Below is a line by line comparison of RLS's version transposed to the key of F with the 1855 Australian version of Oh come to me in the same key. Differences in pitches are highlighted in yellow. Differences in repeated notes, note length at the end of phrases and style of notation are not highlighted since they are not altered pitches. There are only five rather minor alterations.
It seems clear that RLS's MS is based on Sir John Stevenson's arrangement in Moore's National Airs, and probably even on the separate 1855 Australian edition of the song.
Below is a line by line comparison of Oh come to me transposed to the key of G with the 1820 piano version of the ballet in the same key. Differences in pitches are highlighted in yellow. Differences in style of notation and octave placement are not highlighted since they are not pitch changes. Because the ballet is a piano version it contains additional harmony notes below the melody that are not in Moore's song version. There are only two minor differences.
Because of the short amount of time between the composition of the ballet (1816) and the publication of Moore's National Airs (1818), as well as Moore's stated "old acquaintance" with the work, as well as the many similarities between the two, it seems probable that Sir John Stevenson based his arrangement on some version of the Kreutzer/Persuis ballet Carnaval.