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The Music of Robert Louis Stevenson

Old Dessau March

By J.F.M. Russell ©2020

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:

Yale University, Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Gen Mss 684

Box 1, Folder 36

Robert Louis Stevenson Collection

Series I. Major General and Mrs. John Ramsey Pugh gift

Writings [Music]; scores / 1887-1888

Source:

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

Comments:

The caption below the title of the ms. reads, "arranged for two D penny whistles by the Maestro Stevenson."

This is an unfinished piece, and there is no second part after the fourth bar. The first part continues but lacks the last four bars of the source. The second part is original. RLS probably wrote this in the spring of 1888 to play along with his stepson Lloyd.

RLS's music is in the key of D and appears to be adapted from the piano version in Bb found in E. Pauer's Märsche für das Pianoforte (Marches for Piano), which Stevenson probably owned. The evidence for this is that the Alte Dessauer Marsch (Old Dessauer March) is number 36 in Pauer's book while the Hohenfriedberger March, which RLS also arranged, is number 38, and so they are nearly adjacent. In addition, on the 27th of October 1887, Stevenson sent a letter to his wife's nephew Fred Thomas (1870-1962), a violinist, about music RLS was sending to Fred. The letter mentions a Gavotte Album by Pauer which is the companion book to his march album, so if he owned the one book, he probably also owned the other.

"Old Dessau" was a nickname for Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau.