Shoehorn

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The Music of Robert Louis Stevenson

The Shoehorn

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:

Sketch:

Transcriptions:

Sketch:

Recording:

Manuscript Locations:

Original manuscript:

Princeton University Library

Morris L. Parrish Collection

Box/Series/Folder/Thesis #: Bd MSS 113, 114

Code/Call Number #: C0171 1B

Photocopy of original:

CSU East Bay Libraries

Sketch:

Washington University in St. Louis Libraries

Box/folder 16/140

Source:

It is hard to believe that Schubert is not the model here, perhaps this Eccosaise (D. 299, no. 3):

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

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

The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, 1896, via google books.

Comments:

The title reads in full, "The Shoehorn: simple and refreshing movement in C by the Maestro Stevenson.” The Maestro's pen must have slipped on the letter C, since clearly the piece is in G. Below the staves is a musical analysis which begins correctly in the key of G, although again the G looks like a C.

Text at the side of the manuscript reads, "Strange fault in writing", referring to a similar motive down a second and circled.

Text at the bottom of the page reads, "A. Can one introduce the seventh thus without the fifth? Anyway it is 'quitted' by a second."

In the essay Rosa quo locorum RLS describes a childhood memory of a Bible picture with Samuel anointing Saul using a shoehorn instead of a vessel, as a result of a jest his father made. The title of this music clearly refers to the "divine refreshment" of that anointing.

The note at the very bottom of the letter to Una Taylor says that the piece Stevenson is using to play composer is Shoehorn, so it dates from 1887. He says this is his second attempt, so it is opus 2. Threnody was opus 1, as he claims in another letter. At the bottom of letter 1674 above, a note says, "Op. 2: Scherzo (in G major) ... to come". Shoehorn is indeed in G major, is also a scherzo, is Stevenson's second attempt and therefore is his opus 2.

Unfortunately the proposed works in the remaining keys were apparently never written.

In "A gossip on a novel of Dumas’s" in Memories and Portraits, Stevenson says, "How often I have read Guy Mannering, Rob Roy, or Redgauntlet, I have no means of guessing, having begun young." In Guy Mannering, Sir Walter Scott writes, "This, and some other desultory conversation, served as a 'shoeing-horn' to draw on another cup of ale and another cheerer, as Dinmont termed it in his country phrase, of brandy and water.”

The original manuscript at Princeton is bound together with the letters to Una Taylor in a volume titled Robert Louis Stevenson as a Musician. It contains the bookplates of Henry E. Gerstley and Jerome Kern. Stevenson’s score and marginal notes are transcribed in handsome calligraphy.