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The Music of Robert Louis Stevenson

Song of the Road

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.


Setting:

Recording:

Manuscript Location:

There is probably no music manuscript by Stevenson for this work.

Sources:

Gay, John, Beggar's Opera. London: Printed for J. and R. Tonson, 1765:

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

The Novels and Tales of Robert Louis Stevenson, via Google books, New York: Scribner's, 1895:

Booth, Bradford A. and Ernest Mehew. Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Letter 115:

Comments:

That A Song of the Road was probably written to the music of Over the Hills and Far Away is no surprise, since the poem itself names the song in the fourth and last lines. The only question is which version Stevenson used. One of the earliest appearances of the music in print is in the Beggar's Opera (1728), and Stevenson's reference from the opera in his letter to J.M. Barrie shows, as expected, that he was familiar at least with its text. Yet even if he had seen the music for it, it is unlikely he would have known what to do with it, since the poem was written in 1878 and he only learned to read music in 1886.

Knowing that Stevenson loved Jacobite songs both solves the problem of what melody he used, and how he fit the words to the music without being able to read it. The Jacobite version of Over the Hills and Far Away appears in 1819 in Hogg's Jacobite Relics of Scotland as Over the Seas and Far Away. The syllabification of Stevenson's poem is in lockstep with the Jacobite lyrics, as can be seen in the comparison below. Even the words "and", "but" and "away" appear in the same positions:

Though Stevenson surely knew the Jacobite melody, he must have used the words of Over the Seas and Far Away as his pattern, and had no need to follow the music. It is also clear that his model was not the version in the Beggar's Opera nor Walter Crane's similar transposition in the Baby's Opera which deletes four bars from the second section. Both of these lack the important eighth note pick-ups necessary for the initial unstressed syllables that begin each line. Using either the Beggar's Opera or Baby's Opera version of the melody would require the poem to be in a very awkward trochaic quadrameter rather than the iambic RLS uses.

The poetic form of Over the Seas is ABCBDBEBFB, using five different stanzas alternating with a fixed refrain. The poetic form of Song of the Road is seven different stanzas without any refrain. The musical form of the Over the Seas is two sections repeated five times, AB:||. Each new stanza is sung to the music of the first section, while the fixed refrain is always sung to the second section. When Song of the Road is sung to the music of Over the Seas, the first stanza is sung to the first musical section, the second stanza is sung to the second musical section, then the third stanza is sung to the first section again, and the fourth stanza is sung to the second section, and so on. If Stevenson had devised a refrain for his poem in the same way as Over the Seas, Song of the Road would have extended to 13 stanzas, which probably would have been over long. Since the effect of a refrain is to continually return "home", it would also have been opposed to Stevenson's theme that to travel is better than to arrive. Because both the first and last stanzas of Song of the Road end with the same text, "Over the Seas and Far Away", doing away with the refrain and using the musical form ABABABA has the fortunate effect of ending the song with the same music it began and to the same words, imparting a circular nature consistent with the meaning.

In speaking of the Skye Boat Song, which Stevenson also arranged with new words, he noted that, "This is a real Scotch air; no fourth or seventh; it has not been doctored." This also applies to the first section of Over the Seas and may account for Stevenson's choice of this music. A scale without a 4th or 7th is pentatonic, a common characteristic of many folk songs. The verse of Over the Seas is also pentatonic, although the refrain is not.

Stevenson may have been inspired to write his version of the song by Walter Crane's Baby's Opera (1875), which contains Over the Hills and Far Away. He knew Crane from the Savile Club, and of course Crane did illustrations for Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey. Other evidence of Crane's influence can be assumed from the fact that in 1879 Crane published a book of popular melody and rhyme called Pan Pipes. Panpipes are a different flute, but Stevenson's original title for Child's Garden of Verses (1883) was Penny Whistles.

He explains the background story of the Gauger in the "Pentland Hills" section of Edinburgh, Picturesque Notes (1878). Stevenson's use of the phrase "Over the hills and far away" in his letter from 1872 and Deacon Brodie suggests his early familiarity with the song. Richard Dury points out that the poem itself does not retell the Gauger's story, but recasts him as a carefree wanderer, rather than as someone with a definite aim in life.