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The Music of Robert Louis Stevenson
Statistical Summary
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.
Summary of Stevenson's Music
Robert Louis Stevenson would surely have been the first to complain about reducing his interest in music, "crystallized emotion", to statistics, but as a former engineering student he would have had at least some interest in the numbers.
An analysis of his more than 173 works shown in the spreadsheet below indicates that 101 are arrangements of other people's music, 49 are original works and 23 are settings of his poems to the music of others. He wrote or arranged 92 solos, 36 duets, 16 trios, 2 quartets and 4 accompanied solos. Schubert was his favorite composer, followed by Schumann and Beethoven.
At least 63 works are for solo flageolet, 27 are flageolet or penny whistle duets, 24 are for flageolet and another instrument, 11 are for piano alone or with another instrument, and 32 are for voice alone or with another instrument.
38 works are in G major, 27 works in A major, 24 in C major, and 19 in D major.
His works are mostly undated, but as best as can be determined from documentation or the appearance of his manuscripts, his approximate yearly production was:
- 1886 (5)
- 1887 (8)
- 1888 (24)
- 1889 (44)
- 1890 (4)
- 1891 (46)
- 1892 (16)
89 of these works are mentioned in some way in his writings.
13 works were derived from music of Schubert, 10 works were taken from Brown and Pittman's collection Songs of Scotland, 8 were derived from music of Schumann, and 7 were taken from Weckerlin's Échos du Temps Passé .
His longest original composition (Gigue) is 80 measures. 24 works are 16 measures long, 14 are 24 measures, 13 are 12 measures, and 14 are 8 measures long.
The largest number of his manuscripts are at the Yale University Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library (60), Washington St. Louis (20), Library of Congress (17), Huntington (14), Rochester (14), and Stevenson House (11).
