Tempest Tossed

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The Music of Robert Louis Stevenson

Tempest Tossed

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 664Box 43, Folder 962, no. 6962

Sources:

Beethoven, Sechs Leichte Variationen, W o O 77:

Beethoven. Symphony no. 9, IV, via IMSLP:

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

Child's Garden, Underwoods, Ballads, New Poems. New York: Scribner's, 1922 via google books:

Stevenson's complete text for the music as it appears in the ms.:

Tempest tossed and sore afflicted, sin defiled and care oppressed,

Come to me all ye that labour, come, and I will give ye rest.

Weary some, your watch is nearly over. Doubting heart, 'tis help is at the door:

Lo, the voice of your redeemer, lo, the songful morning near.

Here one hour ye toil and combat, sin and suffer, bleed and die,

In my father's quiet mansions, soon to lay your burthen by,

Weary soul, the night is nearly over; doubting heart, the day [?]

Lo, the feet of your deliverer, lo the hour of freedom nigh.

Booth, Bradford A. and Ernest Mehew. Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Letters 1962, 1971, Dec. 1887:

Comments:

The first published version of the words for Tempest Tossed appears in George Hellman’s 1916 Bibliophile edition as one of the poems of uncertain date:

Hellman says that Stevenson wrote four titles at the top of the ms.: Starry Evening, Adieu, Du Bist and Ständchen and claims these are poems by Heine. He mentions this to point out the German influence on RLS in poems he wrote in the 70’s. However, Stevenson wrote down the four titles not because they were poems by Heine, but because they are all music by one of Stevenson’s favorite composers, Schubert. Starry Evening is probably Nachthelle, op. 134 and uses a poem by Seidl. Adieu is probably Abschied from Schwanengesang, with lyrics by Rellstab, although there is also a melody attributed to Schubert called Adieu. Du bist die Ruh is Schubert’s op. 59, no. 3, on a poem by Rückert, and the famous Ständchen is also from Schwanengesang, with lyrics by Rellstab. Stevenson arranged Du bist die Ruh for flageolet and also arranged two other songs from Schwanengesang not on Hellman’s list, Ihr Bild and Liebesbotschaft.

Hellman seems to imply that Tempest Tossed was written in the 70’s. However, in Booth letter 1962 from December 6, 1887 Stevenson asks Henley to send him Beethoven’s variations, but then decides he can get them himself in Saranac, where he was at the time. On December 18 he writes in letter 1971 to Ida and Una Taylor that he likes putting words to music and that “my last attempt is the divine theme of Beethoven’s six variations faciles.” So apparently Stevenson had finished the poem and the musical setting between December 6th and December 18th, 1887.

In From Saranac to the Marquesas and Beyond, Stevenson’s mother Margaret writes in her entry covering the period from November 19th, 1887 through January 13th, 1888 that Lou “was busy all last Sunday afternoon arranging the words ‘Come unto me, all ye that labour’, etc. to an air of Beethoven’s.” “Come to me, all ye that labour” is part of the second line of Tempest Tossed and comes from Matthew 11:28-29.

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Between December 6th and the 18th there is only one Sunday, the 11th. So the major work on the poem must have been done on Sunday, December 11, 1887 and was certainly finished by the 18th. Margaret’s statement that RLS “was busy all last Sunday afternoon” suggests a solution to another problem. On December 6th, Stevenson didn’t have the music but by December 11th he did. It seems unlikely that he would have been able to write to New York for the music and get it back in less than five days, although the train depot in Saranac was opened on December 5th. More probably Stevenson went to church on the morning of Sunday the 11th, got the music from the organist, and started work on it that afternoon.

Margaret confides in the same entry that the song said nothing to her, but that Louis was anxious to have it sung in church. Certainly if it had been sung on December 18th he would have mentioned it in his letter to Ida and Una, but he doesn’t. The next Sunday after the 18th would of course have been Christmas, so he may have intended all along to have it performed at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Saranac on Christmas day.

That Hellman is right about a German influence is shown by the fact that Stevenson has apparently patterned Tempest Tossed directly on Schiller’s An die Freude, which Beethoven used in the “Ode to Joy” chorus of the last movement of the 9th Symphony. The two works scan very closely:

Freu-de, schön--er Göt--terfunken Toch-ter aus E-----li----sium,

Tem-pest tossed and sore afflicted, sin de-filed and care oppressed,

Wir betreten feu-er--trunken, Himm-lische, dein Heil--ig--tum!

Come to me all ye that labour, come, and I will give ye rest.

Tempest Tossed hardly counts as either an original composition or an arrangement by Stevenson. He shows his great respect for Beethoven by only altering the 32nd notes in the first full measure to sixteenths, making the song more musical, and changing the notation from piano to vocal style. The dot on the eighth note should have been left out. Otherwise Stevenson has meticulously copied the original piano score, inserting his own words in between.