Ronald Stevenson
A lecture by Anna-Wendy Stevenson delivered at The Swannanoa Gathering, Warren Wilson College, North Carolina July 2005.
I’m going to talk about the music – mainly the song settings of my grandfather who is a composer and pianist and still alive today. Having spent a good portion of my childhood with my grandparents, it has been and still is a privilege of mine to make music and be educated by him. He is now in his 78th year and still composing and occasionally performing. He has had a remarkable life of performance, composing and correspondence. His letters to and from people like Sibelius, Yehudi Menhuin, Percy Grainger to mention a few have been collected by the National Library of Scotland and are educational and inspiring sources of information. Granddad’s works have been performed and recorded by different orchestras, groups and soloists all over the world. His Passacaglia for piano an epic piece of 80 minutes and dedicated to Shostakovitch is probably his most famous and most recorded work. Now his song settings are becoming popular with choirs and ensembles with some having been recorded in the past few years. Yehudi Menhuin commissioned and conducted his Violin Concerto in 1992. Yehudi was a big fan of Scottish music and my grandfather and Yehudi shared a great deal of mutual admiration as correspondence will testify.
To celebrate his 60th birthday the National Library of Scotland ran an exhibition on his life and work and also published a biography written by Malcolm MacDonald. This is one of several books written about his life and music. I particularly like this book – it’s personal and informative and explains succinctly on the back cover
“ He is a virtuoso pianist-composer in the grand tradition of Liszt and Busoni. Working in Scotland, and of Scottish ancestry, he is deeply concerned with Scotland’s musical and cultural identity – yet his range of reference is worldwide and multicultural. His music draws inspiration from folk- music and art- music of many periods; from art and literature and current affairs; from his Lancashire childhood in the Depression and the ecological concerns of the present day.”
The things that granddad values most in music are expression and melody. Marry that with his love for poetry and the human voice and we have the elements for inspired song setting. What he loves about poetry is the potential for distilled expression and ideas. Since the age of 17 he has composed and arranged settings of about 300 songs. He is probably one of the most prolific British song composers since Benjamin Britten. Many of these songs are from the poetry of Scottish poets – including Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Scott, William Souter, and the Gaelic poetry of Sorely MacLean, the traditional folk songs from the Hebrides, and the more modern poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid.
From his earliest memories, song was special. He was brought up in Blackburn, Lancashire. His father had a beautiful tenor voice and encouraged him to play the piano in order to get some free accompaniment. They lived in a pretty poor house, yet worked hard and saved. One day my greatfrandfather put his savings into buying a piano for my grandfather to learn on. His father loved the singing of Richard Tauber, and the Irish Tenor John McCormick and loved the Irish and Scottish melodies that reminded him of his own heritage – his roots were in Kilmarnock in Scotland. This love of Irish and Scottish song was passed on and Granddad developed a love of Scotland and many things Scottish. Whilst at music college in Manchester, Granddad would walk up the Darwen Moors with a book of Burns or Walter Scott poetry under his arm. His first song setting was The Violet by Walter Scott. After leaving college, because he was a consciencious objector, he refused to do national service. He agreed to do land work, but first he had to serve a prison sentence. Whilst working on the land he set four of William Blake’s 19 songs of Innocence and dedicated them to his girlfriend – now my grandmother for her 16th birthday. Granddad loves to point out how it would not be a cool present for a young man in love today to gift as a birthday present. After serving his time in prison, Ronald taught in Boldon Colliery School in the North East of England where he started a brass band for the boys in the school. There he became aware of the local folksong. It reminded him of Scotland.
In 1952 he moved to Edinburgh before settling in the village of West Linton in the borders.
Edinburgh’s was and still is a great meeting place for artists, writers and musicians. Just like there are session pubs in Edinburgh, there are a few places frequented by writers and poets – where they have talking sessions – Milnes bar and the Café Royal. There Granddad met the likes of Sorely MacLean, Hamish Henderson, and Hugh MacDiarmid. Actually Granddad first met Hugh MacDairmid on the bus to Biggar traveling home to West Linton. Hugh MacDiarmid wrote many great books of poetry as well as translating the epic poem Ben Dorain from Gaelic into English. One of MacDiarmid’s most simple and beautiful poems is a song called A’e Gowden Lyric – the lyrics speak of the supremecy of lyric poetry. This poem Ronald set to music and has become something of a classic
“Better Ae Gowden Lyric than the castle’s soaring wa; Better Ae Gowden Lyric than onything else ava”
The melody follows the words – with a big leap for the soaring part which makes it a difficult yet stunning piece to sing. It has been transcribed for various instruments to play.
A great friend and folk song collector was the late Margaret Fay Shaw. She produced a wonderful book: “Folksongs and Folklore of South Uist”. An amazing and feisty American woman who learned Gaelic and lived on the Isle of Canna with her husband the Gaelic scholar John Lorne Campbell. In 1956 Granny gifted this book to my grandfather who promptly set some of her songs to music. What is interesting about these songs is the way in which granddad set them. In the cd notes it says:
“Ideally the best way is for the folksong to remain unharmonised. Otherwise, there are really only two ways of harmonizing a folksong. The first is to use only harmony derived from the notes of the melody. This is the method used by Kodaly. It is like allowing a plant to grow in its own kind of soil. This treatment is used through the South Uist Folksong Suite, Miss Campbell of Saddell (track15) and Hard is my Fate (track 16).
The other way is to use harmony notes which are not in the melody. This is the method used by Percy Grainger who did not restrict himself to the Kodaly concept but harmonised the melody freely and chromatically. This is a kind of replanting or transplanting. I am interested in both ways”
I will play the tired mother’s lullaby 11
Witching song for the milking Track 7
Also hard is my fate track 17
One of granddad’s great inspirations has been the work and life of Percy Grainger – an Australian composer and pianist, musicologist and folk music collector. He founded the Grainger museum at Melbourne University, a unique archive of folk music and 20th century Australian, British, American and Scandinavian music. He was an eccentric who lived in America, was vegetarian, teetotal, non-smoker and a lover of the open road. He was a Mowgli-spirit in the world of music; his only eccentricity, his perfect naturalness. Percy visited Scotland and records his impressions of the soul-shaking hill – scapes of Western Argyllshire. Here is an example of a Grainger Stevenson transcription of a song for piano “will ye gang to the Hielands, leezie Lindsay. The aim that both Grainger and granddad had were to let each voice sing – not just to have a melody and an accompaniment. You should be able to hear different character and voices within this piece.
I’m going to play you a song setting of the late poet Sorely MacLean’s “Shores” poem – recorded by Susan Hamilton on the Delphian record label CD entitled: A’e Gowden Lyric. It’s sung in English and was written in both Gaelic and English by the poet. It’s a beautiful meditative song and mentions Tiree – a place dear in our family’s hearts as I used to go on holiday’s there with my granny and granddad. Granddad had us write poems about the landscape – no great works of art but I still have them. It was his way of involving us in anything that he was doing. He was always composing - I remember him composing even on the ferry across. Such was his dedication.
Another interest of Granddad’s was the writing of Robert Louis Stevenson. RLS is a wonderful descriptive writer and that is often mirrored in granddad’s approach to composition. In 1985 granddad set the Childs Garden of Verses to music. In the track “My Shadow” granddad has used a pentatonic – an immediately Scottish sound – similar to the pipe scale to set this song. R.L.S very seldom wrote in Lowland Scots – this doesn’t make R.L.S any less Scottish.
Granddad loved to embrace all – Gaelic, lowland, Scots, English as long as it was expressive.
The last track I’m going to play is a favourite and one that granddad describes as a symphonic poem. It is a setting of the ballad Jock o Hazeldean. His setting describes each part of the ballad – Jock’s sweetheart is due to marry another man against her will. He gallops to the church to rescue her and together they start a new life. For the church scene granddad employs the traditional Scottish psalm tune Crimond.
Grandad and I are giving the occasional afternoon concert when invited. You can hear some of these melodies played on our CD "Gowd and Silver" released on the Eclectic record label.
END
For more information about Ronald Stevenson check out the website of
Anna- Wendy Stevenson
is the third generation in a line of composer/performer, from her grandfather Ronald Stevenson through Savourna Stevenson to Anna-Wendy herself. She is a member of
Calluna and
Fine Friday Anna-Wendy's website is
