Ronald Stevenson

The son of a Scottish father and Welsh mother, Stevenson was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, in 1928. He studied at the Royal Manchester College of Music (now incorporated in the Royal Northern College of Music), studying composition with Richard Hall and piano with Iso Elinson, graduating with distinction in 1948. He married Marjorie Spedding in 1952.[1] He moved to Scotland in the mid-1950s. As a socialist pacifist conscientious objector, he applied for exemption from National Service, but was refused recognition by the North Western Tribunal. He, in turn, refused to attend a medical examination as an essential preliminary to call-up, which led to prosecution and sentence to 12 months imprisonment in Wormwood Scrubs.[2] The sentence qualified him to go to the Appellate Tribunal, which finally allowed exemption from military service conditional upon work on the land.

Among his many compositions, the largest (in terms of duration) and most famous is his Passacaglia on DSCH for solo piano, written between 1960 and 1962, based on a 13-note ground bass derived from the musical motif D-E♭-C-B: the German transliteration of Dmitri Shostakovich's initials ("D. Sch."). Stevenson's work takes more than an hour and a quarter to perform and is one of the longest unbroken single movements composed for piano.

Stevenson's other works include two piano concertos, the second of which was first performed at the Proms in 1972, a violin concerto commissioned by Yehudi Menuhin, and a cello concerto in memoriam Jacqueline du Pré. He also wrote several chamber works including a String Quartet and Piano Quartet, numerous songs (among these, many settings of Hugh MacDiarmid, William Soutar and James Joyce) and works for solo piano. In 2007 he completed a choral symphony, Ben Dorain, on Hugh MacDiarmid's translation of the poem of that name by Duncan Ban MacIntyre. This work, for full chorus and chamber choir with chamber orchestra and symphony orchestra, was begun in the 1960s and laid aside for many years. The world premiere was given in City Halls, Glasgow, on 19 January 2008 by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, with the composer present.[1]

Stevenson was very active as a transcriber of music other than his own, chiefly for the piano, in the tradition of Ferrucio Busoni, Percy Grainger and Leopold Godowsky. His transcriptions covered composers as diverse as Henry Purcell and Frederick Delius. Notable examples include piano solo versions of Grainger's Hill Song No.1 (originally for wind orchestra), the first movement of Gustav Mahler's Tenth Symphony, and of the six unaccompanied violin sonatas of Eugène Ysaÿe as piano sonatas. There is also a collection of piano solos based on songs from the 19th and 20th centuries entitled L'art nouveau de chant appliqué au piano, a title that recalls deliberately the collection of song-transcriptions by Sigismond Thalberg. Stevenson made many arrangements of folk music from countries as far apart as Scotland and China, while many of his own works exist in several different instrumentations.

Stevenson was also noted as a teacher. He was senior lecturer in composition at the University of Cape Town in the mid-1960s, delivered seminars at the Juilliard School in New York, and was responsible for a course entitled The Political Piano at the University of York in the early 1980s.

Stevenson died on 28 March 2015, aged 87 at his home in West Linton, Scotland. His widow and three children survive him.[1] His daughter Savourna Stevenson (born 1961) has recorded many works on the Scottish harp. His daughter Gerda Stevenson is a film and theatre actress, and a poet.[3] His granddaughter Anna Wendy Stevenson is a Scots folk fiddler.

(Full list to 2005 in Symposium ed. Scott-Sutherland listed in References)

• Raymond Clarke, recording notes for Stevenson: Passacaglia on DSCH. Raymond Clarke (piano). Marco Polo 8.223545.
• Ronald Stevenson, A musical Biography by Malcolm MacDonald (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, 1989)
• Ronald Stevenson, The Man and his Music, A Symposium edited by Colin Scott-Sutherland with a foreword by Yehudi Menuhin (London, 2005) ISBN 0-907689-40-X

• The Ronald Stevenson Society
• Ronald Stevenson at the Scottish Music Centre
• Ates Orga Ronald Stevenson Composer-Pianist: A Memoir (June 1999)
• Digitised scores of Stevenson's compositions can be viewed through the Five Centuries of Scottish Music collection hosted by AHDS Performing Arts
• Gasser, M., "Ronald Stevenson, Composer-Pianist : An Exegetical Critique from a Pianistic Perspective" (Edith Cowan University Press, Western Australia, 2013)
• Chris Walton, "Composer in Interview: Ronald Stevenson – a Scot in 'emergent Africa'"