Ronald Stevenson - Biography

Biography

The son of a Scottish father and English mother, Stevenson 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 moved to Scotland in the mid-1950s. As author and performer he was instrumental in reviving the works of Ferruccio Busoni, and corresponded with Percy Grainger.

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 the longest well-known unbroken single movement composed for piano, though Kaikhosru Sorabji's Symphonic Nocturne for Piano Alone probably exceeds it by some 45 minutes.

Stevenson's other works include two piano concertos, the second of which was first performed at a Prom in 1972, a violin concerto commissioned by Yehudi Menuhin, and a cello concerto in memoriam Jacqueline du Pré. He has also written 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 (Chamber Choir--Glasgow University Chapel Choir, Chorus--Scottish Opera Chorus and the Edinburgh Singers) conducted by James Grossmith and Chorus Mastered by Dominic Peckham.

Stevenson has been very active as a transcriber of other music than his own, chiefly for the piano, in the tradition of Busoni, Grainger and Leopold Godowsky. He has made dozens if not hundreds of transcriptions of 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 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. In addition Stevenson has 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 is 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. His daughter Savourna Stevenson (born 1961) has recorded many works on the Scottish harp. His granddaughter Anna Wendy Stevenson is a noted Scots folk fiddler. His daughter Gerda Stevenson is an accomplished film and theatre actress.