ROBERT Louis Stevenson's worst nightmare has been set to music and will be premiered in Edinburgh next month.
Shadow Aspect, written by composer Judith Bingham, uses poems, texts and meditations from the 19th-century Scottish writer's life and focuses on his dark side.
Central to this is an extract from Stevenson's A Chapter on Dreams and Dreaming in w
hich a psychiatrist describes a patient's recurring nightmare, which the author eventually admitted was his own.
Shadow Aspect has been commissioned by the Edinburgh Royal Choral Union (ERCU), Scotland's oldest choir, to celebrate its 150th anniversary.
Ms Bingham, whose previous works include a piece on the life of swashbuckling Hollywood star Errol Flynn, was chosen from 25 composers who submitted their ideas on how to celebrate Stevenson.
She said: "When I heard I'd got the commission, I was reading Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde so it was quite serendipitous. But then that's when the gaps started to show up. I'd read things like Treasure Island but had to speed-read his works, which I found really fascinating. His whole family seemed to be involved in 'shining a light' – the lighthouse connection or street lighting. I was intrigued by how this could also be used to illuminate the darker side of the human personality.
"Then I found his essay written in the third person, like a psychiatrist's case notes about a patient's recurring nightmare, about climbing tenement stairs and never getting to the top while people pushed by him. It was quite a Freudian dream about never being able to get what you want.
"He later admitted it was about himself."
Ms Bingham added that Stevenson's strict Calvinist nanny terrified him with stories of damnation
The piece will be performed by guest baritone Julian Tovey.
Conductor Michael Bawtree, the ERCU's musical director, said: "We wanted a Stevenson piece because we were looking for something 'Edinburgh' for the anniversary of an Edinburgh-based choir. I hope the dramatic side of the music and the idea of the darkness of an Edinburgh night ending in a blaze of light appeals to everyone."
He added: "Our Edinburgh Youth Choir, which is also taking part in the performance, is thriving and is a reflection of how popular choirs are becoming."
&149 Shadow Aspect will be performed at the Usher Hall on 3 October, 7.30pm.
Tickets are £10-£24, with concessions available. See www.usherhall.co.uk.
A
Chapter on Dreams and Dreaming
A psychiatrist is describing a case-study
He was from a child an ardent and uncomfortable dreamer.
When he had a touch of fever at night, and the room swelled and shrank, and his clothes, hanging on a nail, now loomed up instant to the bigness of a church, he struggled hard against the approaches of that slumber which was the beginning of sorrows.
But his struggles were in vain; sooner or later the night-hag would have him by the throat, and pluck him, strangling and screaming, from his sleep.
In his dream, on a heavy, rainy, foggy evening he entered a tall tenement, in which he supposed himself to lodge.
All night long, in his wet clothes, he climbed the stairs, stair after stair, and at every second flight a flaring lamp with a reflector.
All night long, he brushed by single persons passing downward – beggarly women of the street, weary, muddy labourers, poor scarecrows of men, pale parodies of women – but all drowsy and weary like himself, brushing against him as they passed.
In the end, out of a northern window, he would see day beginning to whiten, give up the ascent, and in a breath be back upon the streets, in his wet clothes, in the wet, haggard dawn, trudging to another day.
Man is two-fold, not an autonomous empire. His central self fades and grows clear again amid the tumult of the senses, like a revolving Pharos in the night.
It is forgotten: it is hid, it seems, for ever; and yet in the next calm hour he shall behold himself once more, shining and unmoved.
