John Koegel
Nebraska-Wesleyan University, Lincoln

I am both happy and deeply honored to highlight here just a few of the many important contributions Robert Stevenson has made to our understanding of music in Mexico and in the United States. As with his path-breaking work in music of Spain, the Caribbean, and Latin America south of Chiapas and the Yucatan Peninsula, Professor Stevenson has served as a leader in the scholarly study of music in the Republic of Mexico, and those areas of the American Southwest which once came under the domain of Spain and Mexico. Besides his investigations of the musical life in the Spanish-speaking areas in the present-day United States, our distinguished honoree has also paid close attention to the influence of Spanish and Latin American music and musicians in areas of the United States outside the Southwest.
His interest in things Southwestern and Mexican was cultivated at an early age. While born in the railroad town of Melrose, New Mexico, Robert Stevenson spent his formative years in El Paso, Texas. Growing up in El Paso, he came into contact with local European- and New York-trained musicians and music teachers as well as European and American musicians who visited this U.S.-Mexico border town on their tours west to San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the Pacific Coast. At the turn of the century El Paso was an alluring and salubrious haven for Easterners on temporary, semi-permanent, and permanent vacations from the rigors of Eastern winters. Along with the outside social and cultural elements in El Paso, Robert Stevenson grew up next to the Spanish-speaking residents there and in the adjacent Mexican town of Ciudad Juarez (the original Spanish-Mexican town of El Paso). Stevenson's Southwestern connection was strengthened by his familial connections and origins. His family lived in several areas of the Southwest in the early years of this century. From Oklahoma his parents moved to New Mexico, and then to El Paso, where, in 1918, his father Robert Emory Stevenson took up a post as a teacher at the Lydia Patterson Institute, a boarding and day school for Mexican-American and Mexican boys, to which Mexican-American girls were later admitted as students in the commercial course and for music study. The elder Robert Stevenson served as Vice President at the Patterson Institute. Robert Murrell Stevenson's mother Ada Stevenson later served as Principal of the secondary area of the Institute.
Stevenson paid tribute to his hometown with his monograph Music in El Paso, published by his Alma Mater, the University of Texas at El Paso (known as the Texas College of Mines and Metallurgy in his time). Music in El Paso is a model study for the writing of local music history, made all the more significant since Robert Stevenson personally knew and/or studied with several of the persons whose careers he profiled in Music in El Paso.
Though many musical encyclopedias and a number of the various editions of "Who's Who" include entries under "Stevenson, Robert," Nicholas Slonimsky included the most extensive biographical information about our distinguished colleague in the most recent version of Baker's Biographical Dictionary. Details are given about his many academic qualifications, performing and compositional activities, and numerous publications. However, certain aspects of our honoree's professional career may not be well known to some of those here today.
Slonimsky's article in Baker's understandably focuses on Stevenson's principal activity, that of musicologist. However, besides his work as a scholar, he has also been active as a pianist and composer. His pianistic activity, which began in his youth, has continued to the present day. Stevenson was particularly active as a composer during the years spanning the 1940s to the 1960s. Indeed, his doctoral degree taken under Howard Hansen at the University of Rochester is in composition rather than in musicology. Several of his large-scale works have received performances by important ensembles, including Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Before Robert Stevenson arrived at UCLA in 1949 as a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Music, he had taught music at the University of Texas and Westminister Choir College for a number of years. His first assignment at UCLA was to teach keyboard harmony and piano, and not music history or musicology, teaching areas which he only took up later. Therefore, his interest in composing teaching pieces for amateur pianists logically arose from his original pedagogical interests. His Texas Suite for piano, in three movements ("Bronco Bustin," "An Old Spanish Mission," and "The Lonesome Prarie"), published by the venerable Boston Music Company in 1947, exemplifies this interest, and, in a small way, foreshadows his later scholarly work with California mission music and his seminal articles on the historical sources of Indian music in the United States, published in the journal Ethnomusicology.
Throughout his career, Robert Stevenson has been a most productive scholar. His list of publications, which includes many books, monographs, articles, reviews, catalogues, and musical editions, is as varied as it is lengthy. One wonders if there are other scholars who can lay claim to such an impressive record or such a productive research and publication schedule. While other speakers will examine Stevenson's contribution to Spanish and Central and South American musical scholarship today, I wish to focus here on his four most significant projects related to Mexico and the United States, namely, his Music in Mexico of 1952, Music in Aztec and Inca Territory of 1968, Renaissance and Baroque Musical Sources in the Americas of 1970, and his own journal Inter-American Music Review, published twice yearly since 1978.
Stevenson's work in Mexican music began in earnest at the end of the 1940s. Previous to the publication of his epochal Music in Mexico of 1952, the first book on the subject in English, only two major full-length studies of Mexican music had been written in English. Lota Spell's 1923 University of Texas Ph.D. dissertation on music education in Mexico in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the probably one of the first dissertations, if not the first, on Indian musical life in the Americas since Theodore Baker's 1882 Leipzig dissertation on North American Indian music. The other work to appear before Music in Mexico was Steven Barwick's important 1949 Harvard dissertation on Mexican colonial music. Robert Stevenson has mentioned in print on several occasions the role Barwick's pioneering dissertation played in his own research.
It still amazes me that Stevenson was able to research and write Music in Mexico within the short space of time between about 1949 and 1951. While he has subsequently revised a few of the opinions he set forth in this book, most notably about the true identity of Puebla composer Juan Gutierrez de Padilla, Stevenson's Music in Mexico still stands as an important achievement and a model for a future comprehensive study of Mexican music, treating as it does music from before the time of European contact in Mexico up to the end of the 1940s. Because of its unique status, Music in Mexico continues to be utilized by those interested in the subject. I myself have long hoped that Professor Stevenson would take on or permit the revision and expansion of this book, which could then be translated into Spanish. Jorge Velasco, the distinguished Mexican conductor and scholar, has recently expressed his desire for the same updating and translation of Music in Mexico in a review essay in the Mexico daily newspaper Excelsior.
In a sense, Stevenson did update and expand upon this book with his Music in Aztec and Inca Territory of 1968. The focus here is primarily on the indigenous element and only secondarily on European musical influences in the New World. However, aspects of the Spanish and mestizo musical traditions in Mexico enter Music in Aztec and Inca Territory when they relate to Native Americans. While the South American portion of the book is overshadowed by the larger section relating to Mexico because of the greater availability of sources of information about the northern area, musical life in Peru and former Inca lands is examined by Stevenson with equal interest and dedication. Robert Stevenson's research and interests have ranged far afield, for it was he who brought to the attention of the musical community the existence of the New World Calderonian opera La púrpura de la rosa performed in Lima in 1701.
Renaissance and Baroque Musical Sources in the Americas, published in 1970 by the Organization of American States, the current sponsor of the Robert Stevenson prize in musicology, has been a source of information and inspiration for music scholars interested in colonial music in the Americas since its appearance twenty-five years ago. Included here are extensive catalogues of extant music in cathedral, national, local, and other archives and libraries in Mexico, Guatemala, Columbia, Peru, Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, most of which were visited personally by Stevenson. Among the most detailed and important of his entries are those for Mexican archives. Despite his great efforts in bringing this music to our attention, and the ever-growing interest in Latin American colonial music, work still remains to be accomplished in order that we may better understand the complete extent of European and indigenous musical life during the colonial period. Robert Stevenson's work in these areas must serve as a starting point for all who intend to enter these waters.
Professor Stevenson continues to present us with his recent research findings in his own journal Inter-American Music Review. It is a tribute to his industry and unique qualities that the fourteenth volume of Inter-American Music Review has just been completed. The unsigned articles which make up the largest portion of those published in this estimable journal are of course by Robert Stevenson. However, he has generously published a number of articles by fellow musicologists on a wide range of topics. He has also invited several of his students to contribute articles to this journal.
His Inter-American Music Review articles often treat local California subjects, from the musical careers of the Spanish-born composer Santiago Arrillaga resident in the San Francisco area at the turn of the century, and Arrillaga's friend and neighbor, Mexican-born guitarist and composer Manuel Ferrer, to such piquant topics as "Paderewski in Paso Robles," "John Cage's California Background," "Liszt's 'Favorite' California Pupil," or "Teresa Carreño's 1875 California Appearances." His interest in California's musical history, perhaps begun when he first visited the Bancroft Library in 1950 to look at the mission music manuscripts from Spanish California, continues apace today. We should remember that Robert Stevenson has been one of the principal investigators of music in the United States, whether it be of Hispanic or non-Hispanic origin. Many different areas of American musical life have come under his scrutiny, quite a number of which are outside the area covered by this résumé of his contributions.
I say with true sincerity that Robert Stevenson's work has served as a great inspiration for my own scholarly work. I know that other investigators of music and musical life in the Americas have also taken inspiration from him. His continuing contribution to American musical scholarship has been of the greatest distinction and merit. It is fitting indeed that we honor him today in this small way. May he continue for many years to search for truth and beauty!