It's said that when Leroy Robertson was just a toddler he turned up missing at a town picnic. Afraid that he might have fallen into an irrigation ditch, the family launched a frantic search, only to find the boy over at the bandstand, transfixed by the music.
This is same boy who, while growing up in Fountain Green, carved his own violin and bow, the bowstrings being cut directly from a horse's tail. Who, after hearing the New York Philharmonic in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, went on to study at the New England Conservatory of Music, where his "Overture Symphonic" won the Endicott Prize. Who ended up teaching at both Brigham Young University and the University of Utah (where he chaired the music department). And whose compositions are the subject of the first CD in what promises to be a series devoted to the musical heritage of the LDS Church.Produced by BYU on its Tantara label, the CD, "Leroy Robertson: A Treasury of Chamber Music," is Volume 1 of what is being called the Heritage Series and is expected to be in local stores by the end of the month. (The suggested list price is $14.95.)
Funded by the Sloan and Anna Marie Hales family foundation, it contains, besides a pair of piano etudes and "Three Songs From the Shadow," two of Robertson's most important chamber works, the Quintet in A minor for Piano and Strings, completed in 1933, and his String Quartet No. 2, or "American Serenade," premiered in 1945.
Performers include soprano JoAnn Ottley (in the songs), violinist Jean Bradford and pianist Matthew Robertson - both grandchildren of Leroy's - and the Phelps family, one member of which, Cynthia Phelps, is currently principal violist of the orchestra that fired the 19-year-old composer's imagination so long ago in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, the New York Philharmonic.
"About four years ago an endowment was given to BYU," recounts music department chairman Clyn Barrus, "a sizable endowment from Sloan and Anna Marie Hales, for recording compositions which had as their base a spiritual or LDS historical significance."
A committee was formed and it was determined that the first offering should consist of music by the man Barrus calls "the dean of LDS composers," including some of his lesser-known works - i.e., something besides the "Oratorio From the Book of Mormon."
As Hales remembers it, the project grew out of discussions she and her husband had with then Tabernacle organist Robert Cundick during the Tabernacle Choir's tour of eastern Europe in 1991.
"One night in Poland over dinner, we started talking about the need to document what has been created musically in the church. In the past we've had recordings of the Tabernacle Choir and occasionally individual choir organists. But beyond that there hasn't been much, at least in a more serious vein."
With that in mind, she says, "Robertson seemed a wonderful composite of what we wanted to represent, an individual who had composed such a multitudinous variety of music, including hymns and various instrumental combinations."
Together with Idaho's Arthur Shepherd, he was probably also the first LDS-born composer whose concert music spread to a truly international audience. Barrus can still remember hearing the "Book of Mormon" Oratorio for the first time, from an early-'50s LP deriving from the work's first performances under Maurice Abravanel.
In his 32 years with the Utah Symphony, Abravanel went on to record the oratorio two more times, along with a number of other Robertson works. But it was Barrus who led the work's first performances outside the state of Utah, in 1976 with the University of Minnesota Chorale and his own Minneapolis Civic Symphony.
"They wanted to perform a major American religious work for the Bicentennial," Barrus recalls. "And though they were a bit skeptical at first, they ended up being so moved by the piece that they determined to perform it not only in Minneapolis but also take it to Chicago."
"As far as I'm concerned, he represents the unquestioned high-water mark of Mormon composition," says Cundick, himself a former Robertson pupil. In addition to the "Book of Mormon" Oratorio, he cites the "Trilogy" for Large Orchestra (which, in 1947, won Robertson the $25,000 Reichhold Award) and the works on the upcoming Heritage CD.
"Everything on the CD is new except the Quintet recording," he says, "and we chose that because the Phelps family is an extraordinary ensemble - they really play up a storm." Then he adds parenthetically, "It always amazed me that he could write for the piano with such fluency when it wasn't his instrument."
But if the Quintet represents Robertson at his most Blochian - and it is in fact dedicated to Ernest Bloch, with whom he also studied - there is another influence both Cundick and Barrus hear in his music, and that is the West itself, specifically his native Utah.
"I feel that he has been able to capture in his music a great deal of what we in this part of the country feel we're all about," Barrus reflects. "Certainly there's a strong element of the West in the folk-music elements of his compositions, and also their spiritual simplicity. I once heard him say in our home, `How can a musician sing about the earth if he hasn't felt it? And how can he sing about heaven if he hasn't been inspired by it?' "
Reid Nibley, who was also a student of Robertson's, remembers something else from the composer's Sanpete County origins surfacing from time to time, and that was his dry sense of humor.
"I remember showing him a piece of mine and him saying, `You know, as a composer your most important tool is the eraser.' Then, when he was finished with it, he said, `Well, that's pretty good. It's not sacred music yet,' implying that it could still use some touching up."
Most importantly, everyone remembers his kindness. Even Cundick, whose own music has just been issued on the latest CD in Ricks College's sacred-music series and whose oratorio "The Redeemer" is the next project in the Heritage Series, says he sees the Robertson CD as "one way for me to make a tiny down payment on the debt I owe this man. As far as I'm concerned, he's the one who set the tone and the standard for serious musical composition in the church."
They aren't alone. Years ago, when I was still in high school, Pierre Monteux, whose work I admired enormously, came to town to guest conduct the Utah Symphony, and I dragged a friend along to his rehearsals at what is now Gardner Hall on the U. campus.
We arrived to find a sign posted outside the door indicating that the rehearsals were closed - which wasn't usually the case - and standing outside the door was a mild-mannered-looking man who sensed our obvious disappointment.
"You came to hear Monteux?" he asked, and I said we had. He thought a minute, looked over his shoulder and said, "Come with me." Before long we found ourselves being led along a passageway behind the rehearsal hall and through a door in front of which sat a screen. With his finger to his lips, our guide unfolded a couple of chairs for us to sit on behind the screen while the rehearsal continued, then whispered that at the break we could probably slip quietly into the hall itself.
Later I found out who our kindly benefactor was - Leroy J. Robertson. And I've often wondered if in us he didn't see something of the boy who inadvertently sent his family into a panic when he made his way to the Fountain Green bandstand and found himself in the music.
For information on the Heritage Series, or to order CDs directly, call 1-800-879-1555.