A year ago I did a story on a new CD of some of Leroy Robertson's compositions - the first recording of any of his music in years - and immediately afterward people began asking me where they could find out more about this man who was once considered Utah's foremost composer.
Well, a good place to start would be this new biography by his daughter, Marian Robertson Wilson.Issued in time for the Utah Centennial - which also happens to be the 100th anniversary of Robertson's birth - it recounts in loving detail the early years in Fountain Green, where he made his first violin from a cigar box; his move to Pleasant Grove, then to Brigham Young University High School; his years with Chadwick at the New England Conservatory of Music, where he won the Endicott Prize for his Overture in E minor; and his eventual return to Utah, climaxed by his being named the winner of the $25,000 Reichhold Award for his "Trilogy" in 1947, a feat that garnered him international attention.
That's a long way from the slopes of Sanpete County, where Robertson penned much of his music while tending sheep. And in between come fateful encounters with everyone from LDS apostle Melvin J. Ballard, whose comments planted the seed that would later grow into the "Oratorio From the Book of Mormon," to composers Ernest Bloch and Arnold Schoenberg and newly appointed Utah Symphony conductor Maurice Abravanel, who would become Robertson's most ardent champion.
I wouldn't have minded more analysis, especially of some of the pieces. Nor does the prose always flow as it might. But the man himself emerges from these pages, as do behind-the-scenes glimpses of such things as Robertson's leaving BYU in 1948 to take the chairmanship of the University of Utah music department - largely to help build both the U. program and the Utah Symphony - and the eventual mounting by the latter of the "Book of Mormon" Oratorio, which had at one point been scheduled for the 1947 Pioneer Centennial, only to be replaced by Crawford Gates' "Promised Valley" - something Robertson learned by reading it in the newspaper.
Indeed, if there is a subtext in this book, it may be one of dashed hopes and missed opportunities.
Again and again one reads of promised performances of Robertson's music by the likes of Milstein, Menuhin and Stokowski, performances that never materialized. One also cannot help but wonder if Robertson was right not to go for the Rome Prize that Chadwick wanted to put him up for in his student days and to reject the offers that were put before him after his subsequent out-of-state successes (including the directorship of the Cleveland Institute of Music).
Of course, if he hadn't, music in Utah would have been the poorer. And not just because of his music but also because of the countless composers and musicians he influenced during his years here (including yours truly).
Factual errors, like typos, appear to be minor - things like attributing the Utah Symphony's pioneering "Judas Maccabaeus" recording to Westminster, when actually it was for the Handel Society. (The Westminster recording came later.) Or referring to those early Kingsbury Hall opera productions as having "laid the foundation for what would become Opera West," when what is meant is almost certainly Utah Opera.
More bothersome is the lack of a complete list of published compositions and/or recordings of Robertson's music (though several are referred to in the text itself). After all, just as those who hear the music may want to read the book, those who read the book may want to hear the music. And they need to know how.