Alfred George Robyn (April 29, 1860 – October 18, 1935) was an American composer, organist, conductor, and music educator.
[1] He composed the Broadway musicals Princess Beggar (1907), The Yankee Tourist (1907), All for the Ladies (1912), and Pretty Mrs. Smith (1914); many in collaboration with lyricist and playwright Henry Blossom.
[4] Alfred was a child prodigy and began his career as a musician early, with his first public performance being in a piano trio at the age of nine.
[2] After returning to Saint Louis, Robyn became music director of the Olympic Theatre in that city where he notably conducted the world premiere of Wayman C. McCreery's opera L'Afrique on 16 May 1881.
[2] In the first years of the 20th century he organized a concert series of instrumental music at the Odeon Theatre in Saint Louis.
[2] He moved to New York City a few years later where he worked as an organist accompanying silent films at the Rialto Theatre; a position he began in June 1915.
[3] Alfred G. Robyn's first composition of note was the song "A Lady's 'No' Means 'Yes' " (lyrics George Cooper) which he wrote for the Emma Abbot troupe's lead tenor, Will H. Stanley, while touring with that organization in 1878.
[2] Robyn's second stage work, the comic opera Beans and Buttons (1885), was also premiered at the Pickwick Theatre and used a libretto by William H.
The music of Mr. Robyn is not strikingly original, but it is tuneful and bright and written for the most part on good, although conventional, models.