Alexander Mackenzie (musician)
Encyclopedia
Sir Alexander Campbell Mackenzie KCVO (22 August 184728 April 1935) was a Scottish
composer, conductor and teacher best known for his oratorio
s, violin and piano pieces, Scottish folk music and works for the stage.
Mackenzie was a member of a musical family and was sent for his musical education to Germany. He had many successes as a composer, producing over 90 compositions, but from 1888 to 1924, he devoted a great part of his energies to running the Royal Academy of Music
. Together with Hubert Parry
and Charles Villiers Stanford
, he was regarded as one of the fathers of the British musical renaissance
in the late nineteenth century.
, the eldest son of Alexander Mackenzie and his wife, Jessie Watson née Campbell. He was the fourth musician of his family. His great-grandfather was an army bandsman; his grandfather, John Mackenzie, was a violinist in Edinburgh and Aberdeen
; his father was also a violinist, the conductor of the orchestra in the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, and editor of The National Dance Music of Scotland. Mackenzie's musical talent emerged early: at the age of eight he was playing nightly in his father's orchestra. He was sent for his musical education to Germany, living with his teacher, the Stadtmusiker August Bartel, in Schwarzburg-Sondershausen
in Thuringia
, where he entered the conservatorium under K. W. Ulrich and Eduard Stein, remaining there from 1857 to 1861, when he entered the ducal orchestra as a violinist.
Mackenzie wished to continue his violin studies with the teacher Prosper Sainton, who had taught his father, and in 1862 he successfully applied for admission to the Royal Academy of Music
in London, where Sainton taught. His other tutors were the principal, Charles Lucas
(harmony), and Frederick Bowen Jewson (piano). Shortly after starting at the Academy, he was awarded a King's Scholarship, the income from which Mackenzie augmented by playing in theatre and music hall
pit-bands, as well as in classical concerts under the leading conductor Michael Costa
. This sometimes caused him to neglect his academic work, and on one occasion, having failed to prepare a piece by a classical composer for a piano examination, he improvised, "starting off in A minor and taking care to end in the same key", and convinced the examiners that it was a little-known work by Schubert
. Recalling this prank in his old age, he added, "I have never ceased to wonder at my escape, and would certainly not advise any student to run a similar risk today." Some of Mackenzie's early compositions were performed at the Academy.
. In 1873 he took on the conductorship of the Scottish Vocal Association. He also played the violin in orchestral concerts both locally and at the Birmingham Festivals
from 1864 to 1873, meeting visiting musicians including the conductor Hans von Bülow
, who became a firm friend. In 1874 Mackenzie married a local woman, Mary Malina Burnside (d. 1925). They had a daughter, Mary. Mackenzie successfully began composing orchestral music. Bülow conducted his overture Cervantes in 1879, and two of his Scottish rhapsodies were premiered by August Manns
in 1880 and 1881.
By this time, Mackenzie's heavy workload as a teacher and player began to undermine his health. Two of Bülow's pupils in Florence
, Italy, Giuseppe Buonamici and George F. Hatton, introduced Mackenzie to the musical philanthropists Carl and Jessie Hillebrand. After a few months' rest in their care, Mackenzie began composing full-time. Apart from a year in England (1885), he made Florence his home until 1888. During this period he spent much time in the company of Franz Liszt
. He began composing large-scale works, including instrumental, orchestral and choral music and two operas. His cantata
s The Bride and Jason were successfully given, and the Carl Rosa Company commissioned his first opera, Colomba, written to a libretto prepared by Francis Hueffer
, music critic of The Times
. The opera premiered successfully in 1883. A second opera, The Troubadour, produced by the same company in 1886, was less successful, though Liszt thought well enough of the piece to begin work on a piano fantasia based on themes from it. Pablo de Sarasate
premiered a violin concerto
by Mackenzie at the Birmingham Festival of 1885. For the 1885–86 season, Mackenzie was appointed conductor of Novello
's oratorio
concerts in London. Liszt paid his final visit to England chiefly to hear his Saint Elisabeth performed under Mackenzie's direction in 1886.
, died, and in early 1888 Mackenzie was appointed to succeed him. He held the post for 36 years until his retirement in 1924. At the time, the Academy was overshadowed by its younger rival, the Royal College of Music
, and Mackenzie set about reviving its reputation. He was fortunate in enjoying the friendly support of his opposite numbers at the College, George Grove
, and, from 1895, Hubert Parry
, and the two institutions established a close working relationship of mutual benefit. In addition to overhauling the curriculum and reorganising the faculty, Mackenzie engaged personally with his students by teaching composition and conducting the student orchestra. In 1912 the Academy moved from its old buildings in Mayfair
to purpose-built premises in Marylebone
.
Mackenzie was conductor of the Royal Choral Society
and the Philharmonic Society
Orchestra between 1892 and 1899, giving the British premières of many works, including symphonies by Tchaikovsky
and Borodin
.
Like his father, Mackenzie took a great interest in folk music and produced several collections of arrangements of traditional Scottish songs. In 1903, interested in investigating Canadian folk-song, he undertook a tour of Canada organised by the Anglo-Canadian musician Charles A.E. Harriss. His visit stimulated the cultural scene and choral festival competitions were held throughout Canada with eleven new choral societies being founded. Mackenzie conducted concerts during the tour, exclusively of British music.
Mackenzie was regarded as a cosmopolitan musician. He spoke fluent German and Italian and was elected to the post of President of the International Musical Society which he held from 1908 to 1912. From his early days playing in orchestras in Edinburgh and Birmingham he had met and become friendly with many leading international musicians, including Clara Schumann
, Joseph Joachim
, Charles Gounod
and Antonín Dvořák
. His friendship with Liszt began in Mackenzie's student days in Sondershausen and lasted for the rest of Liszt's life.
Although Mackenzie composed a large number of works, which met with great public success, he found, as had Arthur Sullivan
earlier and as did Parry contemporaneously, that running a large musical conservatoire left less time for composition. Both at the Academy and elsewhere, he was a popular lecturer. Among his topics were Verdi
's opera Falstaff
, the text of his lecture on which was later published in translation in Italy. Outliving his contemporaries Sullivan and Parry, he gave memorial lectures on their lives and works. At a time when Sullivan's reputation in academic musical circles was not high, Mackenzie's tribute was generous and enthusiastic.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Mackenzie's professional prominence brought him many honours from universities and learned societies in Britain and abroad. He was knight
ed in 1895, and created a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) in 1922, the year of the centenary celebrations of the Royal Academy, in which he was the central figure. On his eighty-sixth birthday, over forty distinguished musicians presented him with a silver tray inscribed with facsimiles of their signatures, including Elgar
, Delius
, Ethel Smyth
, Edward German
, Henry Wood
, and Landon Ronald
. He retired from the Academy and from public life in 1924.
Mackenzie died in London in 1935 at the age of 87.
, Gounod
, Schumann
, and Wagner
." Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians says that although Mackenzie's music was eclipsed by the works of later composers, "he and his contemporaries may be regarded as having laid the foundations of the musical renaissance
in 19th- and early 20th-century Britain".
During his time teaching in Edinburgh, Mackenzie wrote several works, including a piano trio, a string quartet and a piano quartet, and he maintained a considerable output despite his crowded schedule both then and later. The Times reported that his list of compositions numbered 90, of which 20 were distinctly Scottish.
His orchestral works include the overture Cervantes, performed at Schwarzburg-Sondershausen in 1877, three Scottish Rhapsodies, a violin concerto premiered by Pablo de Sarasate
at the Birmingham Festival of 1885, a "Scottish" concerto for piano (1897), a suite, London Day by Day (1902), and a Canadian Rhapsody (1905). He composed incidental music
to six dramas, including Ravenswood, and J. M. Barrie
's The Little Minister. The funeral march from his music for Henry Irving
's production of Coriolanus
was played at Irving's funeral in 1905 and at Mackenzie's memorial service at St Paul's Cathedral
in 1935. He worked on a symphony but did not complete it.
It was as a composer of vocal music that Mackenzie first achieved national fame. His cantata The Bride was a success at the Three Choirs Festival
of 1881. Edward Elgar
played in the violins at the première and later remarked that meeting Mackenzie was "the event of my musical life". A second cantata, Jason, for the Bristol
festival of 1882, was also well received. His most famous choral work was the oratorio The Rose of Sharon, written for the Norwich
festival of 1884. The words were adapted from the Song of Solomon
by Joseph Bennett
, music critic of The Daily Telegraph
, who later provided Sullivan with the text for The Golden Legend. The Dream of Jubal (1889), is an unusual combination of recitation and choral sections, composed for the jubilee of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society
in 1889.
Mackenzie's operas began in 1883 with Colomba, first produced by the Carl Rosa Company. It was a success, but his second opera The Troubadour (1886) was not. Francis Hueffer's libretti for both operas were written in an antiquated style that attracted much criticism. Mackenzie's other operas were a one-act opera, The Cricket on the Hearth, first performed in 1914, The Eve of St John (1924), and two almost-complete operas, The Cornish Opera and Le luthier.
Critics observed that Mackenzie's operatic and choral music was generally ill-served by his librettists: "Much of his best work ... is neglected, partly because unlike his contemporaries, Parry and Stanford, Mackenzie went for the texts of his larger vocal works to such librettists as Joseph Bennett and Hueffer, instead of to the vital things of English poetry and literature." "[He] was content with librettos written by hacks according to the current operatic conventions." This even applied to his one excursion into comic opera
, His Majesty, a piece in the Gilbert and Sullivan
vein, with a libretto by F. C. Burnand
and R. C. Lehmann
and additional lyrics by Adrian Ross
, presented at the Savoy Theatre
in 1897. The Times
commented, "Mr Burnand's experience as a librettist of comic opera, and Sir Alexander Mackenzie's inexperience in this class of composition might lead the public to expect a brilliant book weighed down by music of too serious and ambitious a type. The exact opposite is the case." Burnand's libretto was judged dull and confused, but Mackenzie's music was "marked by distinction as well as humour."
Mackenzie also wrote books on Giuseppe Verdi
(1913) and Franz Liszt
(1920). In his memoirs A Musician's Narrative (1927), he described "a lifetime spent, boy and man, in the service of British music".
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
composer, conductor and teacher best known for his oratorio
Oratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
s, violin and piano pieces, Scottish folk music and works for the stage.
Mackenzie was a member of a musical family and was sent for his musical education to Germany. He had many successes as a composer, producing over 90 compositions, but from 1888 to 1924, he devoted a great part of his energies to running the Royal Academy of Music
Royal Academy of Music
The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...
. Together with Hubert Parry
Hubert Parry
Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, 1st Baronet was an English composer, teacher and historian of music.Parry's first major works appeared in 1880. As a composer he is best known for the choral song "Jerusalem", the coronation anthem "I was glad" and the hymn tune "Repton", which sets the words...
and Charles Villiers Stanford
Charles Villiers Stanford
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford was an Irish composer who was particularly notable for his choral music. He was professor at the Royal College of Music and University of Cambridge.- Life :...
, he was regarded as one of the fathers of the British musical renaissance
English Musical Renaissance
The English Musical Renaissance was a hypothetical period in the late 19th and early 20th century, when British composers, often those lecturing or trained at the Royal College of Music, were said to have freed themselves from foreign musical influences, to have begun writing in a distinctively...
in the late nineteenth century.
Life and career
Mackenzie was born in EdinburghEdinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
, the eldest son of Alexander Mackenzie and his wife, Jessie Watson née Campbell. He was the fourth musician of his family. His great-grandfather was an army bandsman; his grandfather, John Mackenzie, was a violinist in Edinburgh and Aberdeen
Aberdeen
Aberdeen is Scotland's third most populous city, one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas and the United Kingdom's 25th most populous city, with an official population estimate of ....
; his father was also a violinist, the conductor of the orchestra in the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, and editor of The National Dance Music of Scotland. Mackenzie's musical talent emerged early: at the age of eight he was playing nightly in his father's orchestra. He was sent for his musical education to Germany, living with his teacher, the Stadtmusiker August Bartel, in Schwarzburg-Sondershausen
Schwarzburg-Sondershausen
Schwarzburg-Sondershausen was a small principality in Germany, in the present day state of Thuringia, with capital at Sondershausen.-History:...
in Thuringia
Thuringia
The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....
, where he entered the conservatorium under K. W. Ulrich and Eduard Stein, remaining there from 1857 to 1861, when he entered the ducal orchestra as a violinist.
Mackenzie wished to continue his violin studies with the teacher Prosper Sainton, who had taught his father, and in 1862 he successfully applied for admission to the Royal Academy of Music
Royal Academy of Music
The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...
in London, where Sainton taught. His other tutors were the principal, Charles Lucas
Charles Lucas (musician)
Charles Lucas was an English cellist, conductor, composer and publisher. He was a Principal of the Royal Academy of Music....
(harmony), and Frederick Bowen Jewson (piano). Shortly after starting at the Academy, he was awarded a King's Scholarship, the income from which Mackenzie augmented by playing in theatre and music hall
Music hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...
pit-bands, as well as in classical concerts under the leading conductor Michael Costa
Michael Costa
Michael Costa is a former Australian Labor politician. He was a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council from 2001 until 2008, and Treasurer of New South Wales from 2006 to 2008.- Early life and career :...
. This sometimes caused him to neglect his academic work, and on one occasion, having failed to prepare a piece by a classical composer for a piano examination, he improvised, "starting off in A minor and taking care to end in the same key", and convinced the examiners that it was a little-known work by Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
. Recalling this prank in his old age, he added, "I have never ceased to wonder at my escape, and would certainly not advise any student to run a similar risk today." Some of Mackenzie's early compositions were performed at the Academy.
Early career
In 1865 Mackenzie returned to Edinburgh. He undertook a heavy workload of teaching, both privately and in local colleges, and from 1870 he was in charge of music at St George's, Charlotte SquareCharlotte Square
Charlotte Square is a city square in Edinburgh, Scotland, part of the New Town, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The square is located at the west end of George Street, intended to mirror St. Andrew Square in the east.-History:Initially named St...
. In 1873 he took on the conductorship of the Scottish Vocal Association. He also played the violin in orchestral concerts both locally and at the Birmingham Festivals
Birmingham Triennial Music Festival
The Birmingham Triennial Musical Festival, in Birmingham, England, founded in 1784, was the longest-running classical music festival of its kind. Its last performance was in 1912.-History:...
from 1864 to 1873, meeting visiting musicians including the conductor Hans von Bülow
Hans von Bülow
Hans Guido Freiherr von Bülow was a German conductor, virtuoso pianist, and composer of the Romantic era. He was one of the most famous conductors of the 19th century, and his activity was critical for establishing the successes of several major composers of the time, including Richard...
, who became a firm friend. In 1874 Mackenzie married a local woman, Mary Malina Burnside (d. 1925). They had a daughter, Mary. Mackenzie successfully began composing orchestral music. Bülow conducted his overture Cervantes in 1879, and two of his Scottish rhapsodies were premiered by August Manns
August Manns
Sir August Friedrich Manns was a German-born conductor who made his career in England. After serving as a military bandmaster in Germany, he moved to England and soon became director of music at London's Crystal Palace. He increased the resident band to full symphonic strength and for more than...
in 1880 and 1881.
By this time, Mackenzie's heavy workload as a teacher and player began to undermine his health. Two of Bülow's pupils in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
, Italy, Giuseppe Buonamici and George F. Hatton, introduced Mackenzie to the musical philanthropists Carl and Jessie Hillebrand. After a few months' rest in their care, Mackenzie began composing full-time. Apart from a year in England (1885), he made Florence his home until 1888. During this period he spent much time in the company of Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
. He began composing large-scale works, including instrumental, orchestral and choral music and two operas. His cantata
Cantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....
s The Bride and Jason were successfully given, and the Carl Rosa Company commissioned his first opera, Colomba, written to a libretto prepared by Francis Hueffer
Francis Hueffer
Francis Hueffer, born Franz Hüffer , was a German-English writer on music, music critic, and librettist.-Biography:...
, music critic of The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
. The opera premiered successfully in 1883. A second opera, The Troubadour, produced by the same company in 1886, was less successful, though Liszt thought well enough of the piece to begin work on a piano fantasia based on themes from it. Pablo de Sarasate
Pablo de Sarasate
Pablo Martín Melitón de Sarasate y Navascués was a Navarrese Spanish violinist and composer of the Romantic period.-Career:Pablo Sarasate was born in Pamplona, Navarre, the son of an artillery bandmaster...
premiered a violin concerto
Violin concerto
A violin concerto is a concerto for solo violin and instrumental ensemble, customarily orchestra. Such works have been written since the Baroque period, when the solo concerto form was first developed, up through the present day...
by Mackenzie at the Birmingham Festival of 1885. For the 1885–86 season, Mackenzie was appointed conductor of Novello
Novello
-Places:England* Novello Theatre, a theatre in the City of Westminster, LondonItaly* Novello, Piedmont, a comune in the Province of Cuneo-People:* Agostino Novello, an Italian religious figure* Antonia Novello, a Puerto Rican physician...
's oratorio
Oratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
concerts in London. Liszt paid his final visit to England chiefly to hear his Saint Elisabeth performed under Mackenzie's direction in 1886.
Peak years
In October 1887, the principal of the Royal Academy of Music, Sir George MacfarrenGeorge Alexander Macfarren
Sir George Alexander Macfarren was an English composer.-Life:George Alexander Macfarren was born in London on 2 March 1813 to George Macfarren, a dancing-master, dramatic author, and journalist, and Elizabeth Macfarren, née Jackson. At the age of seven, Macfarren was sent to Dr...
, died, and in early 1888 Mackenzie was appointed to succeed him. He held the post for 36 years until his retirement in 1924. At the time, the Academy was overshadowed by its younger rival, the Royal College of Music
Royal College of Music
The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...
, and Mackenzie set about reviving its reputation. He was fortunate in enjoying the friendly support of his opposite numbers at the College, George Grove
George Grove
Sir George Grove, CB was an English writer on music, known as the founding editor of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians....
, and, from 1895, Hubert Parry
Hubert Parry
Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, 1st Baronet was an English composer, teacher and historian of music.Parry's first major works appeared in 1880. As a composer he is best known for the choral song "Jerusalem", the coronation anthem "I was glad" and the hymn tune "Repton", which sets the words...
, and the two institutions established a close working relationship of mutual benefit. In addition to overhauling the curriculum and reorganising the faculty, Mackenzie engaged personally with his students by teaching composition and conducting the student orchestra. In 1912 the Academy moved from its old buildings in Mayfair
Mayfair
Mayfair is an area of central London, within the City of Westminster.-History:Mayfair is named after the annual fortnight-long May Fair that took place on the site that is Shepherd Market today...
to purpose-built premises in Marylebone
Marylebone
Marylebone is an affluent inner-city area of central London, located within the City of Westminster. It is sometimes written as St. Marylebone or Mary-le-bone....
.
Mackenzie was conductor of the Royal Choral Society
Royal Choral Society
The Royal Choral Society is an amateur choir, based in London. Formed soon after the opening of the Royal Albert Hall in 1871, the choir gave its first performance as the Royal Albert Hall Choral Society on 8 May 1872 – the choir's first conductor Charles Gounod included the Hallelujah Chorus from...
and the Philharmonic Society
Royal Philharmonic Society
The Royal Philharmonic Society is a British music society, formed in 1813. It was originally formed in London to promote performances of instrumental music there. Many distinguished composers and performers have taken part in its concerts...
Orchestra between 1892 and 1899, giving the British premières of many works, including symphonies by Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
and Borodin
Alexander Borodin
Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin was a Russian Romantic composer and chemist of Georgian–Russian parentage. He was a member of the group of composers called The Five , who were dedicated to producing a specifically Russian kind of art music...
.
Like his father, Mackenzie took a great interest in folk music and produced several collections of arrangements of traditional Scottish songs. In 1903, interested in investigating Canadian folk-song, he undertook a tour of Canada organised by the Anglo-Canadian musician Charles A.E. Harriss. His visit stimulated the cultural scene and choral festival competitions were held throughout Canada with eleven new choral societies being founded. Mackenzie conducted concerts during the tour, exclusively of British music.
Mackenzie was regarded as a cosmopolitan musician. He spoke fluent German and Italian and was elected to the post of President of the International Musical Society which he held from 1908 to 1912. From his early days playing in orchestras in Edinburgh and Birmingham he had met and become friendly with many leading international musicians, including Clara Schumann
Clara Schumann
Clara Schumann was a German musician and composer, considered one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era...
, Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant violinists of the 19th century.-Origins:...
, Charles Gounod
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...
and Antonín Dvořák
Antonín Dvorák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...
. His friendship with Liszt began in Mackenzie's student days in Sondershausen and lasted for the rest of Liszt's life.
Although Mackenzie composed a large number of works, which met with great public success, he found, as had Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
earlier and as did Parry contemporaneously, that running a large musical conservatoire left less time for composition. Both at the Academy and elsewhere, he was a popular lecturer. Among his topics were Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
's opera Falstaff
Falstaff (opera)
Falstaff is an operatic commedia lirica in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. It was Verdi's last opera, written in the composer's ninth decade, and only the second of his 26 operas to be a comedy...
, the text of his lecture on which was later published in translation in Italy. Outliving his contemporaries Sullivan and Parry, he gave memorial lectures on their lives and works. At a time when Sullivan's reputation in academic musical circles was not high, Mackenzie's tribute was generous and enthusiastic.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Mackenzie's professional prominence brought him many honours from universities and learned societies in Britain and abroad. He was knight
Knight
A knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages.By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior....
ed in 1895, and created a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) in 1922, the year of the centenary celebrations of the Royal Academy, in which he was the central figure. On his eighty-sixth birthday, over forty distinguished musicians presented him with a silver tray inscribed with facsimiles of their signatures, including Elgar
Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...
, Delius
Frederick Delius
Frederick Theodore Albert Delius, CH was an English composer. Born in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family of German extraction, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce...
, Ethel Smyth
Ethel Smyth
Dame Ethel Mary Smyth, DBE was an English composer and a leader of the women's suffrage movement.- Early career :...
, Edward German
Edward German
Sir Edward German was an English musician and composer of Welsh descent, best remembered for his extensive output of incidental music for the stage and as a successor to Arthur Sullivan in the field of English comic opera.As a youth, German played the violin and led the town orchestra, also...
, Henry Wood
Henry Wood
Henry Wood was a British conductor.Henry Wood may also refer to:* Henry C. Wood , American Civil War Medal of Honor recipient* Henry Wood , English cricketer...
, and Landon Ronald
Landon Ronald
Sir Landon Ronald was an English conductor, composer, pianist, singing teacher and administrator...
. He retired from the Academy and from public life in 1924.
Mackenzie died in London in 1935 at the age of 87.
Works
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says of Mackenzie's music that it is "cosmopolitan in style and somewhat old-fashioned for its period, displaying influences of French and German composers, including BizetGeorges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...
, Gounod
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...
, Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
, and Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
." Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians says that although Mackenzie's music was eclipsed by the works of later composers, "he and his contemporaries may be regarded as having laid the foundations of the musical renaissance
English Musical Renaissance
The English Musical Renaissance was a hypothetical period in the late 19th and early 20th century, when British composers, often those lecturing or trained at the Royal College of Music, were said to have freed themselves from foreign musical influences, to have begun writing in a distinctively...
in 19th- and early 20th-century Britain".
During his time teaching in Edinburgh, Mackenzie wrote several works, including a piano trio, a string quartet and a piano quartet, and he maintained a considerable output despite his crowded schedule both then and later. The Times reported that his list of compositions numbered 90, of which 20 were distinctly Scottish.
His orchestral works include the overture Cervantes, performed at Schwarzburg-Sondershausen in 1877, three Scottish Rhapsodies, a violin concerto premiered by Pablo de Sarasate
Pablo de Sarasate
Pablo Martín Melitón de Sarasate y Navascués was a Navarrese Spanish violinist and composer of the Romantic period.-Career:Pablo Sarasate was born in Pamplona, Navarre, the son of an artillery bandmaster...
at the Birmingham Festival of 1885, a "Scottish" concerto for piano (1897), a suite, London Day by Day (1902), and a Canadian Rhapsody (1905). He composed incidental music
Incidental music
Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack"....
to six dramas, including Ravenswood, and J. M. Barrie
J. M. Barrie
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright...
's The Little Minister. The funeral march from his music for Henry Irving
Henry Irving
Sir Henry Irving , born John Henry Brodribb, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility for season after season at the Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as...
's production of Coriolanus
Coriolanus
Gaius Marcius Coriolanus was a Roman general who is said to have lived in the 5th century BC. He received his toponymic cognomen "Coriolanus" because of his exceptional valor in a Roman siege of the Volscian city of Corioli. He was then promoted to a general...
was played at Irving's funeral in 1905 and at Mackenzie's memorial service at St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral, London, is a Church of England cathedral and seat of the Bishop of London. Its dedication to Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. St Paul's sits at the top of Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City of London, and is the mother...
in 1935. He worked on a symphony but did not complete it.
Three Choirs Festival
The Three Choirs Festival is a music festival held each August alternately at the cathedrals of the Three Counties and originally featuring their three choirs, which remain central to the week-long programme...
of 1881. Edward Elgar
Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...
played in the violins at the première and later remarked that meeting Mackenzie was "the event of my musical life". A second cantata, Jason, for the Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
festival of 1882, was also well received. His most famous choral work was the oratorio The Rose of Sharon, written for the Norwich
Norwich
Norwich is a city in England. It is the regional administrative centre and county town of Norfolk. During the 11th century, Norwich was the largest city in England after London, and one of the most important places in the kingdom...
festival of 1884. The words were adapted from the Song of Solomon
Song of Solomon
The Song of Songs of Solomon, commonly referred to as Song of Songs or Song of Solomon, is a book of the Hebrew Bible—one of the megillot —found in the last section of the Tanakh, known as the Ketuvim...
by Joseph Bennett
Joseph Bennett (critic)
Joseph Bennett was an English music critic and librettist. After an early career as a schoolmaster and organist, he was engaged as a music critic by The Sunday Times in 1865...
, music critic of The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
, who later provided Sullivan with the text for The Golden Legend. The Dream of Jubal (1889), is an unusual combination of recitation and choral sections, composed for the jubilee of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society is a society based in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, that organises concerts and other events mainly in the field of classical music. The society is the second oldest of its type in the United Kingdom and its orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic...
in 1889.
Mackenzie's operas began in 1883 with Colomba, first produced by the Carl Rosa Company. It was a success, but his second opera The Troubadour (1886) was not. Francis Hueffer's libretti for both operas were written in an antiquated style that attracted much criticism. Mackenzie's other operas were a one-act opera, The Cricket on the Hearth, first performed in 1914, The Eve of St John (1924), and two almost-complete operas, The Cornish Opera and Le luthier.
Critics observed that Mackenzie's operatic and choral music was generally ill-served by his librettists: "Much of his best work ... is neglected, partly because unlike his contemporaries, Parry and Stanford, Mackenzie went for the texts of his larger vocal works to such librettists as Joseph Bennett and Hueffer, instead of to the vital things of English poetry and literature." "[He] was content with librettos written by hacks according to the current operatic conventions." This even applied to his one excursion into comic opera
Comic opera
Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...
, His Majesty, a piece in the Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
vein, with a libretto by F. C. Burnand
Francis Burnand
Sir Francis Cowley Burnand , often credited as F. C. Burnand, was an English comic writer and dramatist....
and R. C. Lehmann
R. C. Lehmann
Rudolph Chambers "R.C." Lehmann was an English writer and Liberal Party politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1906 to 1910. As a writer he was best known for three decades in which he was a major contributor to Punch as well as founding editor of Granta magazine.Lehmann was born in...
and additional lyrics by Adrian Ross
Adrian Ross
For the NFL player see Adrian Ross Arthur Reed Ropes , better known under the pseudonym Adrian Ross, was a prolific writer of lyrics, contributing songs to more than sixty British musical comedies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries...
, presented at the Savoy Theatre
Savoy Theatre
The Savoy Theatre is a West End theatre located in the Strand in the City of Westminster, London, England. The theatre opened on 10 October 1881 and was built by Richard D'Oyly Carte on the site of the old Savoy Palace as a showcase for the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan,...
in 1897. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
commented, "Mr Burnand's experience as a librettist of comic opera, and Sir Alexander Mackenzie's inexperience in this class of composition might lead the public to expect a brilliant book weighed down by music of too serious and ambitious a type. The exact opposite is the case." Burnand's libretto was judged dull and confused, but Mackenzie's music was "marked by distinction as well as humour."
Mackenzie also wrote books on Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
(1913) and Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
(1920). In his memoirs A Musician's Narrative (1927), he described "a lifetime spent, boy and man, in the service of British music".