1847–1935 · United Kingdom · 20th century
Alexander Mackenzie (1847–1935) was a Scottish composer, violinist, conductor and music teacher who led the Royal Academy of Music in London for more than thirty years. He became famous for cantatas and oratorios written for English festivals, as one of those who paved the way for the revival of British music at the end of the nineteenth century. Pianists will find his songs with an elaborate piano part especially interesting.
Alexander Mackenzie was born on 22 August 1847 in Edinburgh, into a family of musicians: he was already the fourth generation of musicians in the family. His great-grandfather had served as an army bandsman, his grandfather made his living as a violinist in both Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and his father worked as a violinist as well, besides being conductor of the orchestra at the Theatre Royal in Edinburgh and compiler of a collection of Scottish dance tunes.
Even as a small child Mackenzie showed clear musical gifts: from the age of eight he took part most evenings in the orchestra his father led. He was then sent to Germany for his musical education, settling in the town of Sondershausen, where he studied first privately with August Bartel and afterwards, between 1857 and 1861, at the conservatory under Eduard Stein; during those same years he joined the ducal court orchestra as a violinist.
In 1862 Mackenzie returned to Britain and entered the Royal Academy of Music in London, in the violin class of Prosper Sainton, who had earlier taught his father as well. Besides the violin, he studied harmony with Charles Lucas and piano with another of the Academy's professors, and a King's Scholarship allowed him to earn extra money playing in London theatre orchestras.
Mackenzie went back to Edinburgh in 1865, once his studies were complete. There he kept up a demanding teaching schedule, giving private lessons alongside work at local colleges, and in 1870 took charge of the music at St George's on Charlotte Square. Three years later, in 1873, the Scottish Vocal Association appointed him its conductor.
Mackenzie also performed at the Birmingham music festivals, where he met and became close friends with Hans von Bülow. In 1874 he married Mary Malina Burnside; the couple had a daughter, Mary.
These same years saw the start of his career as a composer for orchestra: in 1879 Bülow gave a highly successful performance of his overture Cervantes, which had first been heard in 1877 at Sondershausen under Max Erdmannsdörfer. In 1880 and 1881 the conductor August Manns premiered two of his Scottish rhapsodies.
The heavy workload of a teacher and orchestral player began to undermine Mackenzie's health, and in the early 1880s he moved to Florence. Through his acquaintance with Giuseppe Buonamici, a pupil of Bülow, he gained the patronage of philanthropists and was able to devote himself entirely to composing; he spent most of that decade in Italy.
Mackenzie's most important works belong to these Florence years. The Carl Rosa Company commissioned Mackenzie to write the opera Colomba to a libretto by Francis Hueffer — it was successfully staged in 1883. A second opera, The Troubadour (1886), to a libretto by the same author, was not a success, although Franz Liszt, a friend of Mackenzie's since his youth, became interested enough in its themes to begin writing a piano fantasia based on them.
These same years produced the cantatas Jason and The Bride — both well received by the public — as well as the oratorio The Rose of Sharon, on words from the Song of Songs, written for the 1884 Norwich Festival. In 1885, at the Birmingham Festival, the Spanish violinist Pablo de Sarasate gave the first performance of Mackenzie's violin concerto.
The success of these works led to Mackenzie being invited, at the end of 1887, to head the Royal Academy of Music in London, following the death of its principal, George Macfarren. From early 1888 until his retirement in 1924 he ran one of Britain's foremost music schools — for 36 years.
At that time the Academy ranked below the younger Royal College of Music in reputation, and Mackenzie worked hard to change that: he rebuilt the curriculum, brought in new staff, taught composition classes himself and took charge of the students' orchestra. His relations with his counterparts across town were good — first George Grove, then, from 1895, Hubert Parry — so the two schools ended up cooperating to everyone's benefit. In 1912 the Academy left its old Mayfair buildings for new, purpose-built premises in Marylebone.
By the end of his long tenure Mackenzie had turned markedly conservative in outlook: he would not let his pupils play Ravel's chamber works, dismissing them as a harmful influence.
Mackenzie was also a willing public lecturer, both at the Academy and elsewhere. Among his topics was Verdi's opera Falstaff, and having outlived his contemporaries Arthur Sullivan and Hubert Parry, he gave memorial lectures on them, speaking of their work generously and with enthusiasm.
Heading the conservatoire left Mackenzie almost no time to compose, yet it did nothing to slow his conducting career: between 1892 and 1899 he stood at the podium of the Royal Choral Society and, separately, the Philharmonic Society's orchestra, bringing a whole series of new scores before British audiences for the first time — among them symphonies by Alexander Borodin and Pyotr Tchaikovsky.
Like his father, he took a keen interest in folk music, putting together collections of arrangements of traditional Scottish songs. A tour of Canada followed in 1903, arranged by the musician Charles Harriss and undertaken to explore Canadian folk-song; the trip gave the country's musical life a real boost, with choral festivals and competitions springing up across Canada and eleven new choral societies formed as a result, while Mackenzie's own concerts there featured British music exclusively. The journey left its mark in his Canadian Rhapsody for orchestra.
From 1908 to 1912 Mackenzie served as President of the International Musical Society; he was seen as a cosmopolitan musician, fluent in German and Italian, and on friendly terms with Joseph Joachim, Antonín Dvořák, Charles Gounod and Clara Schumann. This same period produced his 'Scottish' concerto for piano and orchestra and the comic opera His Majesty, staged at the Savoy Theatre in 1897 — it was not a great success.
Mackenzie received his knighthood in 1895, and in 1922 — when the Academy marked one hundred years and he stood at the centre of the celebrations — he was appointed Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order. Two years later, in 1924, he stepped away from both the Academy and public life for good.
In his later years Mackenzie turned to writing about music: in 1913 his book on Giuseppe Verdi appeared, in 1920 one on Franz Liszt, and in 1927 his memoirs, A Musician's Narrative.
Mackenzie died in London on 28 April 1935, at the age of 87.
Mackenzie's fame rested above all on his vocal music — cantatas and oratorios written for the major English music festivals. Mackenzie's style has been called cosmopolitan and somewhat old-fashioned for its time, showing a clear influence of French and German composers, among them Gounod, Schumann and Wagner. Mackenzie's later operas and orchestral works are rarely heard today, but in his lifetime he, alongside Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford, was regarded as one of those who laid the ground for the revival of British music at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Mackenzie's list of works is extensive — around ninety compositions, of which some twenty are on Scottish subjects: operas, oratorios and cantatas for major festivals, concertos for violin and for piano, orchestral overtures and rhapsodies, chamber music and music for the stage. His orchestral works include the overture Cervantes, several Scottish rhapsodies and a Canadian Rhapsody written under the impression of his trip to Canada; his chamber works include a piano trio and string and piano quartets composed back in his Edinburgh years.
Critics often found fault with the libretti of his operas and oratorios, but in the comic opera His Majesty the music itself was praised — for its distinctive character and its humour; the same blend of clear melody and finely woven piano writing can be heard in the vocal miniatures gathered on this site.
The Dana Piano site brings together Mackenzie's songs for voice and piano — the genre that launched his fame as a composer. The 'Intermediate+' songs The First Rose, A May Song, Summer At Last and Spring Is Not Dead suit players who already read the texture of a song fluently: here the piano part is not mere accompaniment but an equal partner to the voice, with its own melodic line. April Weather, One who never turned his back and Spring's Secrets, at the same level, make a good addition to the repertoire. A more elaborate piano part awaits in the 'Advanced' song Hope, which calls for confident control of dynamics and the pedal. It is best to start getting to know Mackenzie with one of the 'Intermediate+' songs and then move on to the more elaborate parts — this makes it easier to hear how the composer builds a dialogue between voice and piano.