Alexander Mackenzie

Biography

Sir Alexander Campbell Mackenzie KCVO (22 August 1847 – 28 April 1935) was a Scottish composer, conductor and teacher best known for his oratorios, 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.

Life and career

Mackenzie was born in Edinburgh, 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.

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 Square. 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 cantatas 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.

Peak years

In October 1887, the principal of the Royal Academy of Music, Sir George Macfarren, 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. In his later years as principal, Mackenzie became markedly conservative, forbidding his students to play the chamber music of Ravel, which he stigmatised as "a pernicious influence".
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 knighted 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 15 October 1923 the BBC broadcast one of the earliest examples of a one-composer programme, devoting one hour and 45 minutes to performances of Mackenzie's works, conducted by the composer. 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.