Alexander Mackenzie (composer) - Works

Works

Further information: List of compositions by Alexander Mackenzie

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 Bizet, 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." " 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".