- Mackenzie’s Twelfth Night overture is a single movement programmatic work written in 1888 based on the Shakespeare play.
- The music is segmented by six scene references and quotes from the play in the following order:
- Part 1 – Act II, Scene 5: “By my life, this is my lady’s hand.”
- Part 2 – Act II, Scene 5: “Why, thou hast put him in such a dream, that when the image of it leaves him he must run mad.”
- Part 3 – Act II, Scene 3: “Shall we rouse the night-owl in a catch?”
- Part 4 – Act I, Scene 1: “O, she that hath a heart of that fine frame / To pay this debt of love but to a brother, / How will she love, when the rich, golden shaft / Hath kill’d the flock of all affections else / That live in her.”
- Part 5 – Act IV, Scene 2: “Fool, there was never man so notoriously abus’d; I am as well in my wits, fool, as thou art.”
- Listen for Mackenzie’s quotation from Beethoven’s “Pastoral” symphony in this section.
- Part 6 – Act V Scene 1: “I’ll be reveng’d on the whole pack of you.” 1
Sources
- John Purser, Essay in accompanying booklet, Sir Alexander MacKenzie: Orchestral Music performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Martyn Brabbins, Hyperion 66764, 1995, compact disc.
Cut IDs
24657