Composers

GEORGE MACFARREN (1813-1887)

England

(Sir) George (Alexander) Macfarren (1813-1887) was a highly regarded musician in his day, and certainly a prolific one. His operas King Charles II and Robin Hood enjoyed some success – the latter at the time when he was composing the Shakespeare songs. But other works became better known, including the overture Chevy Chace, and the oratorio St. John the Baptist. He also wrote a quantity of church music.
As a youth Macfarren had suffered from poor eyesight and by 1860 he had become entirely blind, though this did little to impede his work as composer, teacher and writer. In 1875 he succeeded Sterndale Bennett as Professor of Music at Cambridge and as principal of the Royal Academy of Music. He was knighted in 1883. (His younger brother, Walter, was also a noted composer of partsongs.)
In its very first edition Grove’s Dictionary noted that Macfarren (then still alive) ‘stands at the head of English musicians. He shares with Sterndale Bennett and Sullivan the rare distinction, for an Englishman, of having had his works performed at the Gewandhaus Concerts of Leipzig and elsewhere in Germany.’ Although he could be a pedant in matters of music theory and history, he seems to have been well liked: ‘His great kindness, and his readiness to communicate his vast knowledge and the stores of his capacious and retentive memory to all who require them, are well known, and have endeared him to a large circle of friends and admirers.’
As is often the case with England’s Victorian composers, the larger works are unlikely to find a new audience, but there are many gems among the lighter and shorter works, which are a pleasure both to hear and to sing, and Macfarren’s Shakespeare settings are certainly among them.