Lilias Livingstone Mackinnon

LRAM Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music (LRAM) is a professional diploma, or licentiate, formerly open to both internal students of the Royal Academy of Music and to external candidates in voice, keyboard and orchestral instruments and guitar, a ...

(20 April 1889 – 1974) was a Scottish pianist and music educator.

Early life and education

Mackinnon was born in

Aberdeen Aberdeen (; sco, Aiberdeen ; gd, Obar Dheathain ; la, Aberdonia) is a city in North East Scotland, and is the third most populous city in the country. Aberdeen is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas (as Aberdeen City), and ...

, the daughter of Lachlan Mackinnon and Theodora Thompson. Her father was a lawyer and a consular agent, and her mother ran a home for unemployed women. Her older sisters were zoologist

Doris Mackinnon Doris Mackinnon (30 September 1883 – 10 September 1956) was a British zoologist. Born in Scotland, her father was a Consul (representative), Consular Agent and her mother managed a "women's home". Influenced by Maria Gordon, Mackinnon st ...

and artist

Esther Blaikie MacKinnon Esther Blaikie MacKinnon (1885–1934) was a Scottish artist who was known for her paintings and engravings. MacKinnon worked with a variety of media including paint, dry point, etchings, and black and white drawings. Notable were her portraits ...

. Her great-grandfather was shipowner George Thompson. She studied piano with Julian Rossetti, and with

Carlo Albanesi Carlo Albanesi (born 22 October 1858; died 26 September 1926) was an Italian-born composer, pianist, teacher and examiner who spent most of his working life in England. His ''Exercises for Fingering'', first published in the early 1900s, are sti ...

at the

Royal Academy of Music The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is the oldest conservatoire in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the first Duke of ...

(RAM). She won the Macfarren Gold Medal at the RAM in 1916. She also studied with Tobias Matthay.

Career

Pianist

In Mackinnon gave concerts of piano works by Scriabin in London, beginning in 1917."Lilias Mackinnon"
''The Scottish Musical Magazine'' 5(4)(1 December 1923): 70. In 1918 she joined Mary Ramsay and

Oscar Beringer Oscar Beringer (14 July 1844 – 21 February 1922) was an English pianist and teacher of German descent. He was born in Furtwangen in the Black Forest, but by 1849 he had moved to London when his father became a political refugee. Due to impo ...

for a benefit concert of works to two pianos, at London's Aeolian Hall. In 1933 she played at the BBC Proms concerts at Queen's Hall. Her cousin, archaeologist

Aileen Fox Aileen Mary Fox, Lady Fox, ( Henderson; 29 July 1907 – 21 November 2005) was an English archaeologist, who specialised in the archaeology of south-west England. She notably excavated the Roman legionary fortress in Exeter, Devon, after the S ...

, remembered seeing a concert by Mackinnon at Wigmore Hall. She toured Canada and the United States several times in the 1930s. Critics generally praised Mackinnon's technique and choice of programme, though Scriabin was considered quite "futuristic" in the 1920s.

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...

described her playing as having "a fluid, not an architecture manner; it is not a confusion." ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' expressed admiration for her charm and intelligent choices in 1932, but some disappointment at her restraint, when "something more of audacity is wanted." The '' Oakland Tribune'''s critic highlighted her "meticulous taste" and "refined and poetic sensibility".

Lecturer, writer, arts patron

Mackinnon devised her own method of memorising piano music, which she taught by correspondence. In 1935, she conducted a summer music school in

St. Andrews St Andrews ( la, S. Andrea(s); sco, Saunt Aundraes; gd, Cill Rìmhinn) is a town on the east coast of Fife in Scotland, southeast of Dundee and northeast of Edinburgh. St Andrews had a recorded population of 16,800 , making it Fife's fourt ...

. She wrote ''Music by Heart'' (1938), "the only non-technical book in English devoted primarily to memorization", and "a classic", according to a 1955 review. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, Mackinnon taught at Dominican College in California, and at

Bradley Polytechnic Institute Bradley University is a private university in Peoria, Illinois. Founded in 1897, Bradley University enrolls 5,400 students who are pursuing degrees in more than 100 undergraduate programs and more than 30 graduate programs in five colleges. The ...

in Illinois. She lectured on musical memory in Chicago in 1942, in New York in 1945, and at a piano clinic in North Carolina in 1956. Composer Nancy Laird Chance was one of her students.

Alexander Stuart-Hill Alexander Stuart-Hill (1889 – February 1948) was a Scottish portrait and landscape artist who lived in Paris who was engaged to Princess Louise of Battenberg before her marriage to King Gustaf VI Adolf. Early life Stuart-Hill was born in 1889 ...

painted Mackinnon's portrait in about 1920; she donated that painting to the Perth Art Gallery.

Maurice Besly Edward Maurice Besly (28 January 1888 - 12 April (?), 1945) was an English composer, conductor, schoolteacher, organist and arranger best known for his popular ballads, ''The Second Minuet'' and ''Time, You Old Gipsy Man''. More ambitious vocal p ...

dedicated a 1928 composition to Mackinnon. She also donated some of her sister's art to the

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...

Publications

* ''Musical Secrets'' (1936) * ''Music by Heart'' (1938)

Personal life

Mackinnon married a younger American man, William P. Harley, in 1959. They divorced in 1965.Virginia, U.S., Divorce Records, 1918-2014 for Lilias Livingstone Mackinnon and William P. Harley, divorce granted May 12, 1965; via Ancestry She died in 1974, in her eighties.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mackinnon, Lilias 1889 births 1974 deaths Scottish musicians British pianists British women pianists Scottish women pianists People from Aberdeen British music educators Scottish music educators British women music educators Scottish women music educators