Chapter 4

SeeVictoria County History, Gloucestershire; Sir R. Atkyns,The Ancient and Present State of Gloucestershire(London, 1712; 2nd ed., London, 1768); Samuel Rudder,A New History of Gloucestershire(Cirencester, 1779); Ralph Bigland,Historical, Monumental and Genealogical Collections relative to the County of Gloucester(2 vols., London, 1791); Thomas Rudge,The History of the County of Gloucester(2 vols., Gloucester, 1803); T. D. FosbrokeAbstract of Records and Manuscripts respecting the County of Gloucestershire formed into a History(2 vols., Gloucester, 1807);Legends, Tales and Songs in the Dialect of the Peasantry of Gloucestershire(London, 1876); J. D. Robertson,Glossary of Dialect and Archaic Words of Gloucester(London, 1890); W. Bazeley and F. A. Hyett,Bibliographers’ Manual of Gloucestershire(3 vols., London, 1895-1897); W. H. Hutton,By Thames and Cotswold(London, 1903). See alsoTransactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society.

GLOVE(O. Eng.glof, perhaps connected with Gothiclofa, the palm of the hand), a covering for the hand, commonly with a separate sheath for each finger.

The use of gloves is of high antiquity, and apparently was known even to the pre-historic cave dwellers. In Homer Laërtes is described as wearing gloves (χειρῖδας ἐπὶ χερσί) while walking in his garden (Od.xxiv. 230). Herodotus (vi. 72) tells how Leotychides filled a glove (χειρίς) with the money he received as a bribe, and Xenophon (Cyrop.viii. 8. 17) records that the Persians wore fur gloves having separate sheaths for the fingers (χειρῖδας δασείας καὶ δακτυλήθρας). Among the Romans also there are occasional references to the use of gloves. According to the younger Pliny (Ep.iii. 5. 15) the secretary whom his uncle had with him when ascending Vesuvius wore gloves (manicae) so that he might not be impeded in his work by the cold, and Varro (R.R.i. 55. 1) remarks that olives gathered with the bare fingers are better than those gathered with gloves (digitabulaordigitalia). In the northern countries the general use of gloves would be more natural than in the south, and it is not without significance that the most common medieval Latin word for glove (guantusorwantus, Mod. Fr.gant) is of Teutonic origin (O. H. Ger.want). Thus in the life of Columbanus by Jonas, abbot of Bobbio (d.c.665), gloves for protecting the hands in doing manual labour are spoken of astegumenta manuum quae Galli wantos vocant. Among the Germans and Scandinavians, in the 8th and 9th centuries, the use of gloves, fingerless at first, would seem to have been all but universal; and in the case of kings, prelates and nobles they were often elaborately embroidered and bejewelled. This was more particularly the case with the gloves which formed part of the pontifical vestments (see below). In war and in the chase gloves of leather, or with the backs armoured with articulated iron plates, were early worn; yet in the Bayeux tapestry the warriors on either side fight ungloved. The fact that gloves are not represented by contemporary artists does not prove their non-existence, since this might easily be an omission due to lack of observation or of skill; but, so far as the records go, there is no evidence to prove that gloves were in general use in England until the 13th century. It was in this century that ladies began to wear gloves as ornaments; they were of linen and sometimes reached to the elbow. It was, however, not till the 16th century that they reached their greatest elaboration, when Queen Elizabeth set the fashion for wearing them richly embroidered and jewelled.

The symbolic sense of the middle ages early gave to the use of gloves a special significance. Their liturgical use by the Church is dealt with below (Pontifical gloves); this was imitated from the usage of civil life. Embroidered and jewelled gloves formed part of theinsigniaof the emperors, and also, and that quite early, of the kings of England. Thus Matthew of Paris, in recording the burial of Henry II. in 1189, mentions that he was buried in his coronation robes, with a golden crown on his head and gloves on his hands. Gloves were also found on the hands of King John when his tomb was opened in 1797, and on those of King Edward I. when his tomb was opened in 1774.

See W. B. Redfern,Royal and Historic Gloves and Shoes, with numerous examples.

Gages.—Of the symbolical uses of the glove one of the most widespread and important during the middle ages was the practice of tendering a folded glove as a gage for waging one’s law. The origin of this custom is probably not far to seek. The promise to fulfil a judgment of a court of law, a promise secured by the delivery of awedor gage, is one of the oldest, if not the very oldest, of all enforceable contracts. This gage was originallya chattel of value, which had to be deposited at once by the defendant as security into his adversary’s hand; and that the glove became the formal symbol of such deposit is doubtless due to its being the most convenient loose object for the purpose. The custom survived after the contract with thevadium,wedor gage had been superseded by the contract with pledges (personal sureties). In the rules of procedure of a baronial court of the 14th century we find: “He shall wage his law with his folded glove (de son gaunt plyee) and shall deliver it into the hand of the other, and then take his glove back and find pledges for his law.” The delivery of the glove had, in fact, become a mere ceremony, because the defendant had his sureties close at hand.1

Associated with this custom was the use of the glove in the wager of battle (vadium in duello). The glove here was thrown down by the defendant in open court as security that he would defend his cause in arms; the accuser by picking it up accepted the challenge (seeWager). This form is still prescribed for the challenge of the king’s champion at the coronation of English sovereigns, and was actually followed at that of George IV. (seeChampion). The phrase “to throw down the gauntlet” is still in common use of any challenge.

Pledges of Service.—The use of the glove as a pledge of fulfilment is exemplified also by the not infrequent practice of enfeoffing vassals by investing them with the glove; similarly the emperors symbolized by the bestowal of a glove the concession of the right to found a town or to establish markets, mints and the like; the “hands” in the armorial bearings of certain German towns are really gloves, reminiscent of this investiture. Conversely, fiefs were held by the render of presenting gloves to the sovereign. Thus the manor of Little Holland in Essex was held in Queen Elizabeth’s time by the service of one knight’s fee and the rent of a pair of gloves turned up with hare’s skin (Blount’sTenures, ed. Beckwith, p. 130). The most notable instance in England, however, is the grand serjeanty of finding for the king a glove for his right hand on coronation day, and supporting his right arm as long as he holds the sceptre. The right to perform this “honourable service” was originally granted by William the Conqueror to Bertram de Verdun, together with the manor of Fernham (Farnham Royal) in Buckinghamshire. The male descendants of Bertram performed this serjeanty at the coronations until the death of Theobald de Verdun in 1316, when the right passed, with the manor of Farnham, to Thomas Lord Furnival by his marriage with the heiress Joan. His son William Lord Furnival performed the ceremony at the coronation of Richard II. He died in 1383, and his daughter and heiress Jean de Furnival having married Sir Thomas Nevill, Lord Furnival in her right, the latter performed the ceremony at the coronation of Henry IV. His heiress Maud married Sir John Talbot (1st earl of Shrewsbury) who, as Lord Furnival, presented the glove embroidered with the arms of Verdun at the coronation of Henry V. When in 1541 Francis earl of Shrewsbury exchanged the manor of Farnham with King Henry VIII. for the site and precincts of the priory of Worksop in Nottinghamshire he stipulated that the right to perform this serjeanty should be reserved to him, and the king accordingly transferred the obligation from Farnham to Worksop. On the 3rd of April 1838 the manor of Worksop was sold to the duke of Newcastle and with it the right to perform the service, which had hitherto always been carried out by a descendant of Bertram de Verdun. At the coronation of King Edward VII. the earl of Shrewsbury disputed the duke of Newcastle’s right, on the ground that the serjeanty was attached not to the manor but to the priory lands at Worksop, and that the latter had been subdivided by sale so that no single person was entitled to perform the ceremony and the right had therefore lapsed. His petition for a regrant to himself as lineal heir of Bertram de Verdun, however, was disallowed by the court of claims, and the serjeanty was declared to be attached to the manor of Worksop (G. Woods Wollaston,Coronation Claims, London, 1903, p. 133).

Presentations.—From the ceremonial and symbolic use of gloves the transition was easy to the custom which grew up of presenting them to persons of distinction on special occasions. When Queen Elizabeth visited Cambridge in 1578 the vice-chancellor offered her a “paire of gloves, perfumed and garnished with embroiderie and goldsmithe’s wourke, price 60s.,” and at the visit of James I. there in 1615 the mayor and corporation of the town “delivered His Majesty a fair pair of perfumed gloves with gold laces.” It was formerly the custom in England for bishops at their consecrations to make presents of gloves to those who came to their consecration dinners and others, but this gift became such a burden to them that by an order in council in 1678 It was commuted for the payment of a sum of £50 towards the rebuilding of St Paul’s. Serjeants at law, on their appointment, were given a pair of gloves containing a sum of money which was termed “regards”; this custom is recorded as early as 1495, when according to theBlack Bookof Lincoln’s Inn each of the new Serjeants received £6, 13s. 4d. and a pair of gloves costing 4d., and it persisted to a late period. At one time it was the practice for a prisoner who pleaded the king’s pardon on his discharge to present the judges with gloves by way of a fee. Glove-silver, according to Jacob’sLaw Dictionary, was a name used of extraordinary rewards formerly given to officers of courts, &c., or of money given by the sheriff of a county in which no offenders were left for execution to the clerk of assize and judge’s officers; the explanation of the term is that the glove given as a perquisite or fee was in some cases lined with money to increase its value, and thus came to stand for money ostensibly given in lieu of gloves. It is still the custom in the United Kingdom to present a pair of white gloves to a judge or magistrate who when he takes his seat for criminal business at the appointed time finds no cases for trial. By ancient custom judges are not allowed to wear gloves while actually sitting on the bench, and a witness taking the oath must remove the glove from the hand that holds the book. (See J. W. Norton-Kyshe,The Law and Customs relating to Gloves, London, 1901.)

Pontifical gloves(Lat.chirothecae) are liturgical ornaments peculiar to the Western Church and proper only to the pope, the cardinals and bishops, though the right to wear them is often granted by the Holy See to abbots, cathedral dignitaries and other prelates, as in the case of the other episcopal insignia. According to the present use the gloves are of silk and of the liturgical colour of the day, the edge of the opening ornamented with a narrow band of embroidery or the like, and the middle of the back with a cross. They may be worn only at the celebration of mass (except masses for the dead). In vesting, the gloves are put on the bishop immediately after the dalmatic, the right hand one by the deacon, the other by the subdeacon. They are worn only until the ablution before the canon of the mass, after which they may not again be put on.

At the consecration of a bishop the consecrating prelate puts the gloves on the new bishop immediately after the mitre, with a prayer that his hands may be kept pure, so that the sacrifice he offers may be as acceptable as the gift of venison which Jacob, his hands wrapped in the skin of kids, brought to Isaac. This symbolism (as in the case of the other vestments) is, however, of late growth. The liturgical use of gloves itself cannot, according to Father Braun, be traced beyond the beginning of the 10th century, and their introduction was due, perhaps to the simple desire to keep the hands clean for the holy mysteries, but more probably merely as part of the increasing pomp with which the Carolingian bishops were surrounding themselves. From the Frankish kingdom the custom spread to Rome, where liturgical gloves are first heard of in the earlier half of the 11th century. The earliest authentic instance of the right to wear them being granted to a non-bishop is a bull of Alexander IV. in 1070, conceding this to the abbot of S. Pietro in Cielo d’ Oro.

During the middle ages the occasions on which pontifical gloves (oftenwanti,guanti, and sometimesmanicaein the inventories)were worn were not so carefully defined as now, the use varying in different churches. Nor were the liturgical colours prescribed. The most characteristic feature of the medieval pontifical glove was the ornament (tasellus,fibula,monile,paratura) set in the middle of the back of the glove. This was usually a small plaque of metal, enamelled or jewelled, generally round, but sometimes square or irregular in shape. Sometimes embroidery was substituted; still more rarely the whole glove was covered, even to the fingers, with elaborate needlework designs.

Liturgical gloves have not been worn by Anglican bishops since the Reformation, though they are occasionally represented as wearing them on their effigies.

See J. Braun, S.J.,Die liturgische Gewandung(Freiburg im Breisgau, 1907), pp. 359-382, where many beautiful examples are illustrated.

Manufacture of Gloves.—Three countries, according to an old proverb, contribute to the making of a good glove—Spain dressing the leather, France cutting it and England sewing it. But the manufacture of gloves was not introduced into Great Britain till the 10th or 11th century. The incorporation of glovers of Perth was chartered in 1165, and in 1190 a glove-makers’ gild was formed in France, with the object of regulating the trade and ensuring good workmanship. The glovers of London in 1349 framed their ordinances and had them approved by the corporation, the city regulations at that time fixing the price of a pair of common sheepskin gloves at 1d. In 1464, when the gild received armorial bearings, they do not seem to have been very strong, but apparently their position improved subsequently and in 1638 they were incorporated as a new company. In 1580 it is recorded that both French and Spanish gloves were on sale in London shops, and in 1661 a company of glovers was incorporated at Worcester, which still remains an important seat of the English glove Industry. In America the manufacture of gloves dates from about 1760, when Sir William Johnson brought over several families of glove makers from Perth; these settled in Fulton county, New York, which is now the largest seat of the glove trade in the United States.

Gloves may be divided into two distinct categories, according as these are made of leather or are woven or knitted from fibres such as silk, wool or cotton. The manufacture of the latter kinds is a branch of the hosiery industry. For leather gloves skins of various animals are employed—deer, calves, sheep and lambs, goats and kids, &c.—but kids have had nothing to do with the production of many of the “kid gloves” of commerce. The skins are prepared and dressed by special processes (seeLeather) before going to the glove-maker to be cut. Owing to the elastic character of the material the cutting is a delicate operation, and long practice is required before a man becomes expert at it. Formerly it was done by shears, the workmen following an outline marked on the leather, but now steel dies are universally employed not only for the bodies of the gloves but also for the thumb-pieces and fourchettes or sides of the fingers. When hand sewing is employed the pieces to be sewn together are placed between a pair of jaws, the holding edges of which are serrated with fine saw-teeth, and the sewer by passing the needle forwards and backwards between each of these teeth secures neat uniform stitching. But sewing machines are now widely employed on the work. The labour of making a glove is much subdivided, different operators sewing different pieces, and others again embroidering the back, forming the button-holes, attaching the buttons, &c. After the gloves are completed, they undergo the process of “laying off,” in which they are drawn over metal forms, shaped like a hand and heated internally by steam; in this way they are finally smoothed and shaped before being wrapped in paper and packed in boxes.Gloves made of thin india-rubber or of white cotton are worn by some surgeons while performing operations, on account of the ease with which they can be thoroughly sterilized.

Gloves made of thin india-rubber or of white cotton are worn by some surgeons while performing operations, on account of the ease with which they can be thoroughly sterilized.

1F. W. Maitland and W. P. Baildon,The Court Baron(Selden Society, London, 1891), p. 17. Maitland wrongly translatesgaunt plyeeas “twisted” glove, adding “why it should be twisted I cannot say.” An earlier instance of the delivery of a folded glove as gage is quoted from the 13th-century Anglo-Norman poem known asThe Song of Dermott and the Earl(ed. G. H. Orpen, Oxford, 1892) in J. H. Round’sCommune of London, p. 153.

GLOVER, SIR JOHN HAWLEY(1829-1885), captain in the British navy, entered the service in 1841 and passed his examination as lieutenant in 1849, but did not receive a commission till May 1851. He served on various stations, and was wounded severely in an action with the Burmese at Donabew (4th February 1853). But his reputation was not gained at sea and as a naval officer, but on shore and as an administrative official in the colonies. During his years of service as lieutenant in the navy he had had considerable experience of the coast of Africa, and had taken part in the expedition of Dr W. B. Baikie (1824-1864) up the Niger. On the 21st of April 1863 he was appointed administrator of the government of Lagos, and in that capacity, or as colonial secretary, he remained there till 1872. During this period he had been much employed in repelling the marauding incursions of the Ashantis. When the Ashanti war broke out in 1873, Captain Glover undertook the hazardous and doubtful task of organizing the native tribes, whom hatred of the Ashantis might be expected to make favourable to the British authorities—to the extent at least to which their fears would allow them to act. His services were accepted, and in September of 1873 he landed at Cape Coast, and, after forming a small trustworthy force of Hausa, marched to Accra. His influence sufficed to gather a numerous native force, but neither he nor anybody else could overcome their abject terror of the ferocious Ashantis to the extent of making them fight. In January 1874 Captain Glover was able to render some assistance in the taking of Kumasi, but it was at the head of a Hausa force. His services were acknowledged by the thanks of parliament and by his creation as G.C.M.G. In 1875 he was appointed governor of Newfoundland and held the post till 1881, when he was transferred to the Leeward Islands. He returned to Newfoundland in 1883, and died in London on the 30th September 1885.

Lady Glover’sLifeof her husband appeared in 1897.

GLOVER, RICHARD(1712-1785), English poet, son of Richard Glover, a Hamburg merchant, was born in London in 1712. He was educated at Cheam in Surrey. While there he wrote in his sixteenth year a poem to the memory of Sir Isaac Newton, which was prefixed by Dr Pemberton to hisView of Newton’s Philosophy, published in 1728. In 1737 he published an epic poem in praise of liberty,Leonidas, which was thought to have a special reference to the politics of the time; and being warmly commended by the prince of Wales and his court, it soon passed through several editions. In 1739 Glover published a poem entitledLondon, or the Progress of Commerce; and in the same year, with a view to exciting the nation against the Spaniards, he wrote a spirited ballad,Hosier’s Ghost, very popular in its day. He was also the author of two tragedies,Boadicea(1753) andMedea(1761), written in close imitation of Greek models. The success of Glover’sLeonidasled him to take considerable interest in politics, and in 1761 he entered parliament as member for Weymouth. He died on the 25th of November 1785. TheAthenaid, an epic in thirty books, was published in 1787, and his diary, entitledMemoirs of a distinguished literary and political Character from 1742 to 1757, appeared in 1813. Glover was one of the reputed authors ofJunius; but his claims—which were advocated in anInquiry concerning the author of the Letters of Junius(1815), by R. Duppa—rest on very slight grounds.

GLOVERSVILLE,a city of Fulton county, New York, U.S.A., at the foot-hills of the Adirondacks, about 55 m. N.W. of Albany. Pop. (1890) 13,864; (1900) 18,349, of whom 2542 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 20,642. It is served by the Fonda, Johnstown & Gloversville railway (connecting at Fonda, about 9 m. distant, with the New York Central), and by electric lines connecting with Johnstown, Amsterdam and Schenectady. The city has a public library (26,000 volumes in 1908), the Nathan Littauer memorial hospital, a state armoury and a fine government building. Gloversville is the principal glove-manufacturing centre in the United States. In 1900 Fulton county produced more than 57%, and Gloversville 38.8%, of all the leather gloves and mittens made in the United States; in 1905 Gloversville produced 29.9% of the leather gloves and mittens made in the United States, its products being valued at $5,302,196. Gloversville has more than a score of tanneries and leather-finishing factories, and manufactures fur goods. In 1905 the city’s total factory product was valued at $9,340,763. The extraordinary localization of the glove-making industry in Gloversville, Johnstown and other parts of Fulton county, is an incident of much interest in the economic history of the United States. The industry seems to have had its origin among a colony of Perthshire families, including many glove-makers, who were settled in this region by Sir William Johnson about 1760. For many years the entire product seems to have been disposed of in the neighbourhood, but about 1809 the goods began to find more distant markets, and by 1825 the industry was firmly established on a prosperousbasis, the trade being handed down from father to son. An interesting phase of the development is that, in addition to the factory work, a large amount of the industry is in the hands of “home workers” both in the town and country districts. Gloversville, settled originally about 1770, was known for some time as Stump City, its present name being adopted in 1832. It was incorporated as a village in 1851 and was chartered as a city in 1890.

GLOW-WORM,the popular name of the wingless female of the beetleLampyris noctiluca, whose power of emitting light has been familiar for many centuries. The luminous organs of the glow-worm consist of cells similar to those of the fat-body, grouped into paired masses in the ventral region of the hinder abdominal segments. The light given out by the wingless female insect is believed to serve as an attraction to the flying male, whose luminous organs remain in a rudimentary condition. The common glow-worm is a widespread European and Siberian insect, generally distributed in England and ranging in Scotland northwards to the Tay, but unknown in Ireland. Exotic species ofLampyrisare similarly luminous, and light-giving organs are present in many genera of the familyLampyridaefrom various parts of the world. Frequently—as in the south EuropeanLuciola italica—both sexes of the beetle are provided with wings, and both male and female emit light. These luminous, winged Lampyrids are generally known as “fire-flies.” In correspondence with their power of emitting light, the insects are nocturnal in habit.

Elongate centipedes of the familyGeophilidae, certain species of which are luminous, are sometimes mistaken for the true glow-worm.

GLOXINIA,a charming decorative plant, botanically a species ofSinningia(S. speciosa), a member of the natural order Gesneraceae and a native of Brazil. The species has given rise under cultivation to numerous forms showing a wonderful variety of colour, and hybrid forms have also been obtained between these and other species ofSinningia. A good strain of seed will produce many superb and charmingly coloured varieties, and if sown early in spring, in a temperature of 65° at night, they may be shifted on into 6-in. pots, and in these may be flowered during the summer. The bulbs are kept at rest through the winter in dry sand, in a temperature of 50°, and to yield a succession should be started at intervals, say at the end of February and the beginning of April. To prolong the blooming season, use weak manure water when the flower-buds show themselves.

GLUCINUM,an alternative name for Beryllium (q.v.). When L. N. Vauquelin in 1798 published in theAnnales de chimiean account of a new earth obtained by him from beryl he refrained from giving the substance a name, but in a note to his paper the editors suggested glucine, fromγλυκύς, sweet, in reference to the taste of its salts, whence the name Glucinum or Glucinium (symbol Gl. or sometimes G). The name beryllium was given to the metal by German chemists and was generally used until recently, when the earlier name was adopted.

GLUCK,1CHRISTOPH WILLIBALD(1714-1787), operatic composer, German by his nationality, French by his place in art, was born at Weidenwang, near Neumarkt, in the upper Palatinate, on the 2nd of July 1714. He belonged to the lower middle class, his father being gamekeeper to Prince Lobkowitz; but the boy’s education was not neglected on that account. From his twelfth to his eighteenth year he frequented the Jesuit school of Kommotau in the neighbourhood of Prince Lobkowitz’s estate in Bohemia, where he not only received a good general education, but also had lessons in music. At the age of eighteen Gluck went to Prague, where he continued his musical studies under Czernohorsky, and maintained himself by the exercise of his art, sometimes in the very humble capacity of fiddler at village fairs and dances. Through the introductions of Prince Lobkowitz, however, he soon gained access to the best families of the Austrian nobility; and when in 1736 he proceeded to Vienna he was hospitably received at his protector’s palace. Here he met Prince Melzi, an ardent lover of music, whom he accompanied to Milan, continuing his education under Giovanni Battista San Martini, a great musical historian and contrapuntist, who was also famous in his own day as a composer of church and chamber music. We soon find Gluck producing operas at the rapid rate necessitated by the omnivorous taste of the Italian public in those days. Nine of these works were produced at various Italian theatres between 1741 and 1745. Although their artistic value was small, they were so favourably received that in 1745 Gluck was invited to London to compose for the Haymarket. The first opera produced there was calledLa Caduta dei giganti; it was followed by a revised version of one of his earlier operas. Gluck also appeared in London as a performer on the musical glasses (seeHarmonica).

The success of his two operas, as well as that of apasticcio(i.e.a collection of favourite arias set to a new libretto) entitledPiramo e Tisbe, was anything but brilliant, and he accordingly left London. But his stay in England was not without important consequences for his subsequent career. Gluck at this time was rather less than an ordinary producer of Italian opera. Handel’s well-known saying that Gluck “knew no more counterpoint than his cook” must be taken in connexion with the less well-known fact that that cook was an excellent bass singer who performed in many of Handel’s own operas. But it indicates the musical reason of Gluck’s failure, while Gluck himself learnt the dramatic reason through his surprise at finding that arias which in their original setting had been much applauded lost all effect when adapted to new words in thepasticcio. Irrelevant as Handel’s criticism appears, it was not without bearing on Gluck’s difficulties. The use of counterpoint has very little necessary connexion with contrapuntal display; its real and final cause is a certain depth of harmonic expression which Gluck attained only in his most dramatic moments, and for want of which he, even in his finest works, sometimes moved very lamely. And in later years his own mature view of the importance of harmony, which he upheld in long arguments with Grétry, who believed only in melody, shows that he knew that the dramatic expression of music must strike below the surface. At this early period he was simply producing Handelian opera in an amateurish style, suggesting an unsuccessful imitation of Hasse; but the failure of hispasticciois as significant to us as it was to him, since it shows that already the effect of his music depended upon its characteristic treatment of dramatic situations. This characterizing power was as yet not directly evident, and it needed all the influence of the new instrumental resources of the rising sonata-forms before music could pass out of what we may call its architectural and decorative period and enter into dramatic regions at all.

It is highly probable that the chamber music of his master, San Martini, had already indicated to Gluck a new direction which was more or less incompatible with the older art; and there is nothing discreditable either to Gluck or to his contemporaries in the failure of his earlier works. Had the young composer been successful in the ordinaryopera seria, there is reason to fear that the great dramatic reform, initiated by him, might not have taken place. The critical temper of the London public fortunately averted this calamity. It may also be assumed that the musical atmosphere of the English capital, and especially the great works of Handel, were not without beneficial influence upon the young composer. But of still greater importance in this respect was a short trip to Paris, where Gluck became for the first time acquainted with the classic traditions and the declamatory style of the French opera—a sphere of music in which his own greatest triumphs were to be achieved. Of these great issues little trace, however, is to be found in the works produced by Gluck during the fifteen years after his return from England. In this period Gluck, in a long course of works by no means free from the futile old traditions, gained technical experience and important patronage, though his success was not uniform. His first opera written for Vienna,La Semiramide riconosciuta, is again an ordinaryopera seria, and little more can be said ofTelemacco, although thirty years later Gluck was able to use most of its overture and an energetic duet in one of his greatest works,Armide.

Gluck settled permanently at Vienna in 1756, having two years previously been appointed court chapel-master, with a salary of 2000 florins, by the empress Maria Theresa. He had already received the order of knighthood from the pope in consequence of the successful production of two of his works in Rome. During the long interval from 1756 to 1762 Gluck seems to have matured his plans for the reform of the opera; and, barring a ballet namedDon Giovanni, and someairs nouveauxto French words with pianoforte accompaniment, no compositions of any importance have to be recorded. Several laterpièces d’occasion, such asIl Trionfo di Clelia(1763), are still written in the old manner, though already in 1762Orfeo ed Euridiceshows that the composer had entered upon a new career. Gluck had for the first time deserted Metastasio for Raniero Calzabigi, who, as Vernon Lee suggests, was in all probability the immediate cause of the formation of Gluck’s new ideas, as he was a hot-headed dramatic theorist with a violent dislike for Metastasio, who had hitherto dominated the whole sphere of operatic libretto.

Quite apart from its significance in the history of dramatic music,Orpheusis a work which, by its intrinsic beauty, commands the highest admiration. Orpheus’s air,Che faro, is known to every one; but still finer is the great scena in which the poet’s song softens even theombre sdegnoseof Tartarus. The ascending passion of the entries of the solo (Deh! placatevi;Mille pene;Men tiranne), interrupted by the harsh but gradually softening exclamations of the Furies, is of the highest dramatic effect. These melodies, moreover, as well as every declamatory passage assigned to Orpheus, are made subservient to the purposes of dramatic characterization; that is, they could not possibly be assigned to any other person in the drama, any more than Hamlet’s monologue could be spoken by Polonius. It is in this power of musically realizing a character—a power all but unknown in the serious opera of his day—that Gluck’s genius as a dramatic composer is chiefly shown. After a short relapse into his earlier manner, Gluck followed up hisOrpheusby a second classical music-drama (1767) namedAlceste. In his dedication of the score to the grand-duke of Tuscany, he fully expressed his aims, as well as the reasons for his total breach with the old traditions. “I shall try,” he wrote, “to reduce music to its real function, that of seconding poetry by intensifying the expression of sentiments and the interest of situations without interrupting the action by needless ornament. I have accordingly taken care not to interrupt the singer in the heat of the dialogue, to wait for a tediousritornel, nor do I allow him to stop on a sonorous vowel, in the middle of a phrase, in order to show the nimbleness of a beautiful voice in a longcadenza.” Such theories, and the stern consistency with which they were carried out, were little to the taste of the pleasure-loving Viennese; and the success ofAlceste, as well as that ofParis and Helena, which followed two years later, was not such as Gluck had desired and expected. He therefore eagerly accepted the chance of finding a home for his art in the centre of intellectual and more especially dramatic life, Paris. Such a chance was opened to him through thebailliLe Blanc du Roullet, attaché of the French embassy at Vienna, and a musical amateur who entered into Gluck’s ideas with enthusiasm. A classic opera for the Paris stage was accordingly projected, and the friends fixed upon Racine’sIphigénie en Aulide. After some difficulties, overcome chiefly by the intervention of Gluck’s former pupil the dauphiness Marie Antoinette, the opera was at last accepted and performed at the Académie de Musique, on the 19th of April 1774.

The great importance of the new work was at once perceived by the musical amateurs of the French capital, and a hot controversy on the merits ofIphigénieensued, in which some of the leading literary men of France took part. Amongst the opponents of Gluck were not only the admirers of Italian vocalization and sweetness, but also the adherents of the earlier French school, who refused to see in the new composer the legitimate successor of Lulli and Rameau. Marmontel, Laharpe and D’Alembert were his opponents, the Abbé Arnaud and others his enthusiastic friends. Rousseau took a peculiar position in the struggle. In his early writings he is a violent partisan of Italian music, but when Gluck himself appeared as the French champion Rousseau acknowledged the great composer’s genius; although he did not always understand it, as for example when he suggested that inAlceste, “Divinités du Styx,” perhaps the most majestic of all Gluck’s arias, ought to have been set as a rondo. Nevertheless in a letter to Dr Burney, written shortly before his death, Rousseau gives a close and appreciative analysis ofAlceste, the first Italian version of which Gluck had submitted to him for suggestions; and when, on the first performance of the piece not being received favourably by the Parisian audience, the composer exclaimed, “Alceste est tombée,” Rousseau is said to have comforted him with the flatteringbonmot, “Oui, mais elle est tombée du ciel.” The contest received a still more personal character when Piccinni, a celebrated and by no means incapable composer, came to Paris as the champion of the Italian party at the invitation of Madame du Barry, who held a rival court to that of the young princess (seeOpera). As a dramatic controversy it suggests a parallel with the Wagnerian and anti-Wagnerian warfare of a later age; but there is no such radical difference between Gluck’s and Piccinni’s musical methods as the comparison would suggest. Gluck was by far the better musician, but his deficiencies in musical technique were of a kind which contemporaries could perceive as easily as they could perceive Piccinni’s. Both composers were remarkable inventors of melody, and both had the gift of making incorrect music sound agreeable. Gluck’s indisputable dramatic power might be plausibly dismissed as irrelevant by upholders of music for music’s sake, even if Piccinni himself had not chosen, as he did, to assimilate every feature in Gluck’s style that he could understand. The rivalry between the two composers was soon developed into a quarrel by the skilful engineering of Gluck’s enemies. In 1777 Piccinni was given a libretto by Marmontel on the subject ofRoland, to Gluck’s intense disgust, as he had already begun an opera on that subject himself. This, and the failure of an attempt to show his command of a lighter style by furbishing up some earlier works at the instigation of Marie Antoinette, inspired Gluck to produce hisArmide, which appeared four months before Piccinni’sRolandwas ready, and raised a storm of controversy, admiration and abuse. Gluck did not anticipate Wagner more clearly in his dramatic reforms than in his caustic temper; and, as in Gluck’s own estimation the difference betweenArmideandAlcesteis that “l’un(Alceste)doit faire pleurer et l’autre faire éprouver une voluptueuse sensation,” it was extremely annoying for him to be told by Laharpe that he had made Armide a sorceress instead of an enchantress, and that her part was “une criaillerie monotone et fatiguante.” He replied to Laharpe in a long public letter worthy of Wagner in its venomous sarcasm and its tremendous value as an advertisement for its recipient.

Gluck’s next work wasIphigénie en Tauride, the success of which finally disposed of Piccinni, who produced a work on the same subject at the same time and who is said to have acknowledged Gluck’s superiority. Gluck’s next work wasÉcho et Narcisse, the comparative failure of which greatly disappointed him; and during the composition of another opera,Les Danaïdes, an attack of apoplexy compelled him to give up work. He left Paris for Vienna, where he lived for several years in dignified leisure, disturbed only by his declining health. He died on the 15th of November 1787.

(F. H.; D. F. T.)

The great interest of the dramatic aspect of Gluck’s reforms is apt to overshadow his merit as a musician, and yet in some ways to idealize it. One is tempted to regard him as condoning for technical musical deficiencies by sheer dramatic power, whereas unprejudiced study of his work shows that where his dramatic power asserts itself there is no lack of musical technique. Indeed only a great musician could so reform opera as to give it scope for dramatic power at all. Where Gluck differs from the greatest musicians is in his absolute dependence on literature for his inspiration. Where his librettist failed him (as in his last complete work,Écho et Narcisse), he could hardly write tolerably good music; and, even in the finest works of his Frenchperiod, the less emotional situations are sometimes set to music which has little interest except as a document in the history of the art. This must not be taken to mean merely that Gluck could not, like Mozart and nearly all the great song-writers, set good music to a bad text. Such inability would prove Gluck’s superior literary taste without casting a slur on his musicianship. But it points to a certain weakness as a musician that Gluck could not be inspired except by the more thrilling portions of his libretti. When he was inspired there was no question that he was the first and greatest writer of dramatic music before Mozart. To begin with, he could invent sublime melodies; and his power of producing great musical effects by the simplest means was nothing short of Handelian. Moreover, in his peculiar sphere he deserves the title generally accorded to Haydn of “father of modern orchestration.” It is misleading to say that he was the first to use the timbre of instruments with a sense of emotional effect, for Bach and Handel well knew how to give a whole aria or whole chorus peculiar tone by means of a definite scheme of instrumentation. But Gluck did not treat instruments as part of a decorative design, any more than he so treated musical forms. Just as his sense of musical form is that of Philipp Emmanuel Bach and of Mozart, so is his treatment of instrumental tone-colour a thing that changes with every shade of feeling in the dramatic situation, and not in accordance with any purely decorative scheme. To accompany an aria with strings, oboes and flutes, was, for example, a perfectly ordinary procedure; nor was there anything unusual in making the wind instruments play in unison with the strings for the first part of the aria, and writing a passage for one or more of them in the middle section. But it was an unheard-of thing to make this passage consist of longappoggiaturasonce every two bars in rising sequence on the first oboe, answered by deeppizzicatobass notes, while Agamemnon in despair cries: “J’entends retentir dans mon sein le cri plaintif de la nature.” Some of Gluck’s most forcible effects are of great subtlety, as, for instance, inIphigénie en Tauride, where Orestes tries to reassure himself by saying: “Le calme rentre dans mon cœur,” while the intensely agitated accompaniment of the strings belies him. Again, the sense of orchestral climax shown in the oracle scene inAlcestewas a thing inconceivable in older music, and unsurpassed in artistic and dramatic spirit by any modern composer. Its influence in Mozart’sIdomeneois obvious at a first glance.

The capacity for broad melody always implies a true sense of form, whether that be developed by skill or not; and thus Gluck, in rejecting the convenient formalities of older styles of opera, was not, like some reformers, without something better to substitute for them. Moreover he, in consultation with his librettist, achieved great skill in holding together entire scenes, or even entire acts, by dramatically apposite repetitions of short arias and choruses. And thus in large portions of his finest works the music, in spite of frequent full closes, seems to movepari passuwith the drama in a manner which for naturalness and continuity is surpassed only by the finales of Mozart and the entire operas of Wagner. This is perhaps most noticeable in the second act ofOrfeo. In its original Italian version both scenes, that in Hades and that in Elysium, are indivisible wholes, and the division into single movements, though technically obvious, is aesthetically only a natural means of articulating the structure. The unity of the scene in Hades extends, in the original version, even to the key-system. This was damaged when Gluck had to transpose the part of Orpheus from an alto to a tenor in the French version. And here, we have one of many instances in which the improvements his French experience enabled him to make in his great Italian works were not altogether unmixed. Little harm, however, was done toOrfeowhich has not been easily remedied by transposing Orpheus’s part back again; and in a suitable compromise between the two versionsOrfeoremains Gluck’s most perfect and inspired work. The emotional power of the music is such that the inevitable spoiling of the story by a happy ending has not the aspect of mere conventionality which it had in cases where the music produced no more than the normal effect upon 18th-century audiences. Moreover Gluck’s genius was of too high an order for him to be less successful in portraying a sufficiently intense happiness than in portraying grief. He failed only in what may be called the business capacities of artistic technique; and there is less “business” inOrfeothan in almost any other music-drama. It was Gluck’s first great inspiration, and his theories had not had time to take action in paper warfare.Alcestecontains his grandest music and is also very free from weak pages; but in its original Italian version the third act did not give Gluck scope for an adequate climax. This difficulty so accentuated itself in the French version that after continual retouchings a part for Hercules was, in Gluck’s absence, added by Gossec; and three pages of Gluck’s music, dealing with the supreme crisis where Alceste is rescued from Hades (either by Apollo or by Hercules) were no longer required in performance and have been lost. The Italian version is so different from the French that it cannot help us to restore this passage, in which Gluck’s music now stops short just at the point where we realize the full height of his power. The comparison between the Italian and FrenchAlcesteis one of the most interesting that can be made in the study of a musician’s development. It would have been far easier for Gluck to write a new opera if he had not been so justly attached to his second Italian masterpiece. So radical are the differences that in retranslating the French libretto into Italian for performance with the French music not one line of Calzabigi’s original text can be retained.

InIphigénie en AulideandIphigénie en Tauride, Gluck shows signs that the controversies aroused by his methods began to interfere with his musical spontaneity. He had not, inOrfeo, gone out of his way to avoid rondos, or we should have had no “Che faro senza Euridice.” We read with a respectful smile Gluck’s assurance to the bailli Le Blanc du Roullet that “you would not believeArmideto be by the same composer” asAlceste. But there is no question thatArmideis a very great work, full of melody, colour and dramatic point; and that Gluck has availed himself of every suggestion that his libretto afforded for orchestral and emotional effects of an entirely different type from any that he had attempted before. And it is hardly relevant to blame him for his inability to write erotic music. In the first place, the libretto is not erotic, though the subject would no doubt become so if treated by a modern poet. In the second place a conflict of passions (as, for instance, where Armide summons the demons of Hate to exorcise love from her heart, and her courage fails her as soon as they begin) has never, even inAlceste, been treated with more dramatic musical force. The work as a whole is unequal, partly because there is a little too much action in it to suit Gluck’s methods; but it shows, as does no other opera until Mozart’sDon Giovanni, a sense of thedevelopmentof characters, as distinguished from the mere presentation of them as already fixed.

InIphigénie en AulideandIphigénie en Tauride, the very subtlety of the finest features indicates a certain self-consciousness which, when inspiration is lacking, becomes mannerism. Moreover, in both cases the libretti, though skilfully managed, tell a rather more complicated story than those which Gluck had hitherto so successfully treated; and, where inspiration fails, the musical technique becomes curiously amateurish without any corresponding naïveté. Still these works are immortal, and their finest passages are equal to anything inAlcesteandOrfeo.Écho et Narcissewe must, like Gluck’s contemporaries, regard as a failure. As inOrfeo, the pathetic story is ruined by a violent happy ending, but here this artistic disaster takes place before the pathos has had time to assert itself. Gluck had no opportunities in this work for any higher qualities, musical or dramatic, than prettiness; and with him beauty, without visible emotion, was indeed skin-deep. It is a pity that the plan of the great Pelletan-Damcke criticalédition de luxeof Gluck’s French operas forbids the inclusion of his ItalianParide e Elena, his third opera to Calzabigi’s libretto, which was never given in a French version; for there can be no question that, whatever he owed to France, theperiod of his greatness began with his collaboration with Calzabigi.

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