Handel was a man of high character and intelligence, and his interest was not confined to his own art exclusively. He liked the society of politicians and literary men, and he was also a collector of pictures and articles ofvertu. His power of work was enormous, and theHändelgesellschaft’sedition of his complete works fills one hundred volumes, forming a total bulk almost equal to the works of Bach and Beethoven together.
Handel was a man of high character and intelligence, and his interest was not confined to his own art exclusively. He liked the society of politicians and literary men, and he was also a collector of pictures and articles ofvertu. His power of work was enormous, and theHändelgesellschaft’sedition of his complete works fills one hundred volumes, forming a total bulk almost equal to the works of Bach and Beethoven together.
(F. H.; D. F. T.)
No one has more successfully popularized the greatest artistic ideals than Handel; no artist is more disconcerting to critics who imagine that a great man’s mental development is easy to follow. Not even Wagner effected a greaterHandel as composer.transformation in the possibilities of dramatic music than Handel effected in oratorio, yet we have seen that Handel was the very opposite of a reformer. He was not even conservative, and he hardly took the pains to ascertain what an art-form was, so long as something externally like it would convey his idea. But he never failed to convey his idea, and, if the hybrid forms in which he conveyed it had no historic influence and no typical character, they were none the less accurate in each individual case. The same aptness and the same absence of method are conspicuous in his style. The popular idea that Handel’s style is easily recognizable comes from the fact that he overshadows all his predecessors and contemporaries, except Bach, and so makes us regard typical 18th-century Italian and English style as Handelian, instead of regarding Handel’s style as typical Italian 18th-century. Nothing in music requires more minute expert knowledge than the sifting of the real peculiarities of Handel’s style from the mass of contemporary formulae which in his inspired pages he absorbed, and which in his uninspired pages absorbed him.
His easy mastery was acquired, like Mozart’s, in childhood. The later sonatas for two oboes and bass which he wrote in his eleventh year are, except in their diffuseness and an occasional slip in grammar, indistinguishable from his later works, and they show a boyish inventiveness worthy of Mozart’s work at the same age. Such early choral works, as theDixit Dominus(1707), show the ill-regulated power of his choral writing before he assimilated Italian influences. Its practical difficulties are at least as extravagant as Bach’s, while they are not accounted for by any corresponding originality and necessity of idea; but the grandeur of the scheme and nobility of thought is already that for which Handel so often in later years found the simplest and easiest adequate means of expression that music has ever attained. His eminently practical genius soon formed his vocal style, and long before the period of his great oratorios, such works asThe Birthday Ode for Queen Anne(1713) and theUtrecht Te Deumshow not a trace of German extravagance. The only drawback to his practical genius was that it led him to bury perhaps half of his finest melodies, and nearly all the secular features of interest in his treatment of instruments and of the aria forms, in that deplorable limbo of vanity, the 18th-century Italian opera. It is not true, as has been alleged against him, that his operas are in no way superior to those of his contemporaries; but neither is it true that he stirred a finger to improve the condition of dramatic musical art. He was no slave to singers, as is amply testified by many anecdotes. Nor was he bound by the operatic conventions of the time. InTeseohe not only wrote an opera in five acts when custom prescribed three, but also broke a much more plausible rule in arranging that each character should have two arias in succession. He also showed a feeling for expression and style which led him to write arias of types which singers might not expect. But he never made any innovation which had the slightest bearing upon the stage-craft of opera, for he never concerned himself with any artistic question beyond the matter in hand; and the matter in hand was not to make dramatic music, or to make the story interesting or intelligible, but simply to provide a concert of between some twenty and thirty Italian arias and duets, wherein singers could display their abilities and spectators find distraction from the monotony of so large a dose of the aria form (whichwas then the only possibility for solo vocal music) in the gorgeousness of the dresses and scenery.
When the question arose how a musical entertainment of this kind could be managed in Lent without protests from the bishop of London, Handelian oratorio came into being as a matter of course. But though Handel was an opportunist he was not shallow. His artistic sense seized upon the natural possibilities which arose as soon as the music was transferred from the stage to the concert platform; and his first English oratorio,Esther(1720), beautifully shows the transition. The subject is as nearly secular as any that can be extracted from the Bible, and the treatment was based on Racine’sEsther, which was much discussed at the time. Handel’s oratorio was reproduced in an enlarged version in 1732 at the King’s theatre: the princess royal wished for scenery and action, but the bishop of London protested. And the choruses, of which in the first version there are already no less than ten, are on the one hand operatic and unecclesiastical in expression, until the last, where polyphonic work on a large scale first appears; but on the other hand they are all much too long to be sung by heart, as is necessary in operas. In fact, the turning-point in Handel’s development is the emancipation of the chorus from theatrical limitations. This had as great effect upon his few but important secular English works as upon his other oratorios.Acis and Galatea,SemeleandHercules, are in fact secular oratorios; the choral music in them is not ecclesiastical, but it is large, independent and polyphonic.
We must remember, then, that Handel’s scheme of oratorio is operatic in its origin and has no historic connexion with such principles as might have been generalized from the practice of the German Passion music of the time; and it is sufficiently astonishing that the chorus should have so readily assumed its proper place in a scheme which the public certainly regarded as a sort of Lenten biblical opera. And, although the chorus owes its freedom of development to the disappearance of theatrical necessities, it becomes no less powerful as a means of dramatic expression (as opposed to dramatic action) than as a purely musical resource. Already inAthaliathe “Hallelujah” chorus at the end of the first act is a marvel of dramatic truth. It is sung by Israelites almost in despair beneath usurping tyranny; and accordingly it is a severe double fugue in a minor key, expressive of devout courage at a moment of depression. On purely musical grounds it is no less powerful in throwing into the highest possible relief the ecstatic solemnity of the psalm with which the second act opens. Now this sombre “Hallelujah” chorus is a very convenient illustration of Handel’s originality, and the point in which his creative power really lies. It was not originally written for its situation inAthalia, but it was chosen for it. It was originally the last chorus of the second version of the anthem,As pants the Hart, from the autograph of which it is missing because Handel cut out the last pages in order to insert them into the manuscript ofAthalia. The inspiration inAthaliathus lies not in the creation of the chorus itself, but in the choice of it.
In choral music Handel made no more innovation than he made in arias. His sense of fitness in expression was of little use to him in opera, because opera could not become dramatic until musical form became capable of developing and blending emotions in all degrees of climax in a way that may be described as pictorial and not merely decorative (seeMusic;Sonata-Forms; andInstrumentation). But in oratorio there was not the least necessity for reforming any art-forms. The ordinary choral resources of the time had perfect expressive possibilities where there were no actors to keep waiting, and where no dresses and scenery need distract the attention of the listener. When lastly, ordinary decorum dictated an attitude of reverent attention towards the subject of the oratorio, then the man of genius could find such a scope for his real sense of dramatic fitness as would make his work immortal.
In estimating Handel’s greatness we must think away all orthodox musical and progressive prejudices, and learn to apply the lessons critics of architecture and some critics of literature seem to know by nature. Originality, in music as in other arts, lies in the whole, and in a sense of the true meaning of every part. When Handel wrote a normal double fugue in a minor key on the word “Hallelujah” he showed that he at all events knew what a vigorous and dignified thing an 18th-century double fugue could be. In putting it at the end of a melancholy psalm he showed his sense of the value of the minor mode. When he put it in its situation inAthaliahe showed as perfect a sense of dramatic and musical fitness as could well be found in art. Now it is obvious that in works like oratorios (which are dramatic schemes vigorously but loosely organized by the putting together of some twenty or thirty complete pieces of music) the proper conception of originality will be very different from that which animates the composer of modern lyric, operatic or symphonic music. When we add to this the characteristics of a method like Handel’s, in which musical technique has become a masterly automatism, it becomes evident that our conception of originality must be at least as broad as that which we would apply in the criticism of architecture. The disadvantages of the want of such a conception have been aggravated by the dearth of general knowledge of the structure of musical art; a knowledge which shows that the parallel we have suggested between music and architecture, as regards the nature of originality, is no mere figure of speech.
In every art there is an antithesis between form and matter, which becomes reconciled only when the work of art is perfect in its execution. And, whatever this perfection, the antithesis must always remain in the mind of the artist and critic to this extent, that some part of the material seems to be the special subject of technical rule rather than another. In the plastic and literary arts one type of this antithesis is more or less permanently maintained in the relation between subject and treatment. The mere fact that these arts express themselves by representing things that have some previous independent existence, helps us to look for originality rather in the things that make for perfection of treatment than in novelty of subject. But in music we have no permanent means of deciding which of many aspects we shall call the subject and which the treatment. In the 16th century the a priori form existed mainly in the practice of basing almost every melodic detail of the work on phrases of Gregorian chant or popular song, treated for the most part in terms of very definitely regulated polyphonic design, and on harmonic principles regulated in almost every detail by the relation between the melodic aspects of the church modes and the necessity for occasional alterations of the strict mode to secure finality at the close. In modern music such a relation between form and matter, prescribing as it does for every aspect at every moment both of the shape and the texture of the music, would exclude the element of invention altogether. In 16th-century music it by no means had that effect. An inventive 16th-century composer is as clearly distinguishable from a dull one as a good architect from a bad. The originality of the composer resides, in 16th-century music as in all art, in his whole work; but naturally his conception of property and ideas will not extend to themes or isolated passages. That man is entitled to an idea who can show what it means, or who can make it mean what he likes. Let him wear the giant’s robe if it fits him. And it is merely a local difference in point of view which makes us think that there is property in themes and no property in forms. Nowadays we happen to regard the shape of a whole composition as its form, and its theme as its matter. And, as artistic organization becomes more complex and heterogeneous, the need of the broadest and most forcible possible outline of design is more pressingly felt; so that in what we choose to call form we are willing to sacrifice all conception of originality for the sake of general intelligibility, while we insist upon complete originality in those thematic details which we are pleased to call matter. But, if this explains, it does not excuse our setting up a criterion for musical originality which can be accepted by no intelligent critics of other arts, and which is completely upset by the study of any music earlier than the beginning of the 19th century.
The difficulty many writers have found in explaining the subject of Handel’s “plagiarisms” is not entirely accounted for by mere lack of these considerations; but the grossest confusion of ideas as to the difference between cases in point prevails to this day, and many discussions which have been raised in regard to the ethical aspect of the question are frankly absurd.3It has been argued, for instance, that great injustice was done to Buononcini over his unfortunate affair with the prize madrigal, while his great rival was allowed the credit ofIsrael in Egypt, which contains a considerable number of entire choruses (besides hosts of themes) by earlier Italian and German writers. But the very idea of Handelian oratorio is that of some three hours of music, religious or secular, arranged, like opera, in the form of a colossal entertainment, and with high dramatic and emotional interest imparted to it, if not by the telling of a story, at all events by the nature and development of the subject. It seems, moreover, to be entirely overlooked that the age was an age ofpasticcios. Nothing was more common than the organization of some such solemn entertainment by the skilful grouping of favourite pieces. Handel himself never revived one of his oratorios without inserting in it favourite pieces from his other works as well as several new numbers; and the story is well known that the turning point in Gluck’s career was his perception of the true possibilities of dramatic music from the failure of apasticcioin which he had reset some rather definitely expressive music to situations for which it was not originally designed. The success of an oratorio was due to the appropriateness of its contrasts, together of course with the mastery of its detail, whether that detail were new or old; and there are many gradations between a réchauffé of an early work likeThe Triumph of Time and Truth, or apasticciowith a few original numbers like theOccasional Oratorio, and such works asSamson, which was entirely new except that the “Dead March” first written for it was immediately replaced by the more famous one imported fromSaul. That the idea of thepasticciowas extremely familiar to the age is shown by the practice of announcing an oratorio as “new and original,” a term which would obviously be meaningless if it were as much a matter of course as it is at the present day, and which, if used at all, must obviously so apply to the whole work without forbidding the composer from gratifying the public with the reproduction of one or two favourite arias. But of course the question of originality becomes more serious when the imported numbers are not the composer’s own. And here it is very noticeable that Handel derived no credit, either with his own public or with us, from whole movements that are not of his own designing. InIsrael in Egypt, the choruses “Egypt was glad when they departed,” “And I will exalt Him,” “Thou sentest forth Thy Wrath” and “The Earth swallowed them,” are without exception the most colourless and unattractive pieces of severe counterpoint to be found among Handel’s works; and it is very difficult to fathom his motive in copying them from obscure pieces by Erba and Kaspar Kerl, unless it be that he wished to train his audiences to a better understanding of a polyphonic style. He certainly felt that the greatest possibilities of music lay in the higher choral polyphony, and so inIsrael in Egypthe designed a work consisting almost entirely of choruses, and may have wished in these instances for severe contrapuntal movements which he had not time to write, though he could have done them far better himself. Be this as it may, these choruses have certainly added nothing to the popularity of a work of which the public from the outset complained that there was not enough solo music; and what effect they have is merely to throw Handel’s own style into relief. To draw any parallel between the theft of such unattractive details in the grand and intensely Handelian scheme ofIsrael in Egyptand Buononcini’s alleged theft of a prize madrigal is merely ridiculous. Handel himself, if he had any suspicion that contemporaries did not take a sane architect’s view of the originality of large musical schemes,4probably gave himself no more trouble about their scruples on this matter than about other forms of musical banality.
TheHistory of Musicby Burney, the cleverest and most refined musical critic of the age, shows in the very freshness of its musical scholarship how completely unscholarly were the musical ideas of the time. Burney was incapable of regarding choral music as other than a highly improving academic exercise in which he himself was proficient; and for him Handel is the great opera-writer whose choral music will reward the study of the curious. If Handel had attempted to explain his methods to the musicians of his age, he would probably have found himself alone in his opinions as to the property of musical ideas. He did not trouble to explain, but he made no concealment of his sources. He left his whole musical library to his copyist, and it was from this that the sources of his work were discovered. And when the whole series of plagiarisms is studied, the fact forces itself upon us that nothing except themes and forms which are common property in all 18th-century music, has yet been discovered as the source of any work of Handel’s which is not felt as part of a larger design. Operatic arias were never felt as parts of a whole. The opera was a concert on the stage, and it stood or fell, not by a dramatic propriety which it notoriously neglected to consider at all, but by the popularity of its arias. There is no aria in Handel’s operas which is traceable to another composer. Even in the oratorios there is no solo number in which more than the themes are pilfered, for in oratorios the solo work still appealed to the popular criterion of novelty and individual attractiveness. And when we leave the question of copying of whole movements and come to that of the adaptation of passages, and still more of themes, Handel shows himself to be simply on a line with Mozart. Jahn compares the opening of Mozart’sRequiemwith that of the first chorus in Handel’sFuneral Anthem. Mozart recreates at least as much from Handel’s already perfect framework as Handel ever idealized from the inorganic fragments of earlier writers. The double counterpoint of the Kyrie in Mozart’sRequiemis still more indisputably identical with that of the last chorus of Handel’sJoseph, and if the themes are common property their combination certainly is not. But the true plagiarist is the man who does not know the meaning of the ideas he copies, and the true creator is he in whose hands they remain or become true ideas. The theme “He led them forth like sheep” in the chorus “But as for his people” is one of the most beautiful in Handel’s works, and the bare statement that it comes from a serenata by Stradella seems at first rather shocking. But, to any one who knew Stradella’s treatment of it first, Handel’s would come as a revelation actually greater than if he had never heard the theme before. Stradella makes nothing more of it, and therefore presumably sees nothing more in it than an agreeable and essentially frivolous little tune which lends itself to comic dramatic purpose by a wearisome repetition throughout eight pages of patchy aria and instrumental ritornello at an ever-increasing pace. What Handel sees in it is what he makes of it, one of the most solemn and poetic things in music. Again, it may be very shocking to discover that the famous opening of the “Hailstone chorus” comes from the patchy and facetious overture to this same serenata, with which it is identical for ten bars all in the tonic chord (representing, according to Stradella, someone knocking at a door). And it is no doubt yet more shocking that the chorus “He spake the word, andthere came all manner of flies” contains no idea of Handel’s own except the realistic swarming violin-passages, the general structure, and the vocal colouring; whereas the rhythmic and melodic figures of the voice parts come from an equally patchysinfonia concertatain Stradella’s work. The real interest of these things ought not to be denied either by the misstatement that the materials adapted are mere common property, nor by the calumny that Handel was uninventive.
The effects of Handel’s original inspiration upon foreign material are really the best indication of the range of his style. The comic meaning of the broken rhythm of Stradella’s overture becomes indeed Handel’s inspiration in the light of the gigantic tone-picture of the “Hailstone chorus.” In the theme of “He led them forth like sheep” we have already cited a particular case where Handel perceived great solemnity in a theme originally intended to be frivolous. The converse process is equally instructive. In the short Carillon choruses in Saul where the Israelitish women welcome David after his victory over Goliath, Handel uses a delightful instrumental tune which stands at the beginning of aTe Deumby Urio, from which he borrowed an enormous amount of material inSaul, L’Allegro, theDettingen Te Deumand other works. Urio’s idea is first to make a jubilant and melodious noise from the lower register of the strings, and then to bring out a flourish of high trumpets as a contrast. He has no other use for his beautiful tune, which indeed would not bear more elaborate treatment than he gives it. The ritornello falls into statement and counterstatement, and the counterstatement secures one repetition of the tune, after which no more is heard of it. It has none of the solemnity of church music, and its value as a contrast to the flourish of trumpets depends, not upon itself, but upon its position in the orchestra. Handel did not see in it a fine opening for a great ecclesiastical work, but he saw in it an admirable expression of popular jubilation, and he understood how to bring out its character with the liveliest sense of climax and dramatic interest by taking it at its own value as a popular tune. So he uses it as an instrumental interlude accompanied with a jingle of carillons, while the daughters of Israel sing to a square-cut tune those praises of David which aroused the jealousy of Saul. But now turn to the opening of theDettingen Te Deumand see what splendid use is made of the other side of Urio’s idea, the contrast between a jubilant noise in the lowest part of the scale and the blaze of trumpets at an extreme height. In the fourth bar of theDettingen Te Deumwe find the same florid trumpet figures as we find in the fifth bar of Urio’s, but at the first moment they are on oboes. The first four bars beat a tattoo on the tonic and dominant, with the whole orchestra, including trumpets and drums, in the lowest possible position and in a stirring rhythm with a boldness and simplicity characteristic only of a stroke of genius. Then the oboes appear with Urio’s trumpet flourishes; the momentary contrast is at least as brilliant as Urio’s; and as the oboes are immediately followed by the same figures on the trumpets themselves the contrast gains incalculably in subtlety and climax. Moreover, these flourishes are more melodious than the broad and massive opening, instead of being, as in Urio’s scheme, incomparably less so. Lastly, Handel’s primitive opening rhythmic figures inevitably underlie every subsequent inner part and bass that occurs at every half close and full close throughout the movement, especially where the trumpets are used. And thus every detail of his scheme is rendered alive with a rhythmic significance which the elementary nature of the theme prevents from ever becoming obtrusive.
No other great composer has ever so overcrowded his life with occasional and mechanical work as Handel, and in no other artist are the qualities that make the difference between inspired and uninspired pages more difficult to analyse. The libretti of his oratorios are full of absurdities, except when they are derived in every detail from Scripture, as in theMessiahandIsrael in Egypt, or from the classics of English literature, as inSamsonandL’Allegro. These absurdities, and the obvious fact that in every oratorio Handel writes many more numbers than are desirable for one performance, and that he was continually in later performances adding, transferring and cutting out solo numbers and often choruses as well—all this may seem at first sight to militate seriously against the view that Handel’s originality and greatness consists in his grasp of the works as wholes, but in reality it strengthens that view. These things militate against the perfection of the whole, but they would have been absolutely fatal to a work of which the whole is not (as in all true art) greater than the sum of its parts. That they are felt as absurdities and defects already shows that Handel created in English oratorio a true art-form on the largest possible scale.
There never has been a time when Handel has been overrated, except in so far as other composers have been neglected. But no composer has suffered so much from pious misinterpretation and the popular admiration of misleading externals. It is not the place here to dilate upon the burial of Handel’s art beneath the “mammoth” performances of the Handel Festivals at the Crystal Palace; nor can we give more than a passing reference to the effects of “additional accompaniments” in the style of an altogether later age, started most unfortunately by Mozart (whose share in the work has been very much misinterpreted and corrupted) and continued in the middle of the 19th century by musicians of every degree of intelligence and refinement, until all sense of unity of style has been lost and does not seem likely to be recovered as a general element in the popular appreciation of Handel for some time to come. But in spite of this, Handel will never cease to be revered and loved as one of the greatest of composers, if we value the criteria of architectonic power, a perfect sense of style, and the power to rise to the most sublime height of musical climax by the simplest means.
Handel’s important works have all been mentioned above with their dates, and a separate detailed list does not seem necessary. He was an extremely rapid worker, and his later works are dated almost day by day as they proceed. From this we learn that theMessiahwas sketched and scored within twenty-one days, and that evenJephtha, with an interruption of nearly four months besides several other delays caused by Handel’s failing sight, was begun and finished within seven months, representing hardly five weeks’ actual writing. Handel’s extant works may be roughly summarized from the edition of theHändelgesellschaftas 41 Italian operas, 2 Italian oratorios, 2 German Passions, 18 English oratorios, 4 English secular oratorios, 4 English secular cantatas, and a few other small works, English and Italian, of the type of oratorio or incidental dramatic music; 3 Latin settings of theTe Deum; the (English)Dettingen Te DeumandUtrecht Te Deum and Jubilate; 4 coronation anthems; 3 volumes of English anthems (Chandos Anthems); 1 volume of Latin church music; 3 volumes of Italian vocal chamber-music; 1 volume of clavier works; 37 instrumental duets and trios (sonatas), and 4 volumes of orchestral music and organ concertos (about 40 works). Precise figures are impossible as there is no means of drawing the line betweenpasticciosand original works. The instrumental pieces especially are used again and again as overtures to operas and oratorios and anthems.The complete edition of the GermanHändelgesellschaftsuffers from being the work of one man who would not recognize that his task was beyond any single man’s power. The best arrangements of the vocal scores are undoubtedly those published by Novello that are not based on “additional accompaniments.” None is absolutely trustworthy, and those of the editor of the GermanHändelgesellschaftare sad proofs of the uselessness of expert library-scholarship without a sound musical training. Yet Chrysander’s services in the restoration of Handel are beyond praise. We need only mention his discovery of authentic trombone parts inIsrael in Egyptas one among many of his priceless contributions to musical history and aesthetics.
Handel’s important works have all been mentioned above with their dates, and a separate detailed list does not seem necessary. He was an extremely rapid worker, and his later works are dated almost day by day as they proceed. From this we learn that theMessiahwas sketched and scored within twenty-one days, and that evenJephtha, with an interruption of nearly four months besides several other delays caused by Handel’s failing sight, was begun and finished within seven months, representing hardly five weeks’ actual writing. Handel’s extant works may be roughly summarized from the edition of theHändelgesellschaftas 41 Italian operas, 2 Italian oratorios, 2 German Passions, 18 English oratorios, 4 English secular oratorios, 4 English secular cantatas, and a few other small works, English and Italian, of the type of oratorio or incidental dramatic music; 3 Latin settings of theTe Deum; the (English)Dettingen Te DeumandUtrecht Te Deum and Jubilate; 4 coronation anthems; 3 volumes of English anthems (Chandos Anthems); 1 volume of Latin church music; 3 volumes of Italian vocal chamber-music; 1 volume of clavier works; 37 instrumental duets and trios (sonatas), and 4 volumes of orchestral music and organ concertos (about 40 works). Precise figures are impossible as there is no means of drawing the line betweenpasticciosand original works. The instrumental pieces especially are used again and again as overtures to operas and oratorios and anthems.
The complete edition of the GermanHändelgesellschaftsuffers from being the work of one man who would not recognize that his task was beyond any single man’s power. The best arrangements of the vocal scores are undoubtedly those published by Novello that are not based on “additional accompaniments.” None is absolutely trustworthy, and those of the editor of the GermanHändelgesellschaftare sad proofs of the uselessness of expert library-scholarship without a sound musical training. Yet Chrysander’s services in the restoration of Handel are beyond praise. We need only mention his discovery of authentic trombone parts inIsrael in Egyptas one among many of his priceless contributions to musical history and aesthetics.
(D. F. T.)
1Chrysander says Mattei instead of Ariosti.2By a dramatic coincidence Handel’s blindness interrupted him during the writing of the chorus, “How dark, oh Lord, are Thy decrees, ... all our joys to sorrow turning ... as the night succeeds the day.”3The “moral” question has been raised afresh in reviews of Mr Sedley Taylor’s admirable volume of analysed illustrations (The Indebtedness of Handel to works of other Composers, Cambridge, 1906). The latest argument is that Handel shows moral obliquity in borrowing “regrettably” from sources no one could know at the time. This reasoning makes it mysterious that a man of such moral obliquity should ever have written a note of his own music in England when he could have stolen the complete choral works of Bach and most of the hundred operas of Alessandro Scarlatti with the certainty that the sources would not be printed for a century after his death, even if his own name did not then check curiosity among antiquarians. Of course Handel’s plagiarisms would have damaged his reputation if contemporaries had known of them. His polyphonic scholarship was more “antiquated” in the 18th century than it is in the 20th.4Much light would be thrown on the subject if some one sufficiently ignorant of architecture were to make researches into Sir Christopher Wren’s indebtedness to Italian architects!
1Chrysander says Mattei instead of Ariosti.
2By a dramatic coincidence Handel’s blindness interrupted him during the writing of the chorus, “How dark, oh Lord, are Thy decrees, ... all our joys to sorrow turning ... as the night succeeds the day.”
3The “moral” question has been raised afresh in reviews of Mr Sedley Taylor’s admirable volume of analysed illustrations (The Indebtedness of Handel to works of other Composers, Cambridge, 1906). The latest argument is that Handel shows moral obliquity in borrowing “regrettably” from sources no one could know at the time. This reasoning makes it mysterious that a man of such moral obliquity should ever have written a note of his own music in England when he could have stolen the complete choral works of Bach and most of the hundred operas of Alessandro Scarlatti with the certainty that the sources would not be printed for a century after his death, even if his own name did not then check curiosity among antiquarians. Of course Handel’s plagiarisms would have damaged his reputation if contemporaries had known of them. His polyphonic scholarship was more “antiquated” in the 18th century than it is in the 20th.
4Much light would be thrown on the subject if some one sufficiently ignorant of architecture were to make researches into Sir Christopher Wren’s indebtedness to Italian architects!
HANDFASTING(A.S.handfæstnung, pledging one’s hand), primarily the O. Eng. synonym forbetrothal(q.v.), and later a peculiar form of temporary marriage at one time common in Scotland, the only necessary ceremony being the verbal pledge of the couple while holding hands. The pair thus handfasted were, in accordance with Scotch law, entitled to live together for a year and a day. If then they so wished, the temporary marriage could be made permanent: if not, they could go their several ways without reproach, the child, if any, being supported by the party who objected to further cohabitation.
HANDICAP(from the expressionhand in cap, referring to drawing lots), a disadvantageous condition imposed upon thesuperior competitor in sports and games, or an advantage allowed the inferior, in order to equalize the chances of both. The character of the handicap depends upon the nature of the sport. Thus in horse-racing the better horse must carry the heavier weight. In foot races the inferior runners are allowed to start at certain distances in advance of the best (or “scratch”) man, according to their previous records. In distance competitions (weights, fly-casting, jumping, &c.) the inferior contestants add certain distances to their scores. In time contests (yachting, canoe-racing, &c.) the weaker or smaller competitors subtract certain periods of time from that actually made, reckoned by the mile. In stroke contests (e.g.golf) a certain number of strokes are subtracted from or added to the scores, according to the strength of the players. In chess and draughts the stronger competitor may play without one or more pieces. In court games (tennis, lawn-tennis, racquets, &c.) and in billiards certain points, or percentage of points, are accorded the weaker players.
Handicapping was applied to horse-racing as early as 1680, though the word was not used in this connexion much before the middle of the 18th century. A “Post and Handy-Cap Match” is described inPond’s Racing Calendarfor 1754. A reference to something similar in Germany and Scandinavia, calledFreimarkt, may be found inGermania, vol. xix.
Competitions in which handicaps are given are calledhandicap-eventsorhandicaps. There are many systems which depend upon the whim of the individual competitors. Thus a tennis player may offer to play against his inferior with a selzer-bottle instead of a racquet; or a golfer to play with only one club; or a chess-player to make his moves without seeing the board.
The name “handicap” was taken from an ancient English game, to which Pepys, in hisDiaryunder the date of the 18th of September 1660, thus refers: “Here some of us fell to handicap, a sport that I never knew before, which was very good.” This game, which became obsolete in the 19th century, was described as early as the 14th inPiers the Plowmanunder the name of “New Faire.” It was originally played by three persons, one of whom proposed to “challenge,” or exchange, some piece of property belonging to another for something of his own. The challenge being accepted an umpire was chosen, and all three put up a sum of money as a forfeit. The two players then placed their right hands in a cap, or in their pockets, in which there was loose money, while the umpire proceeded to describe the two objects of exchange, and to declare what sum of money the owner of the inferior article should pay as a bonus to the other. This declaration was made as rapidly as possible and ended with the invitation, “Draw, gentlemen!” Each player then withdrew and held out his hand, which he opened. If both hands contained money the exchange was effected according to the conditions laid down by the umpire, who then took the forfeit money for himself. If neither hand contained money the exchange was declined and the umpire took the forfeit money. If only one player signified his acceptance of the exchange by holding money in his hand, he was entitled to the forfeit-money, though the exchange was not made.
Handicap was also the name of an old game at cards, now obsolete. It resembled the game of Loo, and probably derived its name from the ancient sport described above.
HANDSEL,the O. Eng. term for earnest money; especially in Scotland the first money taken at a market or fair. The terminationselis the modern “sell.” “Hand” indicates, not a bargain by shaking hands, but the actual putting of the money into the hand. Handsels were also presents or earnests of goodwill in the North; thus Handsel Monday, the first Monday in the year, an occasion for universal tipping, is the equivalent of the English Boxing day.
HANDSWORTH.(1) An urban district in the Handsworth parliamentary division of Staffordshire, England, suburban to Birmingham on the north-west. Pop. (1891), 32,756; (1901) 52,921. (SeeBirmingham.) (2) An urban district in the Hallamshire parliamentary division of Yorkshire, 4 m. S.E. of Sheffield. Pop. (1901), 13,404. In this neighbourhood are extensive collieries and quarries.
HANDWRITING.UnderPalaeographyandWriting, the history of handwriting is dealt with. Questions of handwriting come before legal tribunals mainly in connexion with the law of evidence. In Roman law, the authenticity of documents was proved first by the attesting witnesses; in the second place, if they were dead, by comparison of handwritings. It was necessary, however, that the document to be used for purposes of comparison either should have been executed with the formalities of a public document, or should have its genuineness proved by three attesting witnesses. The determination was apparently, in the latter case, left to experts, who were sworn to give an impartial opinion (Code 4, 21. 20). Proof by comparison of handwritings, with a reference if necessary to three experts as to the handwriting which is to be used for the purposes of comparison, is provided for in the French Code of Civil Procedure (arts. 193 et seq.); and in Quebec (Code Proc. Civ. arts. 392 et seq.) and St Lucia (Code Civ. Proc. arts. 286 et seq.), the French system has been adopted with modifications. Comparison by witnesses of disputed writings with any writing proved to the satisfaction of the judge to be genuine is accepted in England and Ireland in all legal proceedings whether criminal or civil, including proceedings before arbitrators (Denman Act, 28 & 29 Vict. c. 18, 55. 1, 8); and such writings and the evidence of witnesses respecting the same may be submitted to the court and jury as evidence of the genuineness or otherwise of the writing in dispute. It is admitted in Scotland (where the termcomparatio literarumis in use) and in most of the American states, subject to the same conditions. In England, prior to the Common Law Procedure Act of 1854 (now superseded by the act of 1866), documents irrelevant to the matter in issue were not admissible for the sole purpose of comparison, and this rule has been adopted, and is still adhered to, in some of the states in America. In England, as in the United States, and in most legal systems, the primary and best evidence of handwriting is that of the writer himself. Witnesses who saw him write the writing in question, or who are familiar with his handwriting either from having seen him write or from having corresponded with him, or otherwise, may be called. In cases of disputed handwriting the court will accept the evidence of experts in handwriting,i.e.persons who have an adequate knowledge of handwriting, whether acquired in the way of their business or not, such as solicitors or bank cashiers (R.v.Silverlock, 1894, 2 Q.B. 766). In such cases the witness is required to compare the admitted handwriting of the person whose writing is in question with the disputed document, and to state in detail the similarities or differences as to the formation of words and letters, on which he bases his opinion as to the genuineness or otherwise of the disputed document. By the use of the magnifying glass, or, as in the Parnell case, by enlarged photographs of the letters alleged to have been written by Mr Parnell, the court and jury are much assisted to appreciate the grounds on which the conclusions of the expert are founded. Evidence of this kind, being based on opinion and theory, needs to be very carefully weighed, and the dangers of implicit reliance on it have been illustrated in many cases (e.g.the Beck case in 1904; and seeSeamanv.Netherclift, 1876, 1 C.P.D. 540). Evidence by comparison of handwriting comes in principally either in default, or in corroboration, of the other modes of proof.
Where attestation is necessary to the validity of a document,e.g.wills and bills of sale, the execution must be proved by one or more of the attesting witnesses, unless they are dead or cannot be produced, when it is sufficient to prove the signature of one of them to the attesting clause (28 & 29 Vict. c. 18, s. 7). Signatures to certain public and official documents need not in general be proved (seee.g.Evidence Act, 1845, ss. 1, 2).
See Taylor,Law of Evidence(10th ed., London, 1906); ErskinePrinciples of the Law of Scotland(20th ed., Edinburgh, 1903); Bouvier,Law Dicty.(Boston and London, 1897); Harris,Identification(Albany, 1892); Hagan,Disputed Handwriting(New York, 1894); also the articleIdentification.
See Taylor,Law of Evidence(10th ed., London, 1906); ErskinePrinciples of the Law of Scotland(20th ed., Edinburgh, 1903); Bouvier,Law Dicty.(Boston and London, 1897); Harris,Identification(Albany, 1892); Hagan,Disputed Handwriting(New York, 1894); also the articleIdentification.
(A. W. R.)
HANG-CHOW-FU,a city of China, in the province of Cheh-Kiang, 2 m. N.W. of the Tsien-tang-Kiang, at the southern terminus of the Grand canal, by which it communicates with Peking. It lies about 100 m. S.W. of Shanghai, in 30° 20′ 20″ N., 120° 7′ 27″ E. Towards the west is the Si-hu or Western Lake, a beautiful sheet of water, with its banks and islands studded with villas, monuments and gardens, and its surface traversed by gaily-painted pleasure boats. Exclusive of extensive and flourishing suburbs, the city has a circuit, of 12 m.; its streets are well paved and clean; and it possesses a large number of arches, public monuments, temples, hospitals and colleges. It has long ranked as one of the great centres of Chinese commerce and Chinese learning. In 1869 the silk manufactures alone were said to give employment to 60,000 persons within its walls, and it has an extensive production of gold and silver work and tinsel paper. On one of the islands in the lake is the great Wên-lan-ko or pavilion of literary assemblies, and it is said that at the examinations for the second degree, twice every three years, from 10,000 to 15,000 candidates come together. In the north-east corner of the city is the Nestorian church which was noted by Marco Polo, the façade being “elaborately carved and the gates covered with elegantly wrought iron.” There is a Roman Catholic mission in Hangchow, and the Church Missionary Society, the American Presbyterians, and the Baptists have stations. The local dialect differs from the Mandarin mainly in pronunciation. The population, which is remarkable for gaiety of clothing, was formerly reckoned at 2,000,000, but is now variously estimated at 300,000, 400,000 or 800,000. Hang-chow-fu was declared open to foreign trade in 1896, in pursuance of the Japanese treaty of Shimonoseki. It is connected with Shanghai by inland canal, which is navigable for boats drawing up to 4 ft. of water, and which might be greatly improved by dredging. The cities of Shanghai, Hangchow and Suchow form the three points of a triangle, each being connected with the other by canal, and trade is now open by steam between all three under the inland navigation rules. These canals pass through the richest and most populous districts of China, and in particular lead into the great silk-producing districts. They have for many centuries been the highway of commerce, and afford a cheap and economical means of transport. Hangchow lies at the head of the large estuary of that name, which is, however, too shallow for navigation by steamers. The estuary or bay is funnel-shaped, and its configuration produces at spring tides a “bore” or tidal wave, which at its maximum reaches a height of 15 to 20 ft. The value of trade passing through the customs in 1899 was £1,729,000; in 1904 these figures had risen to £2,543,831.
Hang-chow-fu is the Kinsai of Marco Polo, who describes it as the finest and noblest city in the world, and speaks enthusiastically of the number and splendour of its mansions and the wealth and luxuriance of its inhabitants. According to this authority it had a circuit of 100 m., and no fewer than 12,000 bridges and 3000 baths. The name Kinsai, which appears in Wassaf as Khanzai, in Ibn Batuta as Khansa, in Odoric of Pordenone as Camsay, and elsewhere as Campsay and Cassay, is really a corruption of the ChineseKing-sze, capital, the same word which is still applied to Peking. From the 10th to the 13th century (960-1272) the city, whose real name was then Ling-nan, was the capital of southern China and the seat of the Sung dynasty, which was dethroned by the Mongolians shortly before Marco Polo’s visit. Up to 1861, when it was laid in ruins by the T’aip’ings, Hangchow continued to maintain its position as one of the most flourishing cities in the empire.
HANGING,one of the modes of execution under Roman law (ad furcam domnatio), and in England and some other countries the usual form of capital punishment. It was derived by the Anglo-Saxons from their German ancestors (Tacitus,Germ.12). Under William the Conqueror this mode of punishment is said to have been disused in favour of mutilation: but Henry I. decreed that all thieves taken should be hanged (i.e.summarily without trial), and by the time of Henry II. hanging was fully established as a punishment for homicide; the “right of pit and gallows” was ordinarily included in the royal grants of jurisdiction to lords of manors and to ecclesiastical1and municipal corporations. In the middle ages every town, abbey, and nearly all the more important manorial lords had the right of hanging. The clergy had rights, too, in respect to the gallows. Thus William the Conqueror invested the abbot of Battle Abbey with authority to save the life of any criminal. From the end of the 12th century the jurisdiction of the royal courts gradually became exclusive; as early as 1212 the king’s justices sentenced offenders to be hanged (Seld. Soc. Publ.vol. i.;Select Pleas of the Crown, p. 111), and in the Gloucester eyre of 1221 instances of this sentence are numerous (Maitland, pl. 72, 101, 228). In 1241 a nobleman’s son, William Marise, was hanged for piracy. In the reign of Edward I. the abbot of Peterborough set up a gallows at Collingham, Notts, and hanged a thief. In 1279 two hundred and eighty Jews were hanged for clipping coin. The mayor and the porter of the South Gate of Exeter were hanged for their neglect in leaving the city gate open at night, thereby aiding the escape of a murderer. Hanging in time superseded all other forms of capital punishment for felony. It was substituted in 1790 for burning as a punishment of female traitors and in 1814 for beheading as a punishment for male traitors. The older and more primitive modes of carrying out the sentence were by hanging from the bough of a tree (“the father to the bough, the son to the plough”) or from a gallows. Formerly in the worst cases of murder it was customary after execution to hang the criminal’s body in chains near the scene of his crime. This was known as “gibbeting,” and, though by no means rare in the earliest times, was, according to Blackstone, no part of the legal sentence. Holinshed is the authority for the statement that sometimes culprits were gibbeted alive, but this is doubtful. It was not until 1752 that gibbeting was recognized by statute. The act (25 Geo. II. c. 37) empowered the judges to direct that the dead body of a murderer should be hung in chains, in the manner practised for the most atrocious offences, or given over to surgeons to be dissected and anatomized, and forbade burial except after dissection (see Foster, Crown Law, 107, Earl Ferrers’ case, 1760). The hanging in chains was usually on the spot where the murder took place. Pirates were gibbeted on the sea shore or river bank. The act of 1752 was repealed in 1828, but the alternatives of dissection or hanging in chains were re-enacted and continued in use until abolished as to dissection by the Anatomy Act in 1832, and as to hanging in chains in 1834. The last murderer hung in chains seems to have been James Cook, executed at Leicester on the 10th of August 1832. The irons used on that occasion are preserved in Leicester prison. Instead of chains, gibbet irons, a framework to hold the limbs together, were sometimes used. At the town hall, Rye, Sussex, are preserved the irons used in 1742 for one John Breeds who murdered the mayor.
The earlier modes of hanging were gradually disused, and the present system of hanging by use of the drop is said to have been inaugurated at the execution of the fourth Earl Ferrers in 1760. The form of scaffold now in use2has under the gallows a drop constructed on the principle of the trap-doors on a theatrical stage, upon which the convict is placed under the gallows, a white cap is placed over his head, and when the halter has been properly adjusted the drop is withdrawn by a mechanical contrivance worked by a lever, much like those in use on railways for moving points and signals. The convict falls into a pit,the length of the fall being regulated by his height and weight. Death results not from real hanging and strangulation, but from a fracture of the cervical vertebrae. Compression of the windpipe by the rope and the obstruction of the circulation aid in the fatal result. Recently the noose has had imbedded in its fibre a metal eyelet which is adjusted tightly beneath the ear and considerably expedites death. The convict is left hanging until life is extinct.
It was long considered essential that executions, like trials, should be public, and be carried out in a manner calculated to impress evil-doers. Partly to this idea, partly to notions of revenge and temporal punishment of sin, is probably due the rigour of the administration of the English law. But the methods of execution were unseemly, as delineated in Hogarth’s print of the execution of the idle apprentice, and were ineffectual in reducing the bulk of crime, which was augmented by the inefficiency of the police and the uncertainty and severity of the law, which rendered persons tempted to commit crime either reckless or confident of escape. The scandals attending public executions led to an attempt to alter the law in 1841, although many protests had been made long before, among them those of the novelist Fielding. But perhaps the most forcible and effectual was that of Charles Dickens in his letters toThe Timeswritten after mixing in the crowd gathered to witness the execution of the Mannings at Horsemonger Lane gaol in 1849. After his experiences he came to the conclusion that public executions attracted the depraved and those affected by morbid curiosity; and that the spectacle had neither the solemnity nor the salutary effect which should attend the execution of public justice. His views were strongly resisted in some quarters; and it was not until 1868 (31 & 32 Vict. c. 24) that they were accepted. The last public hanging in England was that of Michael Barrett for murder by causing an explosion at Clerkenwell prison with the object of releasing persons confined there for treason and felony (Ann. Reg., 1868, p. 63). Under the act of 1868 (31 & 32 Vict. c. 24), which was adapted from similar legislation already in force in the Australian colonies convicted murderers are hanged within the walls of a prison. The sentence of the court is that the convict “be hanged by the neck until he is dead.” The execution of the sentence devolves on the sheriff of the county (Sheriffs Act 1887, s. 13). As a general rule the sentence is carried out in England and Ireland at 8A.M.on a week-day (not being Monday), in the week following the third Sunday after sentence was passed. In old times prisoners were often hanged on the day after sentence was passed; and under the act of 1752 this was made the rule in cases of murder. A public notice of the date and hour of execution must be posted on the prison walls not less than twelve hours before the execution and must remain until the inquest is over. The persons required to be present are the sheriff, the gaoler, chaplain and surgeon of the prison, and such other officers of the prison as the sheriff requires; justices of the peace for the jurisdiction to which the prison belongs, and such of the relatives, or such other persons as the sheriff or visiting justices allow, may also attend. It is usual to allow the attendance of some representatives of the press. The death of the prisoner is certified by the prison surgeon, and a declaration that judgment of death has been executed is signed by the sheriff. An inquest is then held on the body by the coroner for the jurisdiction and a jury from which prison officers are excluded. The certificate and declaration, and a duplicate of the coroner’s inquiry also, are sent to the home office, or in Ireland to the lord-lieutenant, and the body of the prisoner is interred in quicklime within the prison walls if space is available. It is also the practice to toll the bell of the parish or other neighbouring church, for fifteen minutes before and fifteen minutes after the execution. The hoisting of the black flag at the moment of execution was abolished in 1902. The regulations as to execution are printed in the Statutory Rules and Orders, Revised ed. 1904, vol. x. (tits. Prison E. and Prison I). The act of 1868 applies only to executions for murder; but since the passing of the act there have been no executions for any other crime within the United Kingdom. (See furtherCapital Punishment.)
In Scotland execution by hanging is carried out in the same manner as in England and Ireland, but under the supervision of the magistrates of the burgh in which it is decreed to take place, and in lieu of the inquest required in England and Ireland an inquiry is held at the instance of the procurator-fiscal before a sheriff or sheriff substitute (act of 1868, s. 13). The procedure at the execution is governed by the act of 1868 and the Scottish Prison Rules, rr. 465-469 (Stat. Rules and Orders, Revised ed. 1904, tit. Prison S).
British Dominions beyond the Seas.—Throughout the King’s dominions hanging is the regular method of executing sentence of death. In India the Penal Code superseded the modes of punishment under Mahommedan law, and s. 368 of the Criminal Procedure Code of 1898 provides that sentence of death is to be executed by hanging by the neck.
In Canada the sentence is executed within a prison under conditions very similar to those in England (Criminal Code, 1892; ss. 936-945). In Australia the execution takes place within the prison walls, at a time and place appointed by the governor of the state. See Queensland Code, 1899, s. 664; Western Australia Code, 1901, s. 663; in these states no inquest is held. In Western Australia the governor may cause an aboriginal native to be executed outside a prison. In New Zealand the only mode of execution is by hanging within a prison (Act of 1883).
United States.—-In all the states except New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, Mississippi, Virginia, and Ohio (seeElectrocution) persons sentenced to death are hanged. In Utah the criminal may elect to be shot instead.