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‘INSPIRE US GENIUS OF THE DAY’: REWRITING THE REGENT IN THE BIRTHDAY ODE FOR QUEEN ANNE, 1703
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2016
Abstract
In 1701–1702 writer and poet Peter Anthony Motteux collaborated with composer John Eccles, Master of the King's Musick, in writing the ode for King William III's birthday. Eccles's autograph manuscript is listed in the British Library manuscript catalogue as ‘Ode for the King's Birthday, 1703; in score by John Eccles’ and is accompanied by a claim that the ode had already reached folio 10v when William died, requiring the words to be amended to suit his successor, Queen Anne. A closer inspection of this manuscript reveals that much more of the ode had been completed before the king's death, and that much more than the words ‘king’ and ‘William’ was amended to suit a succeeding monarch of a different gender and nationality. The work was performed before Queen Anne on her birthday in 1703 and the words were published shortly afterwards. Discrepancies between the printed text and that in Eccles's score indicate that no fewer than three versions of the text were devised during the creative process. These versions raise issues of authority with respect to poet and composer. A careful analysis of the manuscript's paper types and rastrology reveals a collaborative process of re-engineering that was, in fact, applied to an already completed work. This article explores the problems of textual versus musical authority embodied in the ode and the difficulties faced by its creators in reworking a piece originally celebrating a foreign male war-hero for a female British queen during a period of political and religious fragility.
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References
1 Matthew Prior, A | Pindarique | on | His Majesties Birth-Day. | By Mr. Prior | Sung before Their Majesties at Whitehall, | The Fourth of November 1690. | A Prophecy by Apollo (composer unknown). GB-Lbl, Ashley 4955. There is emphasis here and throughout this ode on King William's most recent victory in Ireland (‘JERNE’) at the Battle of the Boyne.
2 Prince William Henry was heir presumptive (meaning that his position could be displaced by the birth of an heir to the reigning monarchs) until Queen Mary's death in 1694. He then became heir apparent. His mother was effectively heir apparent to the heir apparent until William Henry's death in 1700, when she became the sole heir apparent.
3 Nahum Tate held the position of Poet Laureate from 1692 until his death in 1715. Though he did not provide poetry for all of the odes written for Queen Anne in this period, he did so frequently from the middle of her reign. For a detailed discussion of the Poet Laureate's duties see Estelle Murphy, ‘The Fashioning of a Nation: The Court Ode in the Late Stuart Period’ (PhD dissertation, University College Cork, 2012), volume 1, chapter 2.
4 See, for example, Winn's, James A. recent biography, Queen Anne: Patroness of Arts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)Google Scholar, and Bucholz, Robert O., The Augustan Court: Queen Anne and the Decline of Court Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.
5 Poet Laureate Nahum Tate was not, at this time, obliged to supply poetry for the odes.
6 An obbligato oboe is required for the solo song for bass voice ‘Firm as a rock’, though it is likely that oboes also doubled the strings in other movements.
7 The Post Man, 9–11 February 1703, cited in Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, The London Stage 1660–1800 (revised edition), Part 2, 1700–1729 <www.personal.psu.edu/users/h/b/hb1/London%20Stage%202001/lond1702.pdf> (30 January 2015).
8 GB-Lcm, D40, f. 3: The | Songs | and Symphonys | Perform'd before Her | Majesty at her Palace | of St. Jame's on her Birth Day. 1703 | Composed by Mr Eccles | Master of Her Majestys | Musick (London: Walsh[, 1703]); GB-Ob, Don. C. 56, f. 17: Mr | Ino. Eccles | General Collection | of SONGS (London: Walsh[, 1704]). The title appeared only in the 1704 edition.
9 ‘Cook, Mr [fl. 1694–1718], singer, violinist?’ in Highfill, Philip H. Jr, Burnim, Kalman A. and Langhans, Edward A., A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800, volume 3: Cabanel to Cory (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1975), 442–443 Google Scholar.
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14 Ashbee and others, A Biographical Dictionary of English Court Musicians, volume 1, 333–334.
15 Stoddard Lincoln, ‘John Eccles: The Last of a Tradition’ (PhD dissertation, University of Oxford, 1963), 390. McGuinness, Rosamond, English Court Odes, 1660–1820 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971), 142 Google Scholar.
16 The manuscripts include GB-Lcm, MS 1064, fols 28v–29; GB-Lbl, Add. 31808, fols 97–99v; and GB-Lbl, Add. MS 31806, fols 52–54. Further testifying to this movement's longevity and popularity is a printed concert programme from ‘Harrison and Knyvett's Vocal Concert’ dating from 1793. Described as a ‘GLEE, 3 Voices and CHORUS. Eccles’, the programme reproduces the lyrics of the trio and the chorus that follows.
17 For discussion of terminology recently established in relation to eighteenth-century manuscripts such as this, see Herissone, Rebecca, ‘“Fowle Originalls” and “Fayre Writeing”: Reconsidering Purcell's Compositional Process’, The Journal of Musicology 23/4 (2006), 586 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 Rebecca Herissone notes the presence of tally marks in a non-autograph manuscript of Purcell's keyboard music and settings (US-Lauc M678). However, she asserts that their presence together with fingerings suggests that the manuscript was used for teaching. Herissone, Musical Creativity in Restoration England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 111 and Appendix: Musical Creativity in Restoration England <http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=16614> (30 January, 2015).
19 Michael Talbot hypothesizes that a group of Vivaldi's autograph manuscripts of sacred works written in Venice were intended for use as exemplars elsewhere in Italy, quite possibly for the liturgy of St Laurence Martyr. Talbot, Michael, The Sacred Vocal Music of Antonio Vivaldi (Florence: Olschki, 1995), 167–168 Google Scholar. Many thanks to Paul Everett for bringing Talbot's discussion to my attention. Everett suggests that the presence of tally numbers (among other features) in Vivaldi's Dixit Dominus rv594 indicates that ‘he designed the score as a definitive text from which performance materials were to be derived’. Antonio Vivaldi, Dixit Dominus Salmo in due cori RV 594, ed. Paul Everett (Milan: Ricordi, 2002), 156.
20 Herissone discusses similar revisions made to file copies, including Henry Purcell's practice of adding slips of paper to cover an original, rejected passage. See Herissone, ‘“Fowle Originalls” and “Fayre Writeing”’, 590–591, and ‘Purcell's Revisions of His Own Works’ in Purcell Studies, ed. Curtis Price (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 58–62.
21 The British Library Archive and Manuscripts Catalogue Online, <http://searcharchives.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=IAMS_VU2> (30 January, 2015).
22 ‘Paper type’ here and below refers to the identification of paper according to rastrology.
23 See Churchill, W. A., Watermarks in Paper in Holland, England, France, etc., in the XVII and XVIII Centuries and Their Interconnection (Amsterdam: Hertzberger, 1967), 46 Google Scholar. Similar watermarks showing the Arms of Amsterdam are illustrated on pages cxcii and iii–xlviii. Note that f. 3, indicated as music paper B* in Table 2, appears to be a rogue folio. Though its ruling bears a strong resemblance to Type B folios, its watermark is unique in the manuscript. Hence it is likely, given its textual content, that it was used in tandem with music paper A when the work was originally completed for William III.
24 GB-Llp, **SR1175 1.033. It should be noted that the published songs from the ode contain poetry matching that of the manuscript (and not the printed poem), but for insignificant spelling discrepancies.
25 The Post Man, 31 December 1700–2 January 1701. Quoted in McGuinness, English Court Odes, 24.
26 The London Gazette, 3–6 November 1701; The Post Man, 4–6 November 1701.
27 See Winn, Queen Anne, chapter 6. On her first address to parliament, Anne's costume was modelled on a portrait of Queen Elizabeth. Gregg, Edward, Queen Anne (London: Routledge, 1984), 152 Google Scholar, and Churchill, Winston S., Marlborough: His Life and Times, volume 1 (London: Harrap, 1947), 499 Google Scholar.
28 On this point see Murphy, Estelle, ‘“Sing Great Anna's Matchless Name”: Images of Queen Anne in the Court Ode’, in Queen Anne and the Arts, ed. Reverand II, Cedric D. (New York: Bucknell University Press, 2014), 205–226 Google Scholar.
29 Queen Anne's self-fashioning in relation to Elizabeth I is discussed in detail in Murphy, ‘Sing Great Anna's Matchless Name’, and in Winn, Queen Anne, especially chapter 6.
30 Baxter, Stephen B., William III (London: Longmans, 1966), 248 Google Scholar.
31 There appear to have been occasions when the text of a work was published before being set to music, or, in the case of the 1693 playbook for Purcell's The Fairy Queen, before being altered to reflect a revised setting. See Herissone, Musical Creativity, 135–138.
32 For a detailed discussion of Henry Aldrich's engagement in such practices see Shay, Robert, ‘“Naturalizing” Palestrina and Carissimi in Late Seventeenth-Century Oxford: Henry Aldrich and His Recompositions’, Music & Letters 77/3 (1996), 368–400 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
33 Rebecca Herissone, ‘“To Entitle Himself to ye Composition”: Investigating Concepts of Authorship and Originality in Seventeenth-Century English Ceremonial Music’, unpublished paper presented at the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, University of Southern California, 2008. My thanks to Rebecca Herissone for sharing her paper with me.
34 Pinnock, Andrew, ‘“Deus ex machina”: A Royal Witness to the Court Origin of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas ’, Early Music 40/2 (2012), 265–278 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Which Genial Day? More on the Court Origin of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, With a Shortlist of Dates for Its Possible Performance Before Charles II’, Early Music 43/2 (2015), 199–212.
35 D'Urfey, Thomas, New Poems, Consisting of Satyrs, Elegies, and Odes: Together with a Collection of the Newest Court Songs, Set to Musick by the Best Masters of the Age (London: Bullard, 1690)Google Scholar. GB-Ob, Harding C 1197 (1).