DICTIONARY OF MUSIC - El Atril

190 GOD SAVE THE KING GOD SAVE THE KING
Second' (Victor's letter, Oct. 1745). Dr. Arne
is reported to have said that it was a received
opinion that it was written for the Catholic
Chapel of .James II. This is the date given it by
Burney in Reea's Cyclojifcdia (Chappell, p. 694),
and Dr. Benjamin Cooke had heard it sung to
Dr.
the words ' But Great .) ames our King. '
Cooke was not born till 1734, and his 'James '
must have been (.James III. ) the Pretender. And
as to the Catholic Chapel of James II., to have
been sung there it must surely have been in
Latin, of wliich
[but see below].
certainly no traces are found
Lully's (163.3-S7) claim to the tune, sometimes
put forward, rests on the Souvenirs de
la Marquise de Crt^qui, which is now know'n
to be a mere modern fiction. The tune, however,
quickly crossed tlie Cliannel. It is found
in La Lire Ma(;mv)ie . . . de J^ignoUcs et du Bois
. . . a la Hayc as early as 1766, and it is worth
noting that ^ the first bar has there taken
^
its
present form, and that the close is as follows :
It wag adopted as the Danish National Air, to
a version made by Harries, beginning ' Heil
Dir, dem liebenden,' and was expressly stated
to have been written for tlie melody of ' God
save great George the King.' [Fle/isburger
WochenUatt, Jan. 27, 1790.) The Berlin
form, beginning 'Heil dir im Siegerkranz, ' is
by Balthasar Gerhard Schumacher, and was
published in the Spenersche Zeiiung, Berlin,
Dec. 17, 1793. See a paper by A. Hoffmann
von Fallersleben in his Findlinge, Leipzig,
1859.
W. Chappell quoted more than one additional
occasional stanza as well as parody of ' God save
the King.' But perhaps none are so curious
as the extra stanza which is said to have been
sung at Calais at the banquet given in honour
of the Duke of Clarence, when, as Lord High
Admiral of England, he took Louis XVIII.
across the Channel :
God save noble Clarence,
"Who brings her king to France,
God save Clarence !
He maintain.s the glory
Ot the British navy,
O God make him happy !
God save Clarence
The tune was a great favourite with Weber.
He introduced it into his Cantata ' Kampf
und Sieg' (No. 9) and his 'Jubel Ouverture,'
and has twice harmonised it for four voices—in
D and B? (both MS.—Jahns, Nos. 247, 271).
With Beethoven it was at least equally a
favourite. He wrote seven variations on it for
Piano (in C ; 1804), arranged it lor solo and
chorus with accompaniment of pf., violin, and
violoncello (B. & H. No. 259), and introduced
1 If the tune is alike in the Ist and 2nd (1776) editlone. See
Tappel-t in Mut. ,Wocltenbtatl. August 31, 1877.
it into his Battle Symphony ; apropos of the
latter the following words are found in his
journal :
' I must show the English a little what
a blessing they have in God save the King '
(Nohl, Beethoven- Fcier, p. 65). Our own Attwood
harmonised it in his anthem ' I was glad
for the coronation of George IV., as he did ' Rule
Britannia '
for the coronation of William IV.
Dr. Ciiminings has published an investigation
of the subject in the Musical Times (March to
August 1878) more complete than any preceding
it ; and has expanded the article into a volume
[see below]. I have only been able to avail
myself of his oojiy of Bull's Ayre, and must refer
my readers to the authorities already mentioned,
and to an article by Major Crawford, in Julian's
DietAonary of Hymnology, p. 437. G.
[In an article originally intended for insertion
in the first edition of this Dictionary, Major
Crawford inclined to the belief that the song
was 'really sung in James XL's chapel in 1688,
and preserved in the memory of the adherents
of the Stuart family.' According to this, it
came into the hands of John Travel's, who set
it as a Latin chorus for the birthday of the
Princess of Wales, and had it performed in the
winter of 1743-44. The words were as follows,
and may represent the actual original of the
hymn :
O Deus optime !
Salviim nunc facito
Regem nostrum ;
Sit laeta victoria.
Comes et gloria,
Salvum nunc facito,
Te Dominum.
Exurgat Dominus ;
Rebelles dissipet,
Et reprimat
Dolos confundito
Fraudes depellito ;
In Te sit sita spes ;
O salva nos.
Dr. Cummings supports this theory as to the
words, and considers that the tune may have
been an adaptation from Bull's air, modified by
tradition.]
Since the above was written, no definite
solution of the problem of the authorship of
either words or music has l)cen made. Dr.
Cummings has put his facts into book -form,
under the title God save the King, the origin and
history of the imtsic and words of the National
Anthe'ni (Novello, 1902). In the various articles
which appear from time to time in magazines
and newspapers, Henry Carey still divides
aliout equally with Dr. John Bull the credit of
its composition. The present writer ventured,
in The Minstrelsy of England (first series, 1901,
Bayley and Ferguson), to broach a new theory
suggesting the probability of its composition or
its modern revival being due to James Oswald,
a Scottish musician who settled in London in
1742. Oswald became a hack-^vriter for John
Simpson, the publisher of all early copies (with