Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/54

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

2^ S. N 3., JAN*. 19. '56.

MOZART'S " REQUIEM."

What Mozart wrote, and what he did not write, of the celebrated Requiem, is a question which has given rise to many volumes of curious con- troversy. One point, however, has been altoge- ther overlooked by the combatants, and it is this : that Mozart may have written certain movements new and fresh for the composition, and brought in and used 'up movements for the other portions of the Mass which he had written many years before. I think this to be the true solution of this vexed question. It is clear Mozart did not score his Requiem, and Spohr or Berlioz should remove the blots Sussmayer has charged upon this superb opera.

Mozart considered he had done something new, in fact had made an advance in writing, for just before his death he said, " Ah ! how sad it is I must die, when I have only just begun to write." I believe his acquaintance for the first time with the niotetts of Bach, and Bach's forty-eight pre- ludes and fugues, to be the turning point in the second epoch of Mozart's style. His letters to his wife testify to his wonder and amazement at the preludes and fugues ; and his use of the Choral in the Zaiiberflote shows how soon he turned the motetts to account. Of the Requiem I think five movements were written specially, and the others adaptations from earlier works. The Domine is unquestionably the greatest of all his compositions, and Bach is seen in every bar. The fugue upon the " Christs eleison " is com- pounded out of the two fugues in A minor in Bach's celebrated work. H. J. GAUNTLETT.

HandeVs Mode of composing Music. Among the four creators (not composers) of music Bach, Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven Handel ranks the first and foremost in many respects, but is, notwithstanding, the weakest and most unequal of the four. So low do the great German theo- rists rank him, that he is not admitted as an authority in their rudimentary treatises. The reason of his great inequality may be traced from his practice of writing for immediate performance, and for money. He was in one person proprietor, renter, lessee, composer, manager, conductor, organist, singing-master, chorngus, banker, specu- lator, and had to look to the public for an imme- diate return for his labours. He wrote therefore to please all classes of humanity, those who had hearts and heads, and those who had not. When he completed his Oratorio of Judas Maccabasus, Dr. Mainwaring requested the loan of the MSS. for a few days, and on returning them observed, " I have marked some of the finest movements." "Ah," said Handel, "you have picked out the best things, but you take no notice of that which is to bring me all the money .'" II. J. GAUNTLETT.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF MACAULAY.

Hugh Speke and the forged Declaration of the Prince of Orange (Concluded from p. 29.) The accession of Jatnes stirred up the disaffected and let loose the persecutors. The Spekes, kith and kin, were all suspected. It appears from Mr. Roberts's researches in the State Paper Office, that Bishop Mews had in 1683 officially reported Mrs. Speke as " the most dangerous woman in the West," and recommended that the house at White Lackington should be searched.

In 1685 a messenger was despatched to arrest Trenchard, who was then on a visit to his father- in-law. The messenger was resisted, and Tren- chard escaped. Old Speke was prosecuted for aiding in the rescue, and fined two thousand pounds, and ordered to find security for good be- haviour. Hugh Speke, too, who had secured the liberty of the Rules, was now locked up within the King's Bench. Here he became acquainted with Johnson, who was then confined for writing Julian the Apostate. Speke tells us that he sug- gested to Johnson the Humble and Hearty Ad- dress to all Protestants in the present Army ; which he also undertook to get printed and circulated at the camp' at Hounslow.

Then came Monmouth's 'Expedition and the Re- bellion in the West. Fortunately for John Tren- chard, the country had been too hot to hold him, and he had retired to France. Speke, the father, was too old to go soldiering as in the Cavalier days Hugh Speke was in prison, but John, the eldest son, the late member for Ilchester, joined at once, with forty attendants on horseback, and was probably the most influential gentleman who risked life and fortune on the issue.

This John Speke escaped by some miraculous chance the legal slaughter which followed the defeat at Sedgmoor ; but a younger brother, Charles, who had not joined in the rebellion, but had unfortunately met Monmouth and shaken hands with him, suffered death. A major of dragoons told Jefferys that there were two Spekes, and that the one left for execution was not the man intended, and that perhaps favour might be shown him. " No," replied the judge; " his family owe a life he shall die for his namesake ; " and he was executed from a tree in the market-place at Wells. This young man was Filazer for Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Bristol, and Poole, an office, I presume, of honour and profit, as he had given 3000/. for it. So soon as it was known that he had been apprehended, both my Lord Jeffreys and Chief Justice Jones begged the place of the king. Jeffreys got the grant, and, as Hugh Speke quaintly says, " there remained, therefore, nothing to do but to hang him."

Now I cannot believe that any man with such antecedents, can with propriety be called an " un-