OCR NATIONAL ANTHEM*

Otago Witness, Issue 2446, 30 January 1901, Page 54

OCR NATIONAL ANTHEM*

The controversy as to the authorship of the

National Anthem will inevit- *' GOD SAVE ably be revived now that the the king." necessity for altering the terms

of the petition it contains has arisen. The claims which have been put forth on behalf of various personfe to the jmerit of having written the hymn"have never been quite satisfactorily settled. Nor has it !been found possible to definitely assign any elate to its composition. One thing* is, howlever, fairly clear, and that is that it was originally written in the form in which it Jwill now have to be sung — God save the Jting!" In Grove's "Dictionary of Music" 'the original form of the air and words, as toearly as could be arrived at, is reproduced, Ike first stanza running as follows : —

"<)& save our Lord the King, jng live our noble King, God save the King! E^tnd him victorious, Happy and glorious, Long to reign over us, God save the King.

The first public performance of the hymn is said to have been at a dinner in 1740 to celebrate the taking of Portobello by Admiral rVernon. According to one account it ■was then sung by Henry Carey (the Writer of the evergreen " Sally in our »lley ") as his own composition — both words and music. On the other hand it has been fcaid that the first claim on Henry Carey's •behalf of the credit of the composition of the hymn was made by his posthumous son in the latter part of his lifetime. Mr J. Christopher Smith, amanuensis of Handel, who was a contemporary of Carey's, is among the witnesses in support of the assertion that the lattpr was actually the author of the song. Sir John Hawkins, the historian of music, did not place * high, estimate upon. Carey's abili-

tii«s. "As a. musician," he wrote, "Carey seems to have been one of the fir3t of the lowest rank." He was, it may be added, a reputed natural son of George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, and when he died there seems to have been some ground for the suspicion of suicide. Various causes for the alleged act of Belf-destruction were stated, among them being that of pecuniary embarrassment, and it is certain that his family were left ill provided for. Edmund Kean, the famous tragedian, was his great- grandson.

A claim, which has been vigorously supported, is that the composition of the VARIOUS National Anthem was inspired claims. by the discovery of the Gun-

powder plot, and it has been asserted that the prayer to " frustrate their knavish tricks " is an especial allusion to that incident in British history. If this contention were correct it would be impossible to hold that Carey was the author. The claim that the anthem was written by Dr John Bull would, if this were established, carry much more weight than it does. The date of the Gunpowder plot was 1604. Bull lived between 1563 and 1628. The date of Carey's birth is not known, but he died in 1743 — nearly a century and a-half after the date of the Guy Fawkes conspiracy. The claim on Bull's part to the authorship of the anthem has, however, only met with partial acceptance. It has been alleged that there is in Antwerp Cathedral a manuscript copy of the hymn which asserts that the words and music were by Dr John Bull, but this does not rest upon any sure foundation. The Chevalier Leon de Burbure is quoted in Grove's Dictionary as having written on the subject some few years back as follows: — "I do not know that the Cathedral of Antwerp ever possessed any MSS. of Dr John Bull, but at all events there have remained no traces for a long time." Dr Bull became organist of Notre Dame at Antwerp in 1617, lived in the house adjoining the church for some time, and was buried in the cathedral, where he had been organist. An " ayre," without further title, which is dated 1619 and is attributed to " Dr Jan Bull," has a general likeness to the air of the National Anthem, and it has both the rhythm and the melody of the modern air in the first four bars of the second strain ; but it is in minor, and bo also is the air of a Scottish carol,

" Remember, O thou man," on the ground of which the anthem is sometimes claimed for Scotland. There are other pieces which bear marks of resemblance to the air as we know it. The rhythm and phrases of the hymn, and even the unequal length of the two strains (its most essential peculiarity), had all existed before it became publicly known. Sir George Grove points this out in his standard work, in which he also shows that some of the phrases of the words had been employed long before Carey's time. But this may only imply that Carey compiled the anthem, both as to the L air and words, from older compositions.