Handel at Oxford in 1733

Abstract

H ANDELS appearance at Oxford in July 1733, like Haydn's in 1791, was one of the few great events in the musical history of the 18th-century university.' The occasion was the so-called 'Oxford Act'--which was, in effect, the university's annual graduation ceremony (or passing-out parade) for masters of arts and the higher doctorates (in divinity, law, medicine and, just occasionally, music too). When celebrated publicly, the Act usually involved special musical performances (and also, in earlier days, a short season of dramatic performances given by one of the London theatre companies). Such a variety of entertainment, in addition to the academic ceremonial itself, naturally attracted a great many visitors to Oxford, not only numerous persons 'of quality and distinction', but also a fairly large contingent of Cambridge men come to witness the proceedings. As it happened, the Act in its traditional form as established by statute was publicly celebrated only three times during the first half of the 18th century: once in 1703, again in 1713, and once again 20 years later when, possibly because of the presence of Mr Handel and 'his lowsy Crew' (as they were famously dubbed by Thomas Hearne, the irascible Oxford diarist and antiquary), the stage players were denied access to the city, and thus forced to perform in Abingdon, a small country town about 61/2 miles to the south. The character of the Act, occasionally referred to later on as the Commemoration, changed quite markedly during the course of the century, and was, after 1733, soon replaced by the Encaenia, now an annual one-day festive event in commemoration of the university's benefactors which takes place in the presence of the Chancellor, and is confined to the awarding of honorary degrees (and ancillary garden party). A generally lively speech by the Public Orator (or, in alternate years, the Professor of Poetry) commenting on the main events of the preceding academic year also forms part of the proceedings.3 Somewhat surprisingly perhaps, the 1733 Oxford Act involving Handel seems never to have been considered as a single self-contained episode in the composer's career, save by Cyril Eland, in an unpublished essay apparently written in the 1930s when its author was an undergraduate at Magdalen College.4 A corrected carbon copy of the typescript was later acquired (and bound) by Gerald Coke, the great English collector of Handeliana, who lent it to Otto Erich Deutsch when he was working on his invaluable documentary biography published in 1955. Together with a letter of 9 July 1951 from Deutsch to Coke thanking him for the use of it, Eland's essay is at present housed with the rest of the Coke collection of manuscripts and early printed editions in the Hampshire County Record Office in Winchester (press-mark HC 767). Though it can hardly be described as a commendably scholarly achievement, even for an undergraduate, Deutsch no doubt found it useful in alerting him to one or two sources that might otherwise have eluded him. Unfortunately, however, Deutsch's strictly chronological presentation of data not only allows two or three other non-Oxonian items to get in the way, but also defers for a further 30-odd pages several other contemporary observations on the Act which were not published until June 1734.5 Thus no clear picture of the week's events emerges; neither is there any very satisfactory explanation of the framework of academic ceremonial to which