Handel Reference Database (HRD): a case of entrepreneurial scholarship

Ilias Chrissochoidis

Handel Reference Database (HRD): a case of entrepreneurial scholarship

‘Handel Reference Database’ (http://ichriss.ccarh.org/HRD/) is the first online documentary collection on the composer and one of the largest of its kind on a musical topic. It originated as the third part of my dissertation ‘Early Reception of Handel’s Oratorios, 1732–1784: Narrative – Studies – Documents’ (Stanford University, 2004), pp. 654–1432, the largest expansion of Handel documents since 1955. My strategic decision to unify the century quarters surrounding Handel’s death (1759) and the inadequacy of Otto Erich Deutsch’s documentary biography to support this goal forced me to launch a rigorous campaign of identifying and transcribing new sources, first at Stanford’s Special Collections department and later at other archives. As academic publishers withdrew from the field of primary sources for the sake of discursive narratives and textbooks, the chances of publishing a dissertation of 1626 pages became extremely small. Stanford’s affiliation with the Center for Computing Assisted Research in the Humanities (http://ccarh.org) provided a rare opportunity to promote this collection through a recognizable online platform.

HRD was launched in January 2008. Since then, it has grown to over 800,000 words, covering the period from Handel’s birth (1685) to the early 19th century. A number of research fellowships and awards allowed me to work at nearly every major archive of 18th-century resources in the United States and to discover new documents, some of which I have already published in academic journals and the newsletters of the American Handel Society and the Handel Institute.

A further expansion of HRD was due to the appearance of major databases, especially the ‘Eighteenth Century Collections Online’ and the British Library’s ‘Burney Collection of Newspapers’. Finally, an appointment at the UCL Centre for Economic Learning and Social Evolution (ELSE) in 2009–10 offered me the opportunity to spend long hours at the British Library and the Foundling Museum with excursions to the National Archives and the Bodleian Library. Until 2014, HRD featured almost exclusively material from sources that I had personally examined. Occasional overlapping with documents in Deutsch’s Handel (1955) and its German version as “Händel Handbuch, vol. 4” (1985) was owing either to errors in these volumes or limited length of published excerpts. Until recently I considered HRD as a supplement to Deutsch. In 2013, I decided to incorporate the two volumes and by October all documents up to 1726 had been added to HRD. Given the numerous transcription errors in Deutsch, a decision has to be made on whether these additions should be visually identifiable through a special font or format.

The goal of HRD is to offer more than a documentary record of Handel’s life and career. His reception in Britain was a foundational stone of musical modernity and HRD aspires to offer unmediated access to the rich tapestry of London’s musical and theatrical scene in one of the most dynamic periods in European history. Documents are arranged chronologically according to calendar year. Self-contained titles of great length appear separately also in chronological order and a special section offers access to documents in other web sites. Transcriptions are as close to the original as possible and editorial additions are indicated in square or angle brackets; the source is offered as a footnote. Formatting has fluctuated through the years in response to the challenges presented by newly added documents (especially in tabular form). The appearance of

exact dates on the upper left corner of each document allows for comfortable scrolling down of an entire year.

Unlike other textual databases in Musicology, such as ‘In Mozart’s Words’ (http://letters.mozartways.com/) and ‘Schenker Documents Online’ (http://mt.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/schenker/), HRD is the product of a single individual and, excepting two short-term fellowships from Harvard University and UCLA, it remains unfunded and with no technical support. All its files are in html format, which allows only for basic keyword search through a google applet. Discussions to integrate it into the programs of the two digital humanities centres at the University of London (UCL and KCL) have yet to bear fruits. Given that Handel studies is a minor subfield in American musicology, HRD has more chances to maximize its potential through a UK and EE major grant. The pivotal position of Handel in European music history and my personal research record make me hopeful that HRD will at some point receive the financial support it deserves to become one of the major online resources in 18th-century British studies.

Academic validation is a second and thorny problem. The generation of scholars who dominate Anglo-American Handel studies show a strong resistance to online resources. A statistical analysis shows that HRD is accessed from institutions where many Handel scholars work, yet it hardly ever is cited it in their publications (the only exception so far being Thomas McGeary, The Politics of Opera in Handel’s Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2013), xi). This is particularly noticeable in the Preface of George Frideric Handel: Collected Documents (Cambridge University Press, 2013), which fails to mention both my dissertation and HRD as the

largest addition of sources to Deutsch up to 2004. For a database whose account receives over 100,000 hits per year, this invisibility in published scholarship is disturbing and has often tempted me to restrict access to source citations as a way of discouraging its stealthy use. 1

Unlike Handel: Collected Documents, HRD has all the advantages of an online resource: instant updating, unlimited expansion of content and links with other online resources. A major grant would allow the xml marking up of its content, the creation of indices, cross-references and user interactivity through feedback and discussion forms, as well as direct links to image and music libraries. Handel’s wide reception in British society qualifies HRD as a resource of interdisciplinary scope. The possibility of merging it with the documentary portion of HCD on a Cambridge online platform could create the most significant online resource in 18th-century music studies, but it is not up to me to take the initiative here.

After six years of developing HRD, I have concluded that private initiatives cannot flourish in peer controlled environments, as they upset fixed hierarchies and core agendas (study of music autographs and style analysis in the case of Handel studies). The scholar who dares replicate Friedrich Chrysander’s lone journey to address a real need should be prepared for the worst. Having worked outside an institutional context and with hardly more than a few thousand dollars, I find no better compliment than the admission of the editors of Handel: Collected Documents: ‘The present publication is the result of a happy conjunction of support from a number of sources, and the collaborative work of an editorial team. Without a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council in 2007–10 the project could not have been attempted; it

1

HRD has been featured at RILM’s blog ‘bibliolore’ (http://bibliolore.org/2013/12/20/handel-research-database/) and the ‘San Francisco Classical Voice’ (https://www.sfcv.org/article/music-news-sept-7-2011#anchor7).

could not have been brought to completion without the continuing support of the Open University and the Winton Dean Fund of The Handel Institute.’ 2 Scholarly entrepreneurship may not be the average academic’s cup of tea but, whenever it appears it can make a difference for generations to come.

2

George Frideric Handel: Collected Documents. Volume 1: 1609–1725, compiled and ed. Donald Burrows, Helen Coffey, John Greenacombe and Anthony Hicks (Cambridge University Press, 2013), x.