Klarinet Archive - Posting 000682.txt from 2001/01

From: MVinquist@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Going to Court
Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2001 12:41:12 -0500

The meaning of the word "court" has changed over the years and now has two
distinct senses. Originally, a "court" was the people surrounding someone up
the feudal ladder from you - the king, or a nobleman, and his
entourage/hangers-on/employees - his "courtiers." "The king and his court."

Your only redress for wrongs was to go to the person immediately above you.
(Only the nobility could go to the king.) That lord combined the authority
of the legislative, executive and judicial functions, as far as you were
concerned.

You did not file a lawsuit. You humbly appealed to the lord, who might
condescend, out of generosity, a sense of justice, and payment of a
substantial amount of money, to put you back where you had been.

It became convenient for a lord to have special times and places to hear
appeals. That is, he "held court." For the greater lords, and for the king,
there were too many appeals to hear personally, and so special functionaries
- eventually "judges" - were named to handle the traffic. (Not to mention
specialized case presenters - lawyers - to talk to the judges for you.)

As the English kings became more powerful, they wrested away from the
nobility the function of trying important criminal prosecutions.

When Parliament wrested away absolute power from the king, they made an
independent judiciary, which eventually took over non-criminal matters as
well.

The American system institutionalized the separate judiciary and also
separated the legislative and executive functions, creating the familiar
"separation/balance of powers." No matter how obvious that seems to us, it
was un-thought-of and even unthinkable a few hundred years ago.

In what is now Germany and Austria, there was no centralized king or emperor,
but rather hundreds of tiny states, each ruled by its own prince. Thus, Haydn
worked at - was a courtier (albeit a specialized one) at - the court of the
Esterhazy prince, and Carl Stamitz flitted from one prince's court to another.

Thus when you read that Stamitz was a member of the court of so-and-so, it
had nothing to do with the judicial system, but rather refers to the
household of a prince, who could afford to pay for a group of full time
musicians.

Best regards.

Ken Shaw

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