David Starkey's Music and Monarchy (2013) s01e04 Episode Script
Reinventions
1 I vow to thee my country All earthly things above I Vow To Thee My Country is one of our greatest national songs heard regularly at royal events throughout the 20th century.
It was sung at St Paul's Cathedral for the Silver Jubilee of George V.
Lady Diana Spencer said that it was one of her favourite hymns from childhood and requested that it be sung here again at her wedding to Prince Charles.
16 years later it was performed at her funeral.
The love that never falters, the love that The music by Gustav Holst marries an imperial sweep and grandeur with that kind of "catch in the throat" quality so characteristic of the best of English music, with its all pervasive nostalgia.
And there's another country The words fuse a love of country with the love of God.
Qualities which, as I've explored in the course of this series, have been the inspiration for much of the best British music.
Most remarkably of all, though it seems so much part of the national fabric, I Vow To Thee My Country dates from only 1921.
But then Elgar's Hope And Glory is only 20 years older, while the royal house of Windsor itself was only created in 1917.
In other words, the 20th century is not a dying fall in the history of either the British monarchy or its music.
Instead, it's a period of triumphant revival, in which crown and nation find a new unity, a new language, and, above all, a new music.
are peace Early in the 19th century, Britain's monarchy was set on on a very different course.
British music was in the doldrums.
The Brighton Pavilion is a version of the path both might have gone down.
It was built by the Prince Regent who became King George IV.
Gluttonous, lascivious and extravagant, George destroyed public respect for the monarchy.
At the heart of his personal pleasure palace, however, we can see another side of his character.
This is his music room.
Sometimes the King's fine singing voice would be accompanied by this magnificent organ.
At other times he played the cello rather well.
And most frequently he listened to his private military band, described as the best in Europe.
George's most famous musical guest at the Royal Pavilion was Gioacchino Rossini, the Italian opera composer.
The two men, equally vulgar in their way, got on famously.
George brought Rossini here into the Music Room and introduced him to members of his band.
The band, in Rossini's honour, played Rossini's own Overture to The Thieving Magpie.
The Thieving Magpie (Overture) Snobbish, aristocratic members of the house party were disapproving of Rossini's appearance, describing him as a fat, sallow, squab of a man.
And they were outraged at his easy familiarity with the King.
He even dared to sit next to him.
But George was entranced, and, on Rossini's subsequent visits to London, the two sang duets together.
It was, however, a world away from the systematic royal patronage which produced the best English music of the past.
The sacred works of the likes of Tallis, Byrd and Gibbons.
Rossini wrote fashionable light entertainments, and made only fleeting visits to these shores.
The last truly great English musician, Henry Purcell, had died over a century before.
However well drilled George's band, no new British music of note emanated from his palaces or his reign.
Music at the Royal Pavilion had become a private passion of a royal sybarite.
Much like the monarchy, in fact, which, decadent, mismanaged and without visible point or purpose, seemed to be heading for irrelevance or worse.
In France, the revolutionaries had cut off the King's head and abolished the monarchy.
In America, former British colonial subjects were engaged in the novel experiment of a king-less republic, whilst here in Britain there were riots, conspiracies and clamorous calls for reform.
If it were to survive, the monarchy would have to do better than George IV.
But what would the model of a modern cleaned-up monarchy look like? And what would its music be? These questions would be settled in the reign of George's niece, Victoria.
And the monarchy's saviour was the man she married, Prince Albert.
Lebewohl Lebewohl Mein Lieb This is one of Albert's own compositions played in the White Drawing Room of Buckingham Palace on a piano that Victoria and Albert bought together.
Einen Kuà Einen Kuà Mir gib Albert gave this music to Victoria as an engagement gift in a collection of his work called "Lieder Und Romanzen" - Songs And Ballads.
Victoria and Albert would make music together.
Sometimes taking it in turns to sing to each other, sometimes singing duets.
Theirs was a passionate relationship, and sharing these moments of intense music-making only deepened it.
David Owen Norris is a pianist and composer, who has studied the Prince Consort's music.
With a perfect dying fall This splendid instrument is perfect for those sympathetic little duets.
And these accompaniments.
Accompaniments like in the song we've just heard when you need this sort of - (Gentle rolling melody) - The lilt.
And you can lay down a bed of sound for the singer to relax upon.
And the decorations - this is very much Albertine, isn't it? Well, it's ridiculous, isn't it? Well, it's frankly hideous, like most of the things they bought.
It's this androgynous figure in the middle.
It's difficult to keep your eyes off it while playing.
They loved this decoration so much they took it off an earlier piano and reapplied it.
Albert, of course, isn't only a consumer of music, he's not only a performer of music, he is actually a composer.
How serious? I mean, how good? Well, good, actually.
I think he took it very seriously.
And he was interested in the new innovations, that particularly German, early Romantic music was doing.
And he was able to do some of the remarkable harmonic things.
So there's a lovely surprise here which he waits to spring on a new page, which is rather lovely.
But we've had an E-flat chord (Rising chord) And then it suddenly goes (Strident note) Wow.
- Very Mendelssohn-ian.
- Well, very Romantic.
- Yes, yes.
- And he's very keen on doing that.
In general, I think he was very good.
The other song that I've got here, "Der Ungeliebte" - The Unbeloved - has a marvellous introduction which conjures up that sort of Oh, I don't know, Weber opera sort of mood, in a way.
(Plays slow, melancholic melody) - Lonely and deserted - Exactly.
Lonely and deserted, and remote in both the musical sense and emotion He could do that.
Fänd ich doch auf ird'scher Flur Albert himself was modest about his musical abilities.
"I consider that persons in our position of life can never be distinguished artists.
We have too many other duties to perform.
Our business is not so much to create, as to learn to understand and appreciate the work of others.
" der sich wild durch Welten reist His insight led him to champion composers from Bach to Schubert.
And he shared this excellent taste, first with his besotted queen and eventually the nation.
versänke Albert's taste in music was more serious than anything Victoria had been used to hitherto.
But then Albert was a serious man.
There's a yearning, not only in music, but in the rest of his life, public and private, for something deeper, more earnest, even more sacred than the light, bright, drawing room entertainment of Victoria's youth.
Albert brought a new sense of moral purpose and drive to the British monarchy.
Another of Albert's enthusiasms, which Victoria duly learnt to share, was for the music of Felix Mendelssohn.
In 1842, the composer was invited for dinner at Buckingham Palace, the first of several visits.
Mendelssohn described it as, "The only nice, comfortable house in England.
" All three would make music together.
Albert pulling the stops out of the Buckingham Palace organ for Felix.
Victoria singing Mendelssohn's songs, much to his approval.
"Really quite faultlessly with much feeling and expression.
" MENDELSSOHN: Spring Song As a gift, Mendelssohn arranged some of his famous songs without words, especially for the royal couple, so that both could play side by side at the piano.
Victoria was given the easier part.
Such domestic pleasures could be viewed as so not far removed from the lives of middle-class families, who also gathered round their parlour pianos at this time.
The monarchy had regained at least some bourgeois respectability by the mid-19th century.
And the royal couple's moral rectitude was demonstrated again when they attended the musical sensation of 1847.
Ask the Lord Ask the Lord Ask the Lord Ask the Lord This is from one of Mendelssohn's English language oratorios.
Thanks be to God Thanks be to God He laveth the thirsty land The stormy billows are high Their fury is mighty The Queen and the Prince Consort were deeply impressed when they attended one of the very first performances.
Afterwards, Albert sent the composer a hand-written note of congratulation.
"To the noble artist, who like a second Elijah, has freed our ear from the chaos of mindlessjingling of tones.
In grateful recollection, Albert.
" But the Lord is above them "Elijah" marked out Mendelssohn as the natural successor to Handel, whose English language oratorios remained wildly popular in Britain.
The Hanoverian monarchy had found another German composer who spoke of Britain's spiritual destiny.
Elijah would go on to be performed with fervent regularity at cathedrals, where huge choirs, orchestra, and crowds of spectators gathered in the ancient naves.
The Victorian Church was rebuilding its musical infrastructure, which, in time, would serve the monarchy as well.
The waters gather, they rush along The waters gather, they rush along They rush along, they rush along (Tumbling organ flourish) Thanks be to God He laveth the thirsty land! Thanks be to God But the first pioneers of Victorian musical greatness didn't live to see their visions realised.
Barely a year after Elijah's premiere, Mendelssohn died, aged just 38.
Among the causes were overwork and nervous exhaustion, as they were for Albert, who also died shockingly young, at 42, in 1861.
(Choral piece) His loss was felt keenly, not just by Queen Victoria, but also, in time, by the nation.
When it came to music he'd clearly left unfinished business, as a closer examination of his monument here in Hyde Park indicates.
The frieze of the Albert memorial shows in sculptural form the Valhalla of cultural achievement as it was seen by the High Victorians.
Now, Brits are hardly under-represented.
After all, Albert was the great patron of the arts and sciences in Victorian Britain.
But when it comes to British composers, as the dress alone tells you, they belong to the 16th, the 17th, just to the 18th, and with a single 19th-century figure, the justly-forgotten Sir Henry Rowley Bishop.
Forgotten that is, apart from the wonderfully schmaltzy tune that he wrote to the even more schmaltzy words of Home Sweet Home.
Home Sweet Home But with Albert dead and Victoria having begun her long withdrawal from public life to mourn him, who would lead a campaign to improve this sorry state of affairs? The answer turned out still to be Albert, now from beyond the grave.
His ideas survived him, as did the profits from the Great Exhibition, which he'd championed in 1851.
(Orchestral piece) This financial legacy was spent in ways that changed the course of British music and culture.
Some of it helped build the Albert Hall.
State of the art when it opened, and still central to Britain's musical life.
And just behind it rose an even more important institution, one that gave Britain a new musical voice and trained great British composers, from Gustav Holst to Benjamin Britten and beyond.
The Royal College of Music was the direct result of fund-raising by Victoria's children, including the future Edward Vll, then known as Albert, Prince of Wales.
In his opening speech at the Royal College of Music Edward quoted approvingly the dictum that, "Music is the only sensual pleasure to which excess cannot be injurious.
" Quite how anybody, including his wife, kept a straight face is beyond me.
For Edward was an expert in excess.
His sexual appetites led to his being called "Edward the Caresser", whilst his gluttony and corpulence gave him the nickname of "Tum-Tum".
With intellectual pursuits, however, it was quite another matter.
He never picked up a book and he never bought a decent picture.
Even music, which he genuinely liked, was acceptable only in small doses.
One act at the opera was usually quite enough, unless the leading lady were very, very attractive.
The Prince was deadly serious, however, about the new college's duty.
"The object is inspiring in every part of the Empire those emotions of patriotism which national music is calculated so powerfully to evoke.
" The Royal College of Music was born from a self-conscious attempt to re-establish an English national music.
To go behind Handel, to reconnect English music with its glorious past, and to enable it to stand alongside its continental peers in Germany, Italy and France.
There was even talk of an English musical renaissance, with the teachers and pupils of the Royal College of Music here, in the van.
The last time there'd been anything like it was in the 16th and 17th centuries when the Chapel Royal was the focus of a thriving English musical life, at home to geniuses like Tallis, Byrd and Purcell.
Beati quorum via The connections between college and the chapel went beyond their royal name.
This piece exudes all the elaborate polyphonic majesty of the golden age of Elizabethan church music.
Beati quorum via integra But it was written in the 1890s by one of the Royal College's founding tutors, Charles Villiers Stanford, who had spent formative years as both a chapel organist and a choir conductor.
Integra est Quorum via Integra est His music was inspired by the great religious revival of the era, and would, in turn, further fuel it.
Qui ambulant in leger Domini In the 19th century, the Church was transformed by taking the Protestant Church of England back to its Catholic roots.
It was called the Oxford Movement.
Today we'd probably call it High Church.
So, once more, churches were built in flamboyant, colourful Gothic, like this.
They were filled with stained glass and images.
The clergy wore lavish vestments.
Elaborate rituals were reintroduced, and church music and choirs were revived in all their splendour.
One person, however, resisted these changes.
Victoria was the Low Church figure she'd been since childhood.
She also remained largely withdrawn from public life, mourning her beloved Albert decades after his death.
(Organ plays) However, if the so-called Widow of Windsor wouldn't go to the new religion and new music, they would nonetheless come to her, here in St George's Chapel.
In 1882, the post of Chief Organist here was taken up by Walter Parratt, who was also the Inaugural Professor of Organ at the Royal College of Music.
Parratt's name isn't as well known today as some of his colleagues', because few of his compositions have endured, though this piece is still performed at least four times a year at St George's, Windsor.
Keep innocency And take heed unto the thing that is right For that shall bring about peace While serving as a church organist in Huddersfield and Wigan, Parratt experienced the full ceremonial majesty of the High Church movement.
Now he was able to share that experience with Her Majesty.
When Parratt arrived here, the royal musical diet was rather restricted.
Mendelssohn's Hear My Prayer, that beautiful cliché of high Victorian piety, was performed 18 times in one year whilst the same anthem was also performed twice in one week.
O for the wings, for the wings of a dove Far away, far away would I rove Parratt embarked on a vigorous programme of reform.
He rebuilt the organ in the private chapel, whose bellows had been gnawed by rats.
He retrained the choir and he greatly broadened its repertory.
Parratt added pieces by his colleagues at the Royal College of Music like Parry and Stanford together with masterpieces by earlier royal composers like Tallis and Purcell, which had been neglected for centuries.
Thanks to Parratt, St George's set new standards in music-making, exposing Victoria and her family to the breadth of the English musical renaissance and to its deep roots.
Parratt went on to become the Queen's private organist as well.
He would sometimes be summoned to play for Victoria alone.
After so many lonely years in mourning, music was a solace and a comfort and she would listen for hours at a time.
On Queen Victoria's 80th birthday, Parratt arranged for her to be greeted by an aubade or morning concert, performed on the terrace of Windsor Castle.
It included works by Sir Arthur Sullivan, Parratt himself and a certain up-and-coming fellow Northerner, Elgar.
In gratitude, Victoria sent him a gift, this splendid baton.
It's diamond encrusted, it's got her monogram, "VR", in enamel, and surmounted by the imperial Crown.
And just as the High Church approach to music revived royal worship, its love of ritual would help reinvent royal ceremony.
For every heart, made glad by thee With thankful praise is swelling This was the official hymn written for Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897.
The music's by Sir Arthur Sullivan.
Thou hast been mindful It was sung at every church across England and Wales to mark the occasion and the words refer specifically to the Queen.
'Tis thou hast dowered our queenly throne With 60 years of blessing Lead on, O Lord, thy people still The whole nation singing as one an anthem for the Queen.
For the first time in two centuries, music was unapologetically proclaiming the quasi-divinity of monarchy.
On June 22nd, St Paul's Cathedral, rarely used for royal occasions since the reign of Queen Anne nearly two centuries earlier, was the setting for what the Morning Post called "The central ceremonial act of thanksgiving and rejoicing over the longest and happiest reign in history.
" glory Amen When Victoria arrived at St Paul's, she didn't go inside.
She didn't even get out of her carriage, as the effort, it had been decided, was simply too great.
Instead, the Queen sat there, as massed choirs, arranged on the steps here, sang to her.
(Choir continues) Among the 500 singers were all the leading composers of the day, including Walter Parratt and Hubert Parry.
Accompanying them were a full orchestra and two military bands.
It's a long, long way from the decadence of George IV's private music parties at the Brighton Pavilion 70-odd years before.
The monarchy had not only won back popular support, it was now conducting itself in the most public way imaginable.
One of her sniffy Continental relatives was shocked that the Queen had given thanks to God in the street.
In fact, if Victoria had had her way, the Jubilee wouldn't have been celebrated at all.
Throughout her reign, the Queen objected to ostentatious pomp as quite unsuitable to and incompatible with the present day.
Only occasionally and reluctantly could Victoria be persuaded by ministers and other advisers of the value of public ceremony.
Her people turned out in vast numbers again in 1901 when the Queen finally bad farewell to her Empire.
For the first time in over 60 years, Britain had a new monarch, Edward VII.
And for the first time in most people's memory a coronation would be held.
But what form should it take in the 20th Century and what would it sound like? Edward's first instinct was to be radical.
He even toyed with the idea of including a newfangled motor carriage in the coronation procession.
He was soon persuaded down a very different path.
Shrewd politicians have understood and Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebrations had confirmed that Britain's fledgling democracy had a healthy appetite for royal ceremony.
Churchmen, too, thanks to the Oxford Movement, had rediscovered religious ritual and they were learning to perform it on an ever grander and more effective scale.
The result was that Edward's Coronation was presented as the embodiment and the culmination of a thousand years of royal history, which suited Edward perfectly, since, unlike his mother, he really enjoyed public ceremony and he adored dressing up.
The music, too, sought to emphasise royal tradition.
The only permanent musical fixture at previous coronations had been Handel's setting of Zadok The Priest.
1902, however, established the historical canon of royal classics, which we now expect to hear at royal occasions.
The musical conductor in chief was Frederick Bridge, yet another Royal College of Music figure.
He included works by the greatest English composers from the previous five centuries.
He revived, for instance, a 17th-Century Amen by Orlando Gibbons, which would go on to be sung at every coronation of the 20th Century.
A men Amen A men Alongside the greats of the past were new works by contemporary composers.
Amongst them, Hubert Parry, the head of the Royal College of Music.
He set the traditional text I Was Glad.
Jeremy, we're looking here at Parry's actual autographed score that was used in the abbey itself.
That's right, yes.
Now, this is actually the piece of music that opens the whole Coronation service, covering the entry of the King and the Queen and their great procession as they sweep up from the west doors.
Can you explain how this piece works? Well, the piece began with an orchestral introduction, which largely featured trumpets.
Trumpet intro to I Was Glad The idea of a fanfare built into the music at the beginning So, in other words, the King is coming through the doors.
There's no need to have trumpeters going tootle-tootle-too.
He's written it.
- And it's the ballet.
- It's an integral part of the piece.
And every movement in the Coronation was to be orchestrated, was to be accompanied by music.
The Westminster Abbey choir are down at the west door and they were given the first words, "I was glad.
" I was glad Glad when they said unto me The choir then face the King and turn and begin moving up the abbey.
Indeed.
Indeed.
I think the idea is it is in a way a march.
I think that Parry conceived it that way.
And then we have this antiphony between the abbey choir and this is answered by the general choir or second choir.
Our feet shall stand in thy gates Our feet shall stand in thy gates O Jerusalem And it's building up to the first main climax, which, if we step over the page Here, atempo largamente.
gates Our feet shall stand Our feet shall stand In thy gates O Jerusalem Queen followed by King at this point are due to walk through the great choir screen of the abbey and enter the choir itself, with, in front of them, the steps and the platform, the theatre on which they're going to be crowned.
(Organ plays) We turn over Heavens, it all stops.
And it goes completely blank.
And we've got "Kings' Scholars of Westminster School vivat".
"Long live Regina Alexandria.
" "Long live the Queen.
" And then later on "Long live the King.
" Vivat Regina Vivat Regina Elizabetha Vivat Vivat Vivat Vivat This of course is the moment that goes right back to the first coronation in the abbey, which is William the Conqueror, where the people are all supposed to cry out "Long live the King".
In Latin, "Vivat, vivat, vivat.
" Vivat This again has been turned into ballet, into music.
- Absolutely.
- Theatre.
Vivat And then we have this wonderful moment when we move into a brand new key, and this is undoubtedly to take us into another world.
On the word "dolce".
"Gently", yes.
"Sweetly".
And this is really to accompany this rather beautiful semi-chorus, solo quartet.
"O pray for the peace of Jerusalem".
O pray for the peace of Jerusalem They shall prosper They shall prosper That love thee And this would have been a moment of great repose as they moved through and, you know, they prepared for prayer and so on.
Much reduced orchestration.
- Imperial pomp and circumstance cuts off.
- Yes.
- We remember now we're going to consecrate.
- Yes.
- And also swear oaths.
- Indeed.
That love thee And then it moves back into the march at this point.
- It's actually marked.
- "Lento, alla Marcia".
Peace And this is all really in preparation for the drama of the last chorus.
Within thy walls And plenteousness And plenteousness He then takes us back to B flat for the last two or three pages of music.
And for this top B flat, this piercing B flat.
Within thy palaces It's hard to imagine a more majestic start to a religious service than Parry's music, which is why it's been revived at every coronation since and is still sung in churches across Britain to this day.
And yet Edward's crowning inspired another still more iconic composition.
It wasn't, however, written for the abbey.
The Coronation was also celebrated by the Royal Opera House, where the new King was invited to be the guest of honour at a gala concert with music written by a rather different Edward.
Edward Elgar was the son of a shopkeeper, a self-taught musician and a Roman Catholic.
That made him an outsider, compared to the Royal College of Music establishment.
But Elgar understood public taste better than any native-born composer for centuries.
Elgar was championed at court by Walter Parratt, who suggested the revival of a musical tradition, the royal ode.
This was a form at which Purcell and Handel had once excelled, though they never wrote anything on this scale.
Crown the King with Life Crown the King with Life Rarely heard in its entirety today, Elgar's Coronation Ode was wildly popular when it was written, and it's not hard to see why.
A sort of miniature oratorio in length if not in forces, it's set for choir, soloists and a huge orchestra.
Die in joy away The mood veers wildly - bombastic, sentimental, bellicose, expansive.
They're not very popular qualities today.
But they pretty much sum up Edwardian England and the new king, who gave his name to the age.
If you had a hefty dose of melancholy, also glimpsed in the music, you've got Elgar too.
Elgar saw himself as a troubadour, giving voice to the spirit of the age - and above all, giving it tunes.
Land of hope and glory Mother of the free The court's pet poet, AC Benson, wrote most of the ode's words before Elgar started composing.
But there was one point where the music definitely came before the text.
Truth and right and freedom Each a holy gem "Gosh, man, I've got a tune in my head," Elgar wrote to his publisher at the beginning of 1901.
Elgar recognised immediately that he was onto a winner, "A damn fine popular tune that will knock 'em flat," as he put it.
He made it the the Trio of his Pomp And Circumstance March No.
1, which, when it was premiered later in 1901, duly knocked 'em flat and received standing ovations and an unheard of triple encore.
But the tune was just too good not to use again.
Later, Elgar liked to claim that it was King Edward who had come up with the idea.
But, alas for the legend, this is impossible, as the two men hadn't yet met.
Instead, it seems certain that it was Elgar himself who realised that the tune would make a magnificent finale to the Coronation Ode and asked Benson to come up with words to match.
Benson obliged with more than one set, actually.
Truth and right and Land Of Hope And Glory rapidly became our alternative national anthem.
And it remains such a definitive statement of British national identity that few remember that it was created for a king.
brightness Weave thy diadem Stars of solemn brightness It is not just the music of Edward VII's reign that has endured.
So too has the elaborate ceremony and pageantry that he so much adored.
George V's coronation, just nine years later, followed the same template, but with even more music.
We praise thee We bless thee We worship thee Charles Villiers Stanford wrote this gloria for the occasion, which went on to be revived in 1937 and 1953.
for thy great glory Many years later, George V's son still recalled the power of the music.
In that gorgeous, glittering assemblage, listening to the fanfares of trumpets, the rich tones of the organ and the voices of the choir, I became aware as never before of the true majesty and solemnity of kingship.
Almighty Yet George found his coronation a terrible ordeal.
He hated public appearance almost as much as his grandmother Queen Victoria.
He even found that wearing the crown gave him a splitting headache.
Yet more strikingly, he was the first really unmusical monarch for generations.
He enjoyed catchy tunes from No, No, Nanette but thought that a Covent Garden performance of Beethoven's Fidelio was damned dull.
And he drove the royalist Elgar to paroxysms of rage at the hopelessly and irredeemably vulgar quality of his court.
So why did he go through with five whole hours of musical pageantry? Out of a sense of duty.
He believed that his people wanted him to.
Duty was a sort of talisman which drew the sting of royal splendour and reconciled it to an ever greyer, more democratic age.
Ceremony ceased to be princely self-indulgence as under George IV or Edward VII, and it became instead noble self-sacrifice, which bound the king in service to the nation, as unremittingly as the factory hand to his work, the agricultural labourer to his toil even the millions who made the ultimate sacrifice in the First World War.
And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England's mountains green? It was the anti-German feeling of the Great War which led George to rename the Hanoverian monarchy as the House of Windsor in 1917, the year after Hubert Parry had written that great hymn to England, Jerusalem.
the countenance divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark satanic mills? The composers of the English musical renaissance were now writing for a veritable religion of nationhood, of which the monarch was both high priest and sacred head.
Bring me my bow of burning gold Bring me my arrows of desire Bring me my spear, O, clouds unfold The King recognised the moral value of Parry's song and for the rest of his reign, heard it often at commemorations of the Armistice and also at vast celebrations of empire.
mental fight Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land WILLIAM WALTON: Crown Imperial The BBC, founded in 1922, would from this point on play a major role in promoting both the music and the monarchy of Britain, broadcasting the monarch's annual Christmas Speech, as well as a daily diet of British composers such as Elgar.
And in 1937, it broadcast the coronation of the new king, George VI.
It was actually the BBC who commissioned one of the pieces which has endured from the occasion, William Walton's march, Crown Imperial.
Walton, like Elgar, was an outsider, an Oldham lad whose precocious musical talent had won him a scholarship to Oxford.
Now he was writing for the biggest audience of his career, and his music rose to the occasion.
(Cymbals clash) It's another one of these big tunes - it has lots of these big tunes.
He looks back at the tradition of the early part of the 20th century, to Elgar, to Parry and others.
It's also sometimes perhaps cruelly described as film music, isn't it? And maybe the coronation of '37 now being thought of filmically rather than operatically.
I think there's certainly a visual element to Crown Imperial.
One of the things that I think is so distinctively Walton is this rhythmic vibrancy, this energy.
You know it's Walton immediately because of that rhythmic dynamism.
The monarchy had clearly adapted to the world of mass media and indeed mass democracy.
And it had done so in part, and paradoxically, by embracing the tradition and the music of the past.
WILLIAM WALTON: Crown Imperial When George was succeeded by his daughter, everyone, from the popular press to Winston Churchill, hailed the beginning of a new Elizabethan Age.
The Queen's 16th-century namesake had presided over a golden age of music.
So the 1953 coronation was the perfect opportunity to show the deep roots and enduring quality of British music.
All the recent additions to the canon, such as Stanford and Parry, made their reappearance, along with new work by Walton again and Ralph Vaughan Williams.
At this stage the grand old man of English music, Vaughan Williams had spent the 20th century applying what he'd learned at the Royal College of Music.
Ralph Vaughan Williams was firmly on the Left, politically.
And he was an assiduous collector of popular music in the form of folk songs.
So coming from this kind of background, he thought it a great weakness that previous coronations hadn't included a hymn for congregational singing.
But when he suggested including one in 1953, he split opinion.
The Musical Advisory Committee was not at all convinced.
However, the Archbishop of Canterbury was enthusiastic and the Queen herself thought well of the idea.
This was decisive and Vaughan Williams got his way with this democratic musical reform.
(Fanfare) The result was heard at the moment when the Queen processed from her throne to the altar.
All people that on earth do dwell It's a piece that has been sung in the Church of England since the age of the first Queen Elizabeth, the so-called Old Hundredth.
The Scot William Keith wrote this translation of Psalm 100 in the 1550s.
400 years later, his words were still being sung to the tune that it was published with then.
before him and rejoice O, enter then his gates with praise Some of the later verses are embellished by Vaughan Williams.
Here, he writes a trumpet descant which adds an extra regal dignity, as well as echoing the fanfares traditional at such occasions.
his name always For it is seemly so to do For why? The Lord our God is good Vaughan Williams' own compositions often paid homage to the great Elizabethan composers.
In his Abbey arrangement of the Old Hundredth, he paid tribute to another, John Dowland, who was the author of this beautiful harmony.
firmly stood And shall from age to age endure I think there was that sense of historical link and embracing of something to say, "Look, this is what we are, this is us, we are a musical nation.
" (Fanfare) 60 years have passed since the coronation of 1953.
And already it seems a world away.
So much has changed in the intervening decades.
(Crowd cheering) Elizabeth, of course, still reigns over us to this day.
But though music is still used to celebrate royal occasions, it no longer really serves to sanctify royalty.
And yet, as I've argued throughout this series, it was the idea that monarchy has a sacred role and power which inspired the greatest of our music.
In the reigns of Tudors and Stuarts, and through, extraordinarily, to the first decades of the 20th century, it was sacred monarchy which people fought over and prayed for and composed for.
But do any of us really believe that monarchy still has such divine power? Now the sacred monarchy survives only in its music.
But there at least, it remains eternally, magnificently alive.
It echoes from these ancient stones, awakens memories and through the power of music, makes them live again.
Zadok the Priest And Nathan the Prophet Anointed Solomon King And all the people rejoiced Rejoiced Rejoiced And all the people rejoiced Rejoiced Rejoiced Rejoiced Rejoiced Rejoiced
It was sung at St Paul's Cathedral for the Silver Jubilee of George V.
Lady Diana Spencer said that it was one of her favourite hymns from childhood and requested that it be sung here again at her wedding to Prince Charles.
16 years later it was performed at her funeral.
The love that never falters, the love that The music by Gustav Holst marries an imperial sweep and grandeur with that kind of "catch in the throat" quality so characteristic of the best of English music, with its all pervasive nostalgia.
And there's another country The words fuse a love of country with the love of God.
Qualities which, as I've explored in the course of this series, have been the inspiration for much of the best British music.
Most remarkably of all, though it seems so much part of the national fabric, I Vow To Thee My Country dates from only 1921.
But then Elgar's Hope And Glory is only 20 years older, while the royal house of Windsor itself was only created in 1917.
In other words, the 20th century is not a dying fall in the history of either the British monarchy or its music.
Instead, it's a period of triumphant revival, in which crown and nation find a new unity, a new language, and, above all, a new music.
are peace Early in the 19th century, Britain's monarchy was set on on a very different course.
British music was in the doldrums.
The Brighton Pavilion is a version of the path both might have gone down.
It was built by the Prince Regent who became King George IV.
Gluttonous, lascivious and extravagant, George destroyed public respect for the monarchy.
At the heart of his personal pleasure palace, however, we can see another side of his character.
This is his music room.
Sometimes the King's fine singing voice would be accompanied by this magnificent organ.
At other times he played the cello rather well.
And most frequently he listened to his private military band, described as the best in Europe.
George's most famous musical guest at the Royal Pavilion was Gioacchino Rossini, the Italian opera composer.
The two men, equally vulgar in their way, got on famously.
George brought Rossini here into the Music Room and introduced him to members of his band.
The band, in Rossini's honour, played Rossini's own Overture to The Thieving Magpie.
The Thieving Magpie (Overture) Snobbish, aristocratic members of the house party were disapproving of Rossini's appearance, describing him as a fat, sallow, squab of a man.
And they were outraged at his easy familiarity with the King.
He even dared to sit next to him.
But George was entranced, and, on Rossini's subsequent visits to London, the two sang duets together.
It was, however, a world away from the systematic royal patronage which produced the best English music of the past.
The sacred works of the likes of Tallis, Byrd and Gibbons.
Rossini wrote fashionable light entertainments, and made only fleeting visits to these shores.
The last truly great English musician, Henry Purcell, had died over a century before.
However well drilled George's band, no new British music of note emanated from his palaces or his reign.
Music at the Royal Pavilion had become a private passion of a royal sybarite.
Much like the monarchy, in fact, which, decadent, mismanaged and without visible point or purpose, seemed to be heading for irrelevance or worse.
In France, the revolutionaries had cut off the King's head and abolished the monarchy.
In America, former British colonial subjects were engaged in the novel experiment of a king-less republic, whilst here in Britain there were riots, conspiracies and clamorous calls for reform.
If it were to survive, the monarchy would have to do better than George IV.
But what would the model of a modern cleaned-up monarchy look like? And what would its music be? These questions would be settled in the reign of George's niece, Victoria.
And the monarchy's saviour was the man she married, Prince Albert.
Lebewohl Lebewohl Mein Lieb This is one of Albert's own compositions played in the White Drawing Room of Buckingham Palace on a piano that Victoria and Albert bought together.
Einen Kuà Einen Kuà Mir gib Albert gave this music to Victoria as an engagement gift in a collection of his work called "Lieder Und Romanzen" - Songs And Ballads.
Victoria and Albert would make music together.
Sometimes taking it in turns to sing to each other, sometimes singing duets.
Theirs was a passionate relationship, and sharing these moments of intense music-making only deepened it.
David Owen Norris is a pianist and composer, who has studied the Prince Consort's music.
With a perfect dying fall This splendid instrument is perfect for those sympathetic little duets.
And these accompaniments.
Accompaniments like in the song we've just heard when you need this sort of - (Gentle rolling melody) - The lilt.
And you can lay down a bed of sound for the singer to relax upon.
And the decorations - this is very much Albertine, isn't it? Well, it's ridiculous, isn't it? Well, it's frankly hideous, like most of the things they bought.
It's this androgynous figure in the middle.
It's difficult to keep your eyes off it while playing.
They loved this decoration so much they took it off an earlier piano and reapplied it.
Albert, of course, isn't only a consumer of music, he's not only a performer of music, he is actually a composer.
How serious? I mean, how good? Well, good, actually.
I think he took it very seriously.
And he was interested in the new innovations, that particularly German, early Romantic music was doing.
And he was able to do some of the remarkable harmonic things.
So there's a lovely surprise here which he waits to spring on a new page, which is rather lovely.
But we've had an E-flat chord (Rising chord) And then it suddenly goes (Strident note) Wow.
- Very Mendelssohn-ian.
- Well, very Romantic.
- Yes, yes.
- And he's very keen on doing that.
In general, I think he was very good.
The other song that I've got here, "Der Ungeliebte" - The Unbeloved - has a marvellous introduction which conjures up that sort of Oh, I don't know, Weber opera sort of mood, in a way.
(Plays slow, melancholic melody) - Lonely and deserted - Exactly.
Lonely and deserted, and remote in both the musical sense and emotion He could do that.
Fänd ich doch auf ird'scher Flur Albert himself was modest about his musical abilities.
"I consider that persons in our position of life can never be distinguished artists.
We have too many other duties to perform.
Our business is not so much to create, as to learn to understand and appreciate the work of others.
" der sich wild durch Welten reist His insight led him to champion composers from Bach to Schubert.
And he shared this excellent taste, first with his besotted queen and eventually the nation.
versänke Albert's taste in music was more serious than anything Victoria had been used to hitherto.
But then Albert was a serious man.
There's a yearning, not only in music, but in the rest of his life, public and private, for something deeper, more earnest, even more sacred than the light, bright, drawing room entertainment of Victoria's youth.
Albert brought a new sense of moral purpose and drive to the British monarchy.
Another of Albert's enthusiasms, which Victoria duly learnt to share, was for the music of Felix Mendelssohn.
In 1842, the composer was invited for dinner at Buckingham Palace, the first of several visits.
Mendelssohn described it as, "The only nice, comfortable house in England.
" All three would make music together.
Albert pulling the stops out of the Buckingham Palace organ for Felix.
Victoria singing Mendelssohn's songs, much to his approval.
"Really quite faultlessly with much feeling and expression.
" MENDELSSOHN: Spring Song As a gift, Mendelssohn arranged some of his famous songs without words, especially for the royal couple, so that both could play side by side at the piano.
Victoria was given the easier part.
Such domestic pleasures could be viewed as so not far removed from the lives of middle-class families, who also gathered round their parlour pianos at this time.
The monarchy had regained at least some bourgeois respectability by the mid-19th century.
And the royal couple's moral rectitude was demonstrated again when they attended the musical sensation of 1847.
Ask the Lord Ask the Lord Ask the Lord Ask the Lord This is from one of Mendelssohn's English language oratorios.
Thanks be to God Thanks be to God He laveth the thirsty land The stormy billows are high Their fury is mighty The Queen and the Prince Consort were deeply impressed when they attended one of the very first performances.
Afterwards, Albert sent the composer a hand-written note of congratulation.
"To the noble artist, who like a second Elijah, has freed our ear from the chaos of mindlessjingling of tones.
In grateful recollection, Albert.
" But the Lord is above them "Elijah" marked out Mendelssohn as the natural successor to Handel, whose English language oratorios remained wildly popular in Britain.
The Hanoverian monarchy had found another German composer who spoke of Britain's spiritual destiny.
Elijah would go on to be performed with fervent regularity at cathedrals, where huge choirs, orchestra, and crowds of spectators gathered in the ancient naves.
The Victorian Church was rebuilding its musical infrastructure, which, in time, would serve the monarchy as well.
The waters gather, they rush along The waters gather, they rush along They rush along, they rush along (Tumbling organ flourish) Thanks be to God He laveth the thirsty land! Thanks be to God But the first pioneers of Victorian musical greatness didn't live to see their visions realised.
Barely a year after Elijah's premiere, Mendelssohn died, aged just 38.
Among the causes were overwork and nervous exhaustion, as they were for Albert, who also died shockingly young, at 42, in 1861.
(Choral piece) His loss was felt keenly, not just by Queen Victoria, but also, in time, by the nation.
When it came to music he'd clearly left unfinished business, as a closer examination of his monument here in Hyde Park indicates.
The frieze of the Albert memorial shows in sculptural form the Valhalla of cultural achievement as it was seen by the High Victorians.
Now, Brits are hardly under-represented.
After all, Albert was the great patron of the arts and sciences in Victorian Britain.
But when it comes to British composers, as the dress alone tells you, they belong to the 16th, the 17th, just to the 18th, and with a single 19th-century figure, the justly-forgotten Sir Henry Rowley Bishop.
Forgotten that is, apart from the wonderfully schmaltzy tune that he wrote to the even more schmaltzy words of Home Sweet Home.
Home Sweet Home But with Albert dead and Victoria having begun her long withdrawal from public life to mourn him, who would lead a campaign to improve this sorry state of affairs? The answer turned out still to be Albert, now from beyond the grave.
His ideas survived him, as did the profits from the Great Exhibition, which he'd championed in 1851.
(Orchestral piece) This financial legacy was spent in ways that changed the course of British music and culture.
Some of it helped build the Albert Hall.
State of the art when it opened, and still central to Britain's musical life.
And just behind it rose an even more important institution, one that gave Britain a new musical voice and trained great British composers, from Gustav Holst to Benjamin Britten and beyond.
The Royal College of Music was the direct result of fund-raising by Victoria's children, including the future Edward Vll, then known as Albert, Prince of Wales.
In his opening speech at the Royal College of Music Edward quoted approvingly the dictum that, "Music is the only sensual pleasure to which excess cannot be injurious.
" Quite how anybody, including his wife, kept a straight face is beyond me.
For Edward was an expert in excess.
His sexual appetites led to his being called "Edward the Caresser", whilst his gluttony and corpulence gave him the nickname of "Tum-Tum".
With intellectual pursuits, however, it was quite another matter.
He never picked up a book and he never bought a decent picture.
Even music, which he genuinely liked, was acceptable only in small doses.
One act at the opera was usually quite enough, unless the leading lady were very, very attractive.
The Prince was deadly serious, however, about the new college's duty.
"The object is inspiring in every part of the Empire those emotions of patriotism which national music is calculated so powerfully to evoke.
" The Royal College of Music was born from a self-conscious attempt to re-establish an English national music.
To go behind Handel, to reconnect English music with its glorious past, and to enable it to stand alongside its continental peers in Germany, Italy and France.
There was even talk of an English musical renaissance, with the teachers and pupils of the Royal College of Music here, in the van.
The last time there'd been anything like it was in the 16th and 17th centuries when the Chapel Royal was the focus of a thriving English musical life, at home to geniuses like Tallis, Byrd and Purcell.
Beati quorum via The connections between college and the chapel went beyond their royal name.
This piece exudes all the elaborate polyphonic majesty of the golden age of Elizabethan church music.
Beati quorum via integra But it was written in the 1890s by one of the Royal College's founding tutors, Charles Villiers Stanford, who had spent formative years as both a chapel organist and a choir conductor.
Integra est Quorum via Integra est His music was inspired by the great religious revival of the era, and would, in turn, further fuel it.
Qui ambulant in leger Domini In the 19th century, the Church was transformed by taking the Protestant Church of England back to its Catholic roots.
It was called the Oxford Movement.
Today we'd probably call it High Church.
So, once more, churches were built in flamboyant, colourful Gothic, like this.
They were filled with stained glass and images.
The clergy wore lavish vestments.
Elaborate rituals were reintroduced, and church music and choirs were revived in all their splendour.
One person, however, resisted these changes.
Victoria was the Low Church figure she'd been since childhood.
She also remained largely withdrawn from public life, mourning her beloved Albert decades after his death.
(Organ plays) However, if the so-called Widow of Windsor wouldn't go to the new religion and new music, they would nonetheless come to her, here in St George's Chapel.
In 1882, the post of Chief Organist here was taken up by Walter Parratt, who was also the Inaugural Professor of Organ at the Royal College of Music.
Parratt's name isn't as well known today as some of his colleagues', because few of his compositions have endured, though this piece is still performed at least four times a year at St George's, Windsor.
Keep innocency And take heed unto the thing that is right For that shall bring about peace While serving as a church organist in Huddersfield and Wigan, Parratt experienced the full ceremonial majesty of the High Church movement.
Now he was able to share that experience with Her Majesty.
When Parratt arrived here, the royal musical diet was rather restricted.
Mendelssohn's Hear My Prayer, that beautiful cliché of high Victorian piety, was performed 18 times in one year whilst the same anthem was also performed twice in one week.
O for the wings, for the wings of a dove Far away, far away would I rove Parratt embarked on a vigorous programme of reform.
He rebuilt the organ in the private chapel, whose bellows had been gnawed by rats.
He retrained the choir and he greatly broadened its repertory.
Parratt added pieces by his colleagues at the Royal College of Music like Parry and Stanford together with masterpieces by earlier royal composers like Tallis and Purcell, which had been neglected for centuries.
Thanks to Parratt, St George's set new standards in music-making, exposing Victoria and her family to the breadth of the English musical renaissance and to its deep roots.
Parratt went on to become the Queen's private organist as well.
He would sometimes be summoned to play for Victoria alone.
After so many lonely years in mourning, music was a solace and a comfort and she would listen for hours at a time.
On Queen Victoria's 80th birthday, Parratt arranged for her to be greeted by an aubade or morning concert, performed on the terrace of Windsor Castle.
It included works by Sir Arthur Sullivan, Parratt himself and a certain up-and-coming fellow Northerner, Elgar.
In gratitude, Victoria sent him a gift, this splendid baton.
It's diamond encrusted, it's got her monogram, "VR", in enamel, and surmounted by the imperial Crown.
And just as the High Church approach to music revived royal worship, its love of ritual would help reinvent royal ceremony.
For every heart, made glad by thee With thankful praise is swelling This was the official hymn written for Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897.
The music's by Sir Arthur Sullivan.
Thou hast been mindful It was sung at every church across England and Wales to mark the occasion and the words refer specifically to the Queen.
'Tis thou hast dowered our queenly throne With 60 years of blessing Lead on, O Lord, thy people still The whole nation singing as one an anthem for the Queen.
For the first time in two centuries, music was unapologetically proclaiming the quasi-divinity of monarchy.
On June 22nd, St Paul's Cathedral, rarely used for royal occasions since the reign of Queen Anne nearly two centuries earlier, was the setting for what the Morning Post called "The central ceremonial act of thanksgiving and rejoicing over the longest and happiest reign in history.
" glory Amen When Victoria arrived at St Paul's, she didn't go inside.
She didn't even get out of her carriage, as the effort, it had been decided, was simply too great.
Instead, the Queen sat there, as massed choirs, arranged on the steps here, sang to her.
(Choir continues) Among the 500 singers were all the leading composers of the day, including Walter Parratt and Hubert Parry.
Accompanying them were a full orchestra and two military bands.
It's a long, long way from the decadence of George IV's private music parties at the Brighton Pavilion 70-odd years before.
The monarchy had not only won back popular support, it was now conducting itself in the most public way imaginable.
One of her sniffy Continental relatives was shocked that the Queen had given thanks to God in the street.
In fact, if Victoria had had her way, the Jubilee wouldn't have been celebrated at all.
Throughout her reign, the Queen objected to ostentatious pomp as quite unsuitable to and incompatible with the present day.
Only occasionally and reluctantly could Victoria be persuaded by ministers and other advisers of the value of public ceremony.
Her people turned out in vast numbers again in 1901 when the Queen finally bad farewell to her Empire.
For the first time in over 60 years, Britain had a new monarch, Edward VII.
And for the first time in most people's memory a coronation would be held.
But what form should it take in the 20th Century and what would it sound like? Edward's first instinct was to be radical.
He even toyed with the idea of including a newfangled motor carriage in the coronation procession.
He was soon persuaded down a very different path.
Shrewd politicians have understood and Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebrations had confirmed that Britain's fledgling democracy had a healthy appetite for royal ceremony.
Churchmen, too, thanks to the Oxford Movement, had rediscovered religious ritual and they were learning to perform it on an ever grander and more effective scale.
The result was that Edward's Coronation was presented as the embodiment and the culmination of a thousand years of royal history, which suited Edward perfectly, since, unlike his mother, he really enjoyed public ceremony and he adored dressing up.
The music, too, sought to emphasise royal tradition.
The only permanent musical fixture at previous coronations had been Handel's setting of Zadok The Priest.
1902, however, established the historical canon of royal classics, which we now expect to hear at royal occasions.
The musical conductor in chief was Frederick Bridge, yet another Royal College of Music figure.
He included works by the greatest English composers from the previous five centuries.
He revived, for instance, a 17th-Century Amen by Orlando Gibbons, which would go on to be sung at every coronation of the 20th Century.
A men Amen A men Alongside the greats of the past were new works by contemporary composers.
Amongst them, Hubert Parry, the head of the Royal College of Music.
He set the traditional text I Was Glad.
Jeremy, we're looking here at Parry's actual autographed score that was used in the abbey itself.
That's right, yes.
Now, this is actually the piece of music that opens the whole Coronation service, covering the entry of the King and the Queen and their great procession as they sweep up from the west doors.
Can you explain how this piece works? Well, the piece began with an orchestral introduction, which largely featured trumpets.
Trumpet intro to I Was Glad The idea of a fanfare built into the music at the beginning So, in other words, the King is coming through the doors.
There's no need to have trumpeters going tootle-tootle-too.
He's written it.
- And it's the ballet.
- It's an integral part of the piece.
And every movement in the Coronation was to be orchestrated, was to be accompanied by music.
The Westminster Abbey choir are down at the west door and they were given the first words, "I was glad.
" I was glad Glad when they said unto me The choir then face the King and turn and begin moving up the abbey.
Indeed.
Indeed.
I think the idea is it is in a way a march.
I think that Parry conceived it that way.
And then we have this antiphony between the abbey choir and this is answered by the general choir or second choir.
Our feet shall stand in thy gates Our feet shall stand in thy gates O Jerusalem And it's building up to the first main climax, which, if we step over the page Here, atempo largamente.
gates Our feet shall stand Our feet shall stand In thy gates O Jerusalem Queen followed by King at this point are due to walk through the great choir screen of the abbey and enter the choir itself, with, in front of them, the steps and the platform, the theatre on which they're going to be crowned.
(Organ plays) We turn over Heavens, it all stops.
And it goes completely blank.
And we've got "Kings' Scholars of Westminster School vivat".
"Long live Regina Alexandria.
" "Long live the Queen.
" And then later on "Long live the King.
" Vivat Regina Vivat Regina Elizabetha Vivat Vivat Vivat Vivat This of course is the moment that goes right back to the first coronation in the abbey, which is William the Conqueror, where the people are all supposed to cry out "Long live the King".
In Latin, "Vivat, vivat, vivat.
" Vivat This again has been turned into ballet, into music.
- Absolutely.
- Theatre.
Vivat And then we have this wonderful moment when we move into a brand new key, and this is undoubtedly to take us into another world.
On the word "dolce".
"Gently", yes.
"Sweetly".
And this is really to accompany this rather beautiful semi-chorus, solo quartet.
"O pray for the peace of Jerusalem".
O pray for the peace of Jerusalem They shall prosper They shall prosper That love thee And this would have been a moment of great repose as they moved through and, you know, they prepared for prayer and so on.
Much reduced orchestration.
- Imperial pomp and circumstance cuts off.
- Yes.
- We remember now we're going to consecrate.
- Yes.
- And also swear oaths.
- Indeed.
That love thee And then it moves back into the march at this point.
- It's actually marked.
- "Lento, alla Marcia".
Peace And this is all really in preparation for the drama of the last chorus.
Within thy walls And plenteousness And plenteousness He then takes us back to B flat for the last two or three pages of music.
And for this top B flat, this piercing B flat.
Within thy palaces It's hard to imagine a more majestic start to a religious service than Parry's music, which is why it's been revived at every coronation since and is still sung in churches across Britain to this day.
And yet Edward's crowning inspired another still more iconic composition.
It wasn't, however, written for the abbey.
The Coronation was also celebrated by the Royal Opera House, where the new King was invited to be the guest of honour at a gala concert with music written by a rather different Edward.
Edward Elgar was the son of a shopkeeper, a self-taught musician and a Roman Catholic.
That made him an outsider, compared to the Royal College of Music establishment.
But Elgar understood public taste better than any native-born composer for centuries.
Elgar was championed at court by Walter Parratt, who suggested the revival of a musical tradition, the royal ode.
This was a form at which Purcell and Handel had once excelled, though they never wrote anything on this scale.
Crown the King with Life Crown the King with Life Rarely heard in its entirety today, Elgar's Coronation Ode was wildly popular when it was written, and it's not hard to see why.
A sort of miniature oratorio in length if not in forces, it's set for choir, soloists and a huge orchestra.
Die in joy away The mood veers wildly - bombastic, sentimental, bellicose, expansive.
They're not very popular qualities today.
But they pretty much sum up Edwardian England and the new king, who gave his name to the age.
If you had a hefty dose of melancholy, also glimpsed in the music, you've got Elgar too.
Elgar saw himself as a troubadour, giving voice to the spirit of the age - and above all, giving it tunes.
Land of hope and glory Mother of the free The court's pet poet, AC Benson, wrote most of the ode's words before Elgar started composing.
But there was one point where the music definitely came before the text.
Truth and right and freedom Each a holy gem "Gosh, man, I've got a tune in my head," Elgar wrote to his publisher at the beginning of 1901.
Elgar recognised immediately that he was onto a winner, "A damn fine popular tune that will knock 'em flat," as he put it.
He made it the the Trio of his Pomp And Circumstance March No.
1, which, when it was premiered later in 1901, duly knocked 'em flat and received standing ovations and an unheard of triple encore.
But the tune was just too good not to use again.
Later, Elgar liked to claim that it was King Edward who had come up with the idea.
But, alas for the legend, this is impossible, as the two men hadn't yet met.
Instead, it seems certain that it was Elgar himself who realised that the tune would make a magnificent finale to the Coronation Ode and asked Benson to come up with words to match.
Benson obliged with more than one set, actually.
Truth and right and Land Of Hope And Glory rapidly became our alternative national anthem.
And it remains such a definitive statement of British national identity that few remember that it was created for a king.
brightness Weave thy diadem Stars of solemn brightness It is not just the music of Edward VII's reign that has endured.
So too has the elaborate ceremony and pageantry that he so much adored.
George V's coronation, just nine years later, followed the same template, but with even more music.
We praise thee We bless thee We worship thee Charles Villiers Stanford wrote this gloria for the occasion, which went on to be revived in 1937 and 1953.
for thy great glory Many years later, George V's son still recalled the power of the music.
In that gorgeous, glittering assemblage, listening to the fanfares of trumpets, the rich tones of the organ and the voices of the choir, I became aware as never before of the true majesty and solemnity of kingship.
Almighty Yet George found his coronation a terrible ordeal.
He hated public appearance almost as much as his grandmother Queen Victoria.
He even found that wearing the crown gave him a splitting headache.
Yet more strikingly, he was the first really unmusical monarch for generations.
He enjoyed catchy tunes from No, No, Nanette but thought that a Covent Garden performance of Beethoven's Fidelio was damned dull.
And he drove the royalist Elgar to paroxysms of rage at the hopelessly and irredeemably vulgar quality of his court.
So why did he go through with five whole hours of musical pageantry? Out of a sense of duty.
He believed that his people wanted him to.
Duty was a sort of talisman which drew the sting of royal splendour and reconciled it to an ever greyer, more democratic age.
Ceremony ceased to be princely self-indulgence as under George IV or Edward VII, and it became instead noble self-sacrifice, which bound the king in service to the nation, as unremittingly as the factory hand to his work, the agricultural labourer to his toil even the millions who made the ultimate sacrifice in the First World War.
And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England's mountains green? It was the anti-German feeling of the Great War which led George to rename the Hanoverian monarchy as the House of Windsor in 1917, the year after Hubert Parry had written that great hymn to England, Jerusalem.
the countenance divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark satanic mills? The composers of the English musical renaissance were now writing for a veritable religion of nationhood, of which the monarch was both high priest and sacred head.
Bring me my bow of burning gold Bring me my arrows of desire Bring me my spear, O, clouds unfold The King recognised the moral value of Parry's song and for the rest of his reign, heard it often at commemorations of the Armistice and also at vast celebrations of empire.
mental fight Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land WILLIAM WALTON: Crown Imperial The BBC, founded in 1922, would from this point on play a major role in promoting both the music and the monarchy of Britain, broadcasting the monarch's annual Christmas Speech, as well as a daily diet of British composers such as Elgar.
And in 1937, it broadcast the coronation of the new king, George VI.
It was actually the BBC who commissioned one of the pieces which has endured from the occasion, William Walton's march, Crown Imperial.
Walton, like Elgar, was an outsider, an Oldham lad whose precocious musical talent had won him a scholarship to Oxford.
Now he was writing for the biggest audience of his career, and his music rose to the occasion.
(Cymbals clash) It's another one of these big tunes - it has lots of these big tunes.
He looks back at the tradition of the early part of the 20th century, to Elgar, to Parry and others.
It's also sometimes perhaps cruelly described as film music, isn't it? And maybe the coronation of '37 now being thought of filmically rather than operatically.
I think there's certainly a visual element to Crown Imperial.
One of the things that I think is so distinctively Walton is this rhythmic vibrancy, this energy.
You know it's Walton immediately because of that rhythmic dynamism.
The monarchy had clearly adapted to the world of mass media and indeed mass democracy.
And it had done so in part, and paradoxically, by embracing the tradition and the music of the past.
WILLIAM WALTON: Crown Imperial When George was succeeded by his daughter, everyone, from the popular press to Winston Churchill, hailed the beginning of a new Elizabethan Age.
The Queen's 16th-century namesake had presided over a golden age of music.
So the 1953 coronation was the perfect opportunity to show the deep roots and enduring quality of British music.
All the recent additions to the canon, such as Stanford and Parry, made their reappearance, along with new work by Walton again and Ralph Vaughan Williams.
At this stage the grand old man of English music, Vaughan Williams had spent the 20th century applying what he'd learned at the Royal College of Music.
Ralph Vaughan Williams was firmly on the Left, politically.
And he was an assiduous collector of popular music in the form of folk songs.
So coming from this kind of background, he thought it a great weakness that previous coronations hadn't included a hymn for congregational singing.
But when he suggested including one in 1953, he split opinion.
The Musical Advisory Committee was not at all convinced.
However, the Archbishop of Canterbury was enthusiastic and the Queen herself thought well of the idea.
This was decisive and Vaughan Williams got his way with this democratic musical reform.
(Fanfare) The result was heard at the moment when the Queen processed from her throne to the altar.
All people that on earth do dwell It's a piece that has been sung in the Church of England since the age of the first Queen Elizabeth, the so-called Old Hundredth.
The Scot William Keith wrote this translation of Psalm 100 in the 1550s.
400 years later, his words were still being sung to the tune that it was published with then.
before him and rejoice O, enter then his gates with praise Some of the later verses are embellished by Vaughan Williams.
Here, he writes a trumpet descant which adds an extra regal dignity, as well as echoing the fanfares traditional at such occasions.
his name always For it is seemly so to do For why? The Lord our God is good Vaughan Williams' own compositions often paid homage to the great Elizabethan composers.
In his Abbey arrangement of the Old Hundredth, he paid tribute to another, John Dowland, who was the author of this beautiful harmony.
firmly stood And shall from age to age endure I think there was that sense of historical link and embracing of something to say, "Look, this is what we are, this is us, we are a musical nation.
" (Fanfare) 60 years have passed since the coronation of 1953.
And already it seems a world away.
So much has changed in the intervening decades.
(Crowd cheering) Elizabeth, of course, still reigns over us to this day.
But though music is still used to celebrate royal occasions, it no longer really serves to sanctify royalty.
And yet, as I've argued throughout this series, it was the idea that monarchy has a sacred role and power which inspired the greatest of our music.
In the reigns of Tudors and Stuarts, and through, extraordinarily, to the first decades of the 20th century, it was sacred monarchy which people fought over and prayed for and composed for.
But do any of us really believe that monarchy still has such divine power? Now the sacred monarchy survives only in its music.
But there at least, it remains eternally, magnificently alive.
It echoes from these ancient stones, awakens memories and through the power of music, makes them live again.
Zadok the Priest And Nathan the Prophet Anointed Solomon King And all the people rejoiced Rejoiced Rejoiced And all the people rejoiced Rejoiced Rejoiced Rejoiced Rejoiced Rejoiced