By Theodore Harvey
Author’s Note: The following excerpts and listening recommendations are taken from the text of my 2011 Dallas lecture “Choirs and the Crown,” the full text of which is available at: http://www.royaltymonarchy.com/opinion/ChoirsCrown.html
One of Henry Purcell’s responsibilities in his role as organist of Westminster Abbey was to write music for the next coronation. King Charles II died in 1685. He had plenty of children; unfortunately, his wife was not the mother of any of them. So his younger brother James, who had already converted to Roman Catholicism, became monarch. This was sort of a surreal moment, because it was the only time that a Roman Catholic monarch was crowned in an Anglican ceremony; he could not take Communion at his own coronation. Purcell wrote this anthem for the coronation, “I Was Glad.” Now we’re going to hear a slightly more familiar “I Was Glad” later on, but this is the one that Purcell composed for James II in 1685. It is being sung here by the finest exemplar of this tradition in this country, the Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys of New York.
Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
I Was Glad
John Scott/The Saint Thomas Choir of Men & Boys with Concert Royal
O Sing Unto the Lord: Sacred Music of Henry Purcell (Saint Thomas Recordings, 2010)
After the so-called “Glorious Revolution,” especially when the two Stuart daughters died without heirs and the Hanoverian kings were imported from Germany, the Church of England, while there was nothing to approach the horrors of the Puritans, entered into what might be called a long dry period. Musically, liturgically, there wasn’t a lot going on. In fact if you look at church bulletins that print birth and death dates of Anglican composers you’ll see that there are a lot of dates from the 1500s and 1600s, a lot of dates from the 1800s and 1900s, but not a lot from the 1700s. This was a century where not as much was happening.
In 1727, the first Hanoverian king, George I, died and was succeeded by his son George II. It perhaps says something about the condition of English music that far and away the most popular composer in England at the time was not English at all, but had been born in Germany: the great George Frideric Handel. Coronations in the eighteenth century were frankly a bit of a mess. This is a wonderful description from this CD. Unfortunately I only have time to play one excerpt from it but again, this is another recording that seems like it was made with this talk tonight in mind: a complete reconstruction of the coronation of King George II. From the jacket we read:
By the end of September Handel had clearly finished his new compositions. Predictably, with no instructions apparently passed to him (or perhaps they were conveniently ignored), the results come the day of the coronation were delightfully confused. The printed order at times bore little relation to what actually took place. Handel’s texts in his own anthems did not match what was printed in the service paper; several anthems were performed at different positions in the service to those officially sanctioned, and some pieces meant to be set to music apparently were not, and vice versa. The actual musical performances too suffered from more than a degree of disorganization. Archbishop Wake, perhaps miffed because he felt Handel had hijacked the order of service, wrote a series of caustic comments in the margin of his own service paper, commencing with ‘No Anthem at all Sung…by the Negligence of the Choir of Westminster’; and against Handel’s first anthem was marked the terse comment: ‘The Anthem all in confusion: All irregular in the Music’. The lack of musical coordination on the day cannot have been helped by the performers’ being placed on two specially built platforms on either side of the abbey, their views interrupted by the altar. To make matters worse, five of the ten boys from the Chapel Royal choir had left with broken voices in June and such was the duplication of adult jobs between the two musical establishments that only one singer from the abbey was not accounted for from within the ranks of the Chapel Royal choir.
But today, none of that really matters, because we have one legacy of this coronation that outshines any possible confusion at the time. This is an anthem which I think includes perhaps the most exciting introduction and chorus entrance ever written, the one piece that some of you probably could have predicted I would not dare leave out tonight: Handel’s incomparable “Zadok the Priest.”
George Frederic Handel (1685-1759)
Zadok the Priest
Robert King/Choir of The King’s Consort, The King’s Consort
The Coronation of King George II (Hyperion, 2001)
Coronations did not improve much at the beginning of the nineteenth century when there was a farce of an entirely different kind. King George IV, who succeeded his old, mad father George III in 1820, was estranged from his wife Caroline. Actually I’m not sure if you can be “estranged” from someone that you never liked to begin with. When George saw Caroline for the first time (it was of course an arranged marriage), the first thing he said was, “Pray, get me a glass of brandy.” The marriage did not improve. So when it came time to be crowned, Caroline of course considered herself Queen, but George took the rather unusual step of barring Caroline from her own coronation. There was a supremely undignified scene in which Caroline was actually running around to the different doors of Westminster Abbey, banging on them as the guards kept her out. This did not do much for the dignity of her public image.
The death of Queen Victoria inaugurated the twentieth century. When we think of the British Monarchy today, we think of a very high standard in terms of pageantry and ceremonial. However, as I indicated earlier, this has not been consistent through the centuries. It was her son and successor King Edward VII, who loved pageantry, loved putting on a show, who really did a lot to revive and even to a certain extent create this sense of absolutely precise, glorious ceremonial that we take for granted today with the British Monarchy. And this was no less true in the realm of music.
A prominent British musician of the time was the great composer Charles Hubert Hastings Parry. He was the director of the Royal College of Music and a professor at Oxford. His father wanted him to sell insurance, but that didn’t go very well. What did go well was writing music, as I think you’ll agree. He wrote an anthem originally for Edward VII’s coronation in 1902, which has like Handel’s “Zadok the Priest” become a permanent fixture at every subsequent coronation. This is of course “I Was Glad,” the same text [Psalm 122] as the Purcell we heard earlier, but a much grander and more elaborate setting. You’ve probably heard this with organ; I wanted to use this particular live recording with orchestra. You may notice that the balance, which heavily favours the militarily augmented brass, is probably not what you would get on a polished studio recording, but I think that adds an extra dimension of excitement. This is a live royal event in Westminster Abbey, probably very much what this would have sounded like as the Entrance at the coronation of Edward VII in 1902.
Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848-1918)
I Was Glad
James O’Donnell/The Choirs of Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal
Christopher Warren-Green/London Chamber Orchestra
The Royal Wedding: The Official Album (Decca, 2011)
Sadly, Parry, who greatly admired the musical culture of Germany, was devastated by the outbreak of war between the two countries in 1914 and died as a casualty of the flu epidemic of 1918.
Another leading composer of this time was Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924), who was born in Dublin but moved to England at the age of ten and studied at Trinity College Cambridge. He later became a professor at both the Royal College of Music and Cambridge. Stanford was known for having a fiery temper which led to some quarrels with his contemporaries, including Parry, but they were always short-lived: when Parry died, Stanford dedicated a Magnificat to his memory. For the coronation of King George V in 1911 (Edward VII having died the previous year), Stanford arranged this Gloria from his Communion Service in B-flat (originally accompanied by organ) for orchestra. Remember that in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the Gloria comes at the end of the service, so this sounds very much like a finale. As a cellist I think it exhibits some wonderful writing for orchestra. This Gloria would also be sung at the coronation of George V’s granddaughter 42 years later.
Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)
Gloria in Excelsis
Martin Neary/The Choir of Westminster Abbey
Music from the Coronation of HM Queen Elizabeth II (Cantoris, 1994)
Less than a year after George V died in 1936, his eldest son Edward VIII famously abdicated the throne to marry the twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson. So it fell to Edward’s younger brother George VI to lead Britain through World War II, which he did quite heroically. The war took a heavy toll on the King’s health, and in 1952 he died at only 56 and was succeeded by his daughter, the late Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022).
The Queen’s coronation on June 2, 1953, arguably represented the pinnacle of twentieth-century Anglican choral music, and certainly constituted a high point of collaboration between Monarchy and Music. We think of coronations as steeped in tradition, and they certainly are, but it’s important to remember that they’ve also long been an opportunity to showcase new music. For this coronation, pieces were commissioned from the most eminent British and Commonwealth composers of the time, including William Harris, George Dyson, Healy Willan, and Ralph Vaughan Williams. I can’t play all of them tonight, but I know that my Incarnation choir friends would not let me out of here without including a piece by the one and only Herbert Howells. He wrote this beautiful anthem “Behold, O God Our Defender” for the Introit of the 1953 ceremony; I think the achingly lush sonorities at the beginning, especially with orchestra, are particularly remarkable.
Herbert Howells (1892-1983)
Behold, O God Our Defender
Music from the Coronation of HM Queen Elizabeth II
The youngest composer featured in 1953 was William Walton, who was born in 1902 in Oldham. Walton’s career got off to an uncertain start at the age of ten. His parents had seen an advertisement seeking choristers for Christ Church, Oxford and decided William should try out. Unfortunately the night before the audition his father spent the money for the train fare on alcohol at the pub. By the time Louisa Walton managed to borrow money from a grocer and get little William to Oxford, the auditions were over. She convinced the cathedral authorities to hear her son anyway, and since it was already obvious that he was a major talent, they let him in. Walton went on to have quite a distinguished career as a composer, for which he was knighted in 1951. Having already written the march “Crown Imperial” for her father’s coronation in 1937, he contributed both another march and this Te Deum for Elizabeth II’s coronation. As the final piece of the service prior to the National Anthem, the Te Deum while not neglecting bombast also includes some beautiful quiet moments.
William Walton (1902-1983)
Coronation Te Deum
Music from the Coronation of HM Queen Elizabeth II
Queen Elizabeth II went on to reign for an unprecedented 70 years, becoming one of the most iconic and beloved figures in history. With the accession of her son King Charles III, the world awaits a new British Coronation for the first time in the lives of most of us today. For the May 6 ceremony at Westminster Abbey, the King has commissioned twelve new pieces of music, which will be heard alongside traditional standards such as the Handel and Parry mentioned earlier. While adapted in some ways for the modern world, the Coronation is sure to be a thrilling event for all who witness it, linking our time with a thousand years of history.
This piece and others on the coronation can be found in the Fellowship & Fairydust issue Happy & Glorious: A Royal Celebration.