The writer is a broadcaster, violinist and author of ‘Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day’
Of the millions mourning Queen Elizabeth II, how many people could say with any certainty who she was, what she thought or what she actually liked? She left us a few clues: the horses, the corgis, the midday Dubonnet, the off-guard private giggle at an official event. But one of the most remarkable traits of the Queen’s 70-year reign was her absolute inscrutability. Rarely did she let her guard slip.
Read the order of service
Order of service
In the realm of music, though, we do have some idea. While others in the royal family, past and present, have shown interest in progressive musical directions, Queen Elizabeth preferred convention. She was a dutiful patron of many musical institutions, from orchestras and conservatoires, choral societies and concert venues up and down the country. And she seemed to be a genuine supporter of the people behind the music, whether nervous schoolchildren, passionate amateurs bellowing their hearts out or seasoned professional players.
The famed British composer Benjamin Britten was deeply touched at her ministrations after a heart operation and stroke almost ended his career; for her part, she reportedly favoured his version of “God Save the Queen” over any other arrangement. The list of other major composers she was associated with — Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax, William Walton, Herbert Howells, Malcolm Arnold, to name a few — reads like a Who’s Who of 20th-century British musical luminaries. But her own tastes were less Gloriana and more everywoman. While the Queen wasn’t a guest on Desert Island Discs (more’s the pity), we have had occasional auditory glimpses into her inner life.
She loved her girlhood piano lessons with her sister, Princess Margaret. She loved the British folk music of a countryside show, or a Scottish cèilidh reel. She loved her bagpiper, who woke her up most mornings. As one former member of the royal household told me: “She loved the music people actually knew.” For all the heightened pomp and circumstance that she endured every day, the Queen had a common touch.
And so, although protocol means the likes of Vera Lynn or Fred Astaire songs, or numbers from her favourite musicals (such as Show Boat, Oklahoma! and Annie Get Your Gun) couldn’t possibly be performed at her state funeral, many of her other favourite pieces will be celebrated. And not just in the historic pageantry of a monarch’s passing but in the carefully chosen fanfares with their military touches; or the nods to her Scottish roots; or the familiar chords of Hubert Parry’s “My Soul, There is a Country”; or the exuberant congregational Crimond hymn “The Lord’s My Shepherd”, which will surely raise the roof of the abbey.
Queen Elizabeth was an enigma to us. Music — despite the best explanatory efforts of many — is equally inscrutable. In some ways, it is just physics, or “sonorous air”, as the composer Ferruccio Busoni put it. But within those physical properties are ineffable qualities that, in momentous moments, can be binding and all-powerful. Into those notes are somehow collapsed history and geography, space and time, grief and joy, sorrow and wonder, nostalgia and memory.
Just as Westminster Abbey must rise to the occasion as a space to contain all our modern multitudes, so must the soundtrack to this moment in history afford contemplation and space to us all. Music animates the ears and body, the head and heart; I know of no more powerful means of belonging. Even in these lonely, divisive times, it can bestow something akin to gratitude on us, however temporarily. Something akin to hope.
It is a huge responsibility, of course, to provide these otherwise-inarticulable things for so many millions across the world. But Queen Elizabeth tried and largely succeeded in her efforts. In celebrating her reign today, I believe music is up to the task.
The details of the Queen’s order of service can be found here
