Ahead of our performances of 100 Years of British Coronations on 21st / 22nd October in Kings Place and the Sheldonian Theatre, respectively, director Edward Higginbottom shares his insights into a programme spanning 10 turbulent decades of British history.

You have to be of a certain age to remember the last coronation. I was seven. I can recall the street party, my piggy bank in the shape of a crown, and the commemorative crown coins (still in my drawer). Also, a very complicated card model of the procession to the Abbey: carriages, horsemen, bands, flags. Only later did we purchase the box set of the service (several 12” vinyl records).

In two years’ time, our present Queen will have traversed seven decades, making a coronation seem both a very distant event, and an ever closer one. One coronation every 70 years or so would have somewhat reduced the variety of our musical offering later this month (King’s Place, 21 October, Sheldonian Theatre, 22 October). But, by adopting the 100 years between 1661 and 1761, we can count seven: Charles II, James II, William and Mary, Anne, George I, George II, and George III. This gives us rather more scope for musical riches. And musical riches there are. We are talking about a period when the very best of the musical talent of the country was routinely involved in regal pageantry.

We start with that truly historic moment for the kings and queens of England when they were restored to their constitutional role after the Commonwealth. The year 1660 rings like 1066 in the kingdom’s annals. Charles II’s actual crowning came a year after. It was a nail-biting affair for the musicians. The choir of the Chapel Royal had been disbanded for over ten years. Its former trebles were now bearded men in their early twenties. The task of rebuilding the choir in double-quick time was given to Henry Cooke, a former captain in the Royalist army. He no doubt found some of his previous experience useful in confronting the challenge, but it was as an accomplished musician and bass singer that he been appointed to take on the task. Our programme begins with his Behold O God, our defender, the first time this work will have been heard in public, we believe, since its original performance.

If the music of 1661 has to be dragged out of obscurity, that of 1685 (James II’s coronation) was provided by one of the country’s greatest ever composers, Henry Purcell. His teacher and colleague, John Blow, contributed to the next, which was only three years down the track: as James II took refuge at the French Court, William Mary ushered in a new reign in 1688. Queen Anne, James II’s younger daughter, had a coronation (1702) of a more modest scale, if we judge it by Jeremiah Clarke’s contribution. Things scaled up again in 1714, the beginning of the Hanoverian succession, when William Croft composed an extensive five-movement setting of The Lord is a Sun and a Shield.

Things really scaled up in 1727 when Handel was charged with providing four anthems for the coronation of George II. Music of this length and complexity, apart perhaps from Purcell’s My heart is inditing, had never previously been heard at these events. And we might say that Handel established a reference for what coronation music might henceforth sound like. His setting of Zadok the priest, part of our programme, has been performed at every coronation since 1727. The prevailing character of Handel’s music, celebratory, grandiose, loud (for the most part) rang in the ears of William Boyce, who made a number of significant contributions to the music for the coronation of George III in 1761, none more impressive than his setting of The King shall rejoice.

*Ticket for the Coronation of George III (1761)*

We have now traversed 100 years. Whatever might lie in store for our constitutional monarch, the music legacy of coronations has greatly enriched our cultural life. Instruments of Time and Truth offer a survey of perhaps the most varied and richest century of music associated with royal enthronements. In it, we will rekindle the pomp, ceremony, and the excitement of the greatest of all state occasions. VIVAT REX! VIVAT REGINA!

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