Coronation Music

....... on May 6th, 2023

 

Music for the Coronation of King Charles ........

Although I am not a Royalist; in fact, not at all, the occurrence of a Coronation is a notable event and an extraordinary opportunity to present a highly-accomplished feat of organisation and British talent; an upmarket shop window to offset the recent distressing examples of British muddle and bad decision-making. Available to watch online, it will be watched by millions and although I had decided that I almost certainly would not be watching, chiefly out of disinterest although intending to catch snippets of the ceremony online. However, having researched the music and the eminent and widely varied musicians on call, I may well change my mind!

Andrew Lloyd Webber

BUT I am interested in the music of The Day and delighted at the apparent care which has been extended in the choice of music, of performers, and of the contribution of specially-written pieces. Charles and his advisors seem to have caught the national mood of inclusivity with nods to the Commonwealth, the four countries of the U.K. and a wide range of popular entertainers.

Charles has, impressively, commissioned twelve new pieces; six orchestral, five choral and one organ, all from world-renowned British composers. Andrew Lloyd-Webber has composed a new Coronation Anthem; Scottish film composer, Patrick Doyle [Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire] has contributed a Coronation March; Iain Farrington’s solo organ incorporates musical themes from across the Commonwealth, plus there are new

Patrick Doyle

works by Master of the King’s Music, Sarah Class, Nigel Hess. Paul Mealor, Tarik O’Regan, Roxanne Panufnik, Shirley J.Thompson, Roderick Williams and Classic FM’s Composer in Residence, Debbie Wiseman. Shirley Thompson acknowledged “the great honour and privilege” it was to be asked to compose for the Coronation and paid tribute to the inclusivity and diversity manifested in the scope of composers involved in making music for the Coronation. The Welsh Adiemus composer, Sir Karl Jenkins, “one of Britain’s most loved and celebrated living composers” will also contribute. Music by such long-loved composers as Byrd, Handel, Elgar, Walton, Parry, Vaughan-Williams and Sir Henry Walford-Davies will also feature with the final full music programme to be announced in early May 2023.

Andrew Nethsinga, Organist & Master of the Choristers

Westminster Abbey Choir

Debbie Wiseman
Composer in Residence, Classic F.M.

Byzantine Chant Ensemble

Andrew Nethsinga, organist and Master of the Choristers of Westminster Abbey will direct the music and oversee all musical arrangements. Italian maestro, Sir Antonio Pappano, music director of the Royal Opera House, will conduct the Coronation Orchestra which will comprise performers from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and other orchestras associated with the patronage of the King when Prince of Wales. The list of professional musician to be associated with the forthcoming Coronation reads like a dream list!! The choirs of Westminster Abbey, of His Majesty’s Chapel Royal plus the girl choristers of the Chapel Choir of Methodist College, Belfast and of Truro’s Cathedral Choir. A hand-picked Gospel Choir, The Ascension Choir, will perform as will the Royal Harpist, Alis Huws who, with the recital of one of the liturgical sections of the ceremony to be performed in Welsh, will acknowledge the King’s long-standing relationship with Wales. In a nod to Prince Philip, the Byzantine Chant Ensemble will perform Greek Orthodox music during the service.

Girl choristers of the Chapel Choir of the
Methodist College, Belfast.

John Eliot Gardiner will lead the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque in a pre-service programme of choral music. Fanfares will be played by the State Trumpeters of the Household Cavalry and the Fanfare Trumpeters of the Royal Air Force while the great Abbey organ will be played by the sub-organist, Peter Holder, and assistant organist, Matthew Jorysz.

Alys Huws, Royal Harpist

John Eliot Gardiner with the Monteverdi Choir

Bryn Terfel
Leading bass-baritone

Andrew Pappano
Musical Director, the Royal Opera House

This panoply of the musical Good and the Great, is incredibly impressive and influential. The breadth of musical offerings and talent, while serving to grace the actual Coronation itself, is also aimed at impressing the world.

                                                                           

Byzantine musical manuscript 1433
Choral Music of Oriental Christianity
Pantokratoros Monastery

                       

Sights of the Season

Forsythia in the Abbey
Gardens today 21/03

Thomas Nashe 1567-1601

 Thomas Nashe, the 16th century British poet sang of Spring:

The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet/Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit.

His song begins to invoke a feeling of Spring. Today is March 20^th, the first day of Spring and as I stroll through the Abbey Gardens I keep noticing tiny hints of Spring emerging with all that promise of sunshine and longer days; of re-birth as birds return and insects emerge; of vernal promise as plants throw out buds, green shoots and leaves like tiny arrows to the sky. As Swinburne remarks somewhere, “blossom by blossom the Spring begins.” My rhododendron of the piebald leaves is starting to flaunt its pink beauty in buds uncurling as I silently congratulate myself on smuggling it back to England, the one visible survivor from my large Bruggean terrace whose many much-loved plants had to be given away a year ago.

A standard Ilex and a pretty Photinia
Serratifolia.

Snowdrops in February in the 
Abbey Gardens

I have recently walked round my large terrace really noticing what has survived the winter and the answer is, quite a lot. There are flowers, young shoots, and other buds a-bursting to my delight and yesterday’s Mother’s Day gave me and my terraces a shot in the arm…. Or perhaps one might say, a plant in a pot. My children here [with the help and support of my daughter in California] paid for me to choose several plants from a local nursery and also, by happenstance, I included a large pot for the ever-growing pink Bruggean rhododendron. Never was there a more satisfying and frankly indulgent Mother’s Day morning as yesterday’s! And the pleasure of planting is still to come with the weather and the light enabling me to linger on my terrace, work a little perhaps and resume the pleasant habit quite soon of drinking morning coffee after my early morning walk, AND eating lunch, all outside. All as a soft breeze touches the cheek and birds sing. Simple pleasures for sure, but to be counted among those everyday
experiences which add lustre to the soul and warmth to well-being. So, Spring in the air

My Bruggean rhododendron now on the small terrace in Bury.

signifies to me, a warmer, kinder, greener and more receptive season ahead when I shall be able to “a-sunning sit.” 

Ellis Peters puts a familiar feeling, beautifully: “Every Spring is the only Spring, a perpetual astonishment.”

Ellis Peters alias Edith Pargeter who wrote, among others,
the Brother Cadfael murder mysteries.

Writing this blog has triggered memories of Springs past. Particularly when my family lived, with my mother, in Waingroves Hall in Derbyshire, my Spring Bank holiday week always seemed to ignite in me a burst of cleaning activity. To my mother’s great approval, I used to gradually work my way through the blankets from the beds for a family of six! Each day would see several blankets [these were pre-duvet days] blowing in the breeze as the sun shone, apparently endlessly in memory. The feelings of annual accomplishment were always as expected, and always applauded. It was never a chore, but a kind of busy Spring satisfaction which was hugely gratifying! Oddly enough, any Spring cleaning seems to bring a promise of all-round regeneration as if cleaning the windows to let the sun pierce through the opaque scruffiness of winter windows, somehow also confers on the person, refreshment and new optimism. I notice in myself a sudden tendency, these early Spring days, to think about, plan for, short but dazzling 'getaways' which I had told myself were physically impossible for me now. 

Charles Algernon Swinburne
"Blossom by blossom, the 
Spring begins."

Blossom near the Lark in the Abbey Gardens.

Beautiful beige and white swan on the
Linnet and the Lark.
He is young and, alone, awaits a mate.

Harpsichord Concert by Petra Hajduchova

 

Petra Hajduchova

Inside Box H.
The bare floorboards made little concession
to modern standards!

 A great pleasure this afternoon to go to a concert, a rare pleasure since leaving Brugge. There are concerts in Bury St Edmunds, of course, but I have chosen to stop going out in the evenings when I am normally too tired to make the effort, SO a delightful chance to hear music has arrived with three afternoon concerts in the Theatre Royal. There was a fourth which was the first concert of the quartet and which I did not discover in time. The theatre is a delight; first built in 18!9 and restored to its original Regency design in 2007. It is Grade 1 Listed, the only theatre in the National Trust portfolio and the last working Regency theatre in the country. I sat in Box H in a wide circle of boxes with six seats in each box, each seat hinged on one side to allow entry, rather like a small square ‘door’. Such a charming period touch. The Boxes are, most conveniently, situated on the ground floor, a nice reversal of the norm! Predictably, a lady in ‘my’ box grumbled about the fire risk!!

Henry Purcell 1659-1695

Today’s harpsichord concert by Petra Hajduchova was wonderfully surprising and beautifully judged. I warmed immediately to Petra, a specialist in harpsichord, piano, organ and early music, when she introduced herself to us: “I, from Bohemia ….” and then gave an informative preamble to each piece both to set the musical scene historically but also to add personal details. During Lockdown, she had experimented with musician friends, and gradually discovered a real appreciation of more modern music, particularly, electronic, which she explored and with which she experimented and continues to experiment.

Francois Couperin 1668-1733

Alessandro Scarlatti 1660-1725

The last four pieces she played, by Scarlatti, Purcell, Croft and Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer, were each accompanied by what Petra described as 'sound effects', i.e. electronic music. The first, Toccata d’Ottava Stesa, had a very spirited electronic beat in the background, totally unconventional and strangely beautiful. Certainly purists might well have been outraged, but the whole sound was different and exciting to the audience! Her final rendition of Chaconne in F from Musicus Parnassus, slightly differently, had only the tiny but familiar sound of a musical box as accompaniment, ethereal but charming. 

Jean Phillipe Rameau 1683-1764

In addition to performing, [she is a prize-winning harpsichordist] at a variety of notable establishments like the Royal Festival Hall, St Martin’s in the Fields, St John’s, Smith Square and St James, Piccadilly, she has also appeared with the Royal Philharmonic, London Mozart Players, National Symphony Orchestra, the European Union Chamber Orchestra, the Piccadilly Sinfonietta, to name but a few, Petra also teaches harpsichord to students at Canterbury Christ Church University and at the London Performing Academy of Music. She has participated in several educational projects for children across England and teaches piano at various schools and musical establishments. She has appeared live on BBC Radio 3 and in the recording of the soundtrack for Wolf Hall and ITV’s Victoria. She has also featured recently on a C.D. of music by the Moravian composer, Gottfried Finger with the Harmonious Society of Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen.

Stephen Montague b. 1943

Petra has a CV to die for! But it is her innovative ear, coupled with the extraordinary musical width and depth of her talent, which makes her performance so compelling.

Petra and Harpsichord

Young pupil: future harpsichordist

Painting Flanders: Flemish Art 1880-19!4

The new Sudbury Gallery displaying 
locally-made brick and flint.

The newly-upgraded Gainsborough's House.

I was able to visit the recently-reopened Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury, hence the previous blog on the artist. I did find the newly -built, three storey gallery, beautiful and exciting; in fact, incredible for a small town to be able to include in its attractions. This building and the careful restoration of the Grade 1 listed Gainsborough’s House, part late mediaeval, part Georgian and part Regency, apparently cost £10 million with huge support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and the entire project [by architectural firm, Zmma] is superbly accomplished. This new and separate building of local brick and flint, houses four innovative galleries with a Landscape Studio on floor three providing a flexible space for a variety of events, and one which boasts a Camera Obscura and a marvellous picture window offering spectacular views of the Suffolk landscape. The existing Weavers’ Lane Cottages have been re-organised to open up access to the historical print workshop, the largest in Suffolk now offering opportunities for traditional print-making to a new generation. There will be seasonal exhibitions at this Sudbury Gallery for print-makers to show and sell their work.

The era's artistic tendency to the pastoral
typified in Girl By The Leie. 1892
Emil Claus.

 By a serendipitous chance, there was also an exhibition called Painting Flanders: Flemish Art 1880-1914 which I was keen to see. In the event, it was delightful with a list of names familiar to me and dear to my Flemish friends in Brugge too. Below are paintings and sculptures by several of those represented, with a mini-blog to enable readers to make or renew their acquaintance. During and immediately after the Industrial Revolution in Belgium, a pastoral artistic movement developed when some of the most radical and influential artists of the era blossomed until the First World War interrupted their dreams. 

James Ensor's masks and grotesques.

Skeleton Painter in his Studio.
James Ensor.

 Perhaps the best known artist of this group in Britain is  

James Ensor, 1860-1949 who lived his whole life, virtually, in Oostende, He was a man of many masks, a painter and a printmaker and an important influence on Expressionism and Surrealism. He painted Life through the lens of the Carnival and was regarded by his fellow artists as a distant and solitary figure. Leon Spilliaert wrote of him in 1919 “ he lives in an old dilapidated house above a shop selling shells. Here he lives a sad and lonely life……. among his marvellous paintings…… He is vegetating in this ruined and ransacked town…… and always the same, sweet and good, sensitive and worried, childlike.” However, Ensor had not been forgotten by his fellow artists. Max Beckmann, Fernand Khnopff and Wassily Kandinsky all visited him, recognising him as a trailblazer and sharing his creed that art should be anything but banal, and his belief that religion and science are “cruel goddesses, drenched in blood and tears.” In spite of all, Ensor’s star was high enough that he was asked to give a speech, welcoming Einstein when he made an official visit to Belgium in 1933. And, by then, in 1929, the King had conferred a Barony on him.

 

Lady in Blue in Front of a Mirror.
Rik Wouters.

 

Portrait de Femme, blouse bleue

Attitude by Rik Wouters.
Large statue of Nel.

  

 Rik Wouters, 1882-1916, son of an ornamental sculptor from Mechelen, started working in his father’s studio at 12, eventually pursuing a career as artist and sculptor. A visit to Paris in 1900 introduced him to the Impressionists and he began to prioritise the light and colour of painting over his original love of sculpture. He married his beloved Nel, his muse, in 1905 on whom he focused as his model in  countless paintings and sculptures. Over the next few years(1912–1913), Wouters produced the best works of his short career, painting and drawing almost constantly during this period, making 50 canvasses in 1912. The Crazy Violence; Domestic Worries and De Strijkster are among the most famous of his art, all produced during this period. In 1913, he won the Picard prize.

Zelf portret met zwarte hoed.
Rik Wouters

Although his wife was the subject of the majority of his works, Wouters occasionally painted other people and places of particular interest to him. His other subjects included natural scapes from his local area (such as trees in the garden or a vase of flowers on the table) or close friends (such as his lifelong friend and fellow sculptor, Ernest Wijnants), all of which were painted in the same colourful and bright style. Additionally, Wouters produced a number of self-portraits over his painting years. The First World War enveloped Belgium in 1914 and Rik became, in turn, a soldier, a prisoner of war and, increasingly, a sufferer from eye cancer which, by degrees, darkened his world. He was released from the prisoner of war camp in 1916 because of his eye problems and the sombre tone of his subsequent paintings reflects his worsening health, seen in works such as Self-portrait with Black Eye Patch(1916) and Rik with Black Eye Dressing(1916). Wouters lost his eye to cancer 3 months before his death on 11 July 1916, a tragic and painful end to a short but talented artistic life.  

Snow landscape in Oostende
Leon Spilliaert

Leon Spilliaert 1881-1946 was also born in Oostende but moved to Brussels at the age of 20 and would live and work between the two cities for the rest of his life. Self-taught, he forged his own artistic identity which was shaped by the affinity he felt with the writers and thinkers such as Edgar Allen Poe and Friedrich Nietzsche. Spilliaert's work is characterised by dramatic perspectives and a quiet luminescence. He is best known for a sequence of enigmatic self-portraits and for his atmospheric night-time scenes of Ostend. His visual explorations of the self and potent images of solitude align him with European modernists such as Edvard Munch.

                                                                                      

Alone.
Leon Spilliaert

                                                                                    

 Emil Claus 1849-1924 had to overcome opposition from his father to try to become an artist before

Le Bateau Qui Passe
Emil Claus

enrolling at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts where he prospered, graduating with a gold medal. He achieved a local popularity very quickly, appealing naturally to the tastes of the bourgeoisie and later, under the influence of Claude Monet’s Impressionism, developed his own distinctive style called Luminism, in 1904 founding a group called Vie et Lumiere. During the First World War, he prudently fled to London where he awaited the end of hostilities, meanwhile painting, among other subjects, a series of views of the Thames known as ‘reflections on the Thames’, based on Monet’s style and exemplifying Claus’s most traditional Impressionistic style. He married Charlotte Dufaux in 1886, daughter of a Waregem notary, though the important romantic relationship of his life seems to have been with Jenny Montigny, a painter half his age, who initially followed master classes of his in Arsene, continuing to travel for many years between Ghent and Arsene to be with him until Claus died.

Waterloo Bridge, London.
After Monet.
Emil Claus
1918

The Gardener
Emil Claus

Zelf portret, Emil Claus.