We celebrate St. Cecilia’s Day with a programme of  music by British composers from the early 20^th century to the present day – and notably all the featured composers have written music for coronations!

Parry’s stirring anthem, I was glad, was written for the 1902 coronation of King Edward VII and has been performed at all subsequent coronations as well as countless other royal occasions. This setting of words from Psalm 122 alternates between six part and double choir and Organ.

Elgar composed a Coronation Ode to celebrate the 1902 coronation, though not as part of the service. At the King’s suggestion, words were written by A.C. Benson to the Trio from his Pomp and Circumstance March No.1, and “Land of hope and Glory” became the climax of the piece. He also wrote a Coronation March and a short Offertory O Hearken Thou for the coronation of King George V in 1911. His choral work The Music Makers was first performed in 1912, but he had begun to set the Ode by Alfred O’Shaughnessy as early as 1903, despite having no commission. A commission from the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival encouraged him to complete the work, which was performed at what turned out to be the final season of the festival. The poem deals with the isolation of the creative artist, and at Elgar’s hands it has all the fingerprints of the composer’s mature style with its use of self-quotation, including the Enigma Variations, his two Symphonies, the Violin Concerto and Sea Pictures. It was scored for Mezzo Soprano solo, Chorus and Orchestra, but in this case we will perform it at a rather smaller scale with piano accompaniment, with Lorna Perry as soloist and Gavin Roberts as pianist.

In 1932 Herbert Howells wrote a Requiem, not actually a Mass setting but an unconventional arrangement of texts taken from the Burial Service in the Book of Common Prayer. It was apparently meant for the choir of Kings College, Cambridge and its director Boris Ord, but for some reason the composer did not send it and put the piece aside. Three years later he was devastated by the sudden death of his nine-year old son Michael. For some time he wrote no music at all, but in response to his daughter Ursula’s urging he set about writing a large-scale work in memory of his son, which included reworking some of the material from the Requiem into Hymnus Paradisi, completed in 1938. However, the highly personal nature of this work made Howells reluctant to share it and it was not heard until 1950, when he conducted it at the Three Choirs Festival, and it was not until 1980 that the Requiem was published and performed by the BBC Singers. Howells’ contribution to coronations include a march, King’s Herald, written for the 1937 Coronation of King George VI, and in 1953 he wrote the anthem Behold O God our defender for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

A leap forward of 111 years from the première of Elgar’s piece brings us to the Elegy for Fadima by Roxanna Panufnik, our new JCS President. Commissioned by Exultate Singers of Bristol, this work was first performed by them under their conductor David Ogden. Shortly after,  she was at the Coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla to hear the première of her Coronation Sanctus sung by the combined choirs under Andrew Nethsingha. Scored for Double choir and Piano, the Elegy moves between grief and acceptance of God’s will, expressed in contrasting sections in which the two choirs sing in call and response to each other, and then turn to the audience to express their grief but finally to unite in hope.

Roxanna writes: It was quite by accident, whilst googling for some words for a Nigerian choral commission, that I came across the wonderful Nana Asma’u. Asma’u was an eminent and Sufi Muslim scholar living in Nigeria. Originally written in the Hausa language in 1863-4, ‘Elegy for my Niece, Fadima’ struck me immediately with its intense emotional power and by how it would not be out of place in a Christian context, with its references to God and his influence over us all.

You can hear Roxanna Panufnik introduce her piece at the 6.30pm pre-concert talk in St Gabriel’s Church, Pimlico on 22^nd November.

The concert starts at 7pm – tickets are on sale online:

£20 (£10 Adult & U30 Concessions, U12 Free) from www.eventbrite.co.uk (plus booking fee)

and on the door:  £25/£12

Do join us for this evening of crowning choral moments!

Roxanna Panufnik photo by Benjamin Ealovega.