Walton and the Royals

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1953, thousands crowded the route to and from London’s Westminster Abbey for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and, at the Queen’s own request, the event was televised live by the BBC.

British composer William Walton was asked to write two new pieces. The first was Coronation Te Deum, a work that he had begun almost a decade earlier for a quite different occasion, namely the opening night of the 1944 London Proms. The piece got shifted to a back-burner when Walton was asked to work on Lawrence Olivier’s wartime film of Shakespeare’s Henry V.

For the new Queen’s Coronation, Walton returned to his abandoned score, writing to friends, “I’ve got cracking on the Te Deum. Lots of counter-tenors and little boys Holy-holy-ing, not to mention all the Queen’s Trumpeters and a side drum. You will like it, I think, and I hope He will too.” “He” was capitalized, so presumably Walton was referring to either the Deity — or Winston Churchill, perhaps.

Walton was also asked to compose a Coronation March, which he called Orb and Scepter after a line, coincidentally, from Shakespeare’s Henry V. His march may have seemed a bit jazzy to the more conservative audiences of the day, but one critic, slipping into Cockney slang, gushed, “It sounds like a right royal knees-up!”

Music Played in Today's Program

William Walton (1902-1983): Coronation Te Deum; Andrew Lumsden, organ; Finzi Singers; Paul Spicer, conductor; Chandos 9222

William Walton (1902-1983): Orb And Sceptre March; English Northern Philharmonia; Paul Daniel, conductor; Naxos 8.553981

On This Day

Births

• 1835 - Russian composer, pianist and conductor Nicolai Rubinstein (brother of Anton), in Moscow (Gregorian date: June 14)

• 1857 - English composer Sir Edward Elgar, in Broadheath (near Worcester)

• 1863 - German composer and conductor Felix Weingartner, in Zara, Dalmatia (now Zadar, Croatia)

Deaths

• 1937 - French composer and organist Louis Vierne, 66, in Paris at Notre Dame Cathedral while playing an organ recital

Premieres

• 1914 - Miaskovsky: Symphony No. 1, in Pavlovsk (Gregorian date: June 15)

• 1937 - Berg: opera Lulu (Acts 1 & 2 only), in Zürich at the Stadtstheater. The first complete performance of the 3-act version of this opera with Berg’s unfinished Act 3 (arranged by Friedrich Cerha) premiered in Paris on February 24, 1979.

• 1953 - Bliss: Processional in London, at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II

• 1953 - Ginastera: Variaciones Concertantes in Buenos Aires

• 1953 - Walton: Coronation Te Deum and Orb and Sceptre March, in London, at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II

• 1954 - Leroy Anderson: Bugler’s Holiday at a Decca recording session in New York City, with the composer conducting. The three cornet soloist for this classic recording were Robert Cusamann, Carl Poole and Melven Solomon.

• 1983 - Henze: opera The English Cat, in Schwetzingen at the Schlosstheater

Others

• 1711 - The opera season at the Queen’s Theater in London ends with a production of Handel’s opera, Rinaldo, (Gregorian date: June 13) which had opened there on February 24 (Gregorian date: March 7) the same year. This was the first Handel opera produced in London, and the first Italian opera written specifically composed for the London stage, and proved extremely popular.

• 1938 - At the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, Amy Beach begins work on a Piano Trio based on some of her earlier works. She would finish the trio fifteen days later (June 18) and publish it as her Op. 150.