By:
Andrew Sunnucks
Date::
13 Apr 2011
The world has gone mad for Royal Weddings. The media has left no stone unturned in its search for a new angle, opinion or insight; commentators draw significance from the tiniest utterances of Will or Kate often seeking the inside track from their loosest acquaintances.
Silkworm experts are giving their views on Royal Wedding dresses, village halls are gearing up for japes and frolics and health and safety experts, eager not to miss out on the fun, are telling them they can’t. The Daily Mail is having a wonderful time having a go at the health and safety experts and so the merry-go-round goes on.
But amidst all the noise and hullabaloo consider one, as yet unexplored, by-road of endeavour; that of composers and musicians providing the production music soundtrack for the happy day.
Every production and TV company is briefing the unachievable (“can we have a traditional, modern, dignified, funky, regal, accessible tune which sums up the national mood in 30 seconds please?”) to composers who are sitting staring blankly at keyboards or blank manuscript paper with perplexed looks on their faces.
So how do you go about composing music for a royal wedding?
Well the Prince of Pageantry, the master of ceremony and the grand-pappy of British Royal music must have been that plump old German, George Frideric Handel. It was he who set the standard, raised the bar and created the cliché of what patriotic and royal music should be all about.
Desperately trying to ingratiate himself with Royals, first with Queen Anne and then Georges I and II, he:
* Earnestly chased them up and down the Thames warbling Water Music at them.
* Composed suites to be played at the King’s fireworks parties (and unfortunately barbequed half the crowd at the first performance in 1749)
* Wrote music for their birthday parties (Eternal Source of Light Divine)
* And even got the gig to compose a big tune for the Coronation of George II (he came up with the slightly surprising idea of doing a tune about Zadok, the rather obscure character who anointed Solomon king, begging the question about why he didn’t just write about Solomon, who was a top man himself).
It’s always been assumed that the Romans represented royal music and pageantry with trumpets, but actually like so much else, this is another Hollywood myth. Certainly the Romans used early trumpets for military purposes but not to blast the arrival of their Emperor. Nor is there any real record of fanfares becoming the must-have for Royal events until Hubert Parry wrote I Was Glad for King Edward VII in 1901.
Trumpets and royalty
It seems that Handel was really the first one to associate the high trumpet with royalty. No doubt he was at least partly inspired by earlier composers like Purcell, and there are passing nods to Byrd and Tallis who used choirs and organs to great effect, but it was George Frideric who developed the measured, stately harpsichord with the high trumpet which is part of our cultural psyche and which is still used to this day. He was, if you like, the Royal Wedding library music composer of his generation.
So production music composers, as you sit, gazing into space, start with that. Use the trumpet to trumpet the pomp (probably in D Major), keep it absolutely mid tempo, to imply the stately tread of the royal shoe – and once you’ve established that, you can do pretty much what you like. Funky basses and drum grooves, choirs, strings…anything. But keep the orchestral bits real, undignified samples simply won’t do.
So thank you Handel, all because of you we really can have that elusive traditional, modern, dignified, funky, regal, accessible tune which sums up the national mood in 30 seconds.
Follow this link to hear our take on how it should be done.
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