David Starkeys Music And Monarchy

Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, performed in the place

where monarchy and music have met for over a millennium -

Westminster Abbey .

It's been performed here at royal occasions,

including coronations, since the 18th century .

I first heard it in my childhood,

sung by Northern massed choirs .

Then, in my early twenties and on the threshold of my academic career,

I heard it again - here.

The chapel of King's College, Cambridge.

Now, the music and the building together hit me, like a revelation.

The walls, with their crowns and coats of arms.

The words, thick with kings and lords.

The music, with its thunderous rhythm.

All were royal.

This was the music of monarchy in a shrine to monarchy.

This series is the story of how, over six centuries,

successive kings and queens have shaped the history of British music

as patrons and taste-makers -

and even as composers and performers .

Music takes you both into the most intimate personal aspects of monarchs' lives.

And then, of course, the most public and triumphant,

grand ceremonious face of monarchy.

I'll explore the monarchy's crucial role

in the careers of our greatest composers,

from Purcell and Handel,

to Parry and Elgar .

I'll be hearing their music in some of Britain's most historic locations.

Performing this music in the places for which it was written,

you get a sense of that world in depth.

Because of the way music operates,

I think it bursts out of time.

And I'll uncover why and when the music of today's royal family

was first created for their ancestors .

And, beginning with the golden age of English music,

which culminated in the genius of Thomas Tallis and William Byrd,

it's a story of the kings who made English music the envy of Europe,

and then brought it to the brink of destruction .

And of the queen we have to thank

for the continuing glories of English choral music.

Our story begins with King Henry,

the man who was our greatest king and finest general.

Who made the name of England feared

and who reshaped the English church for his own purposes.

Who employed an unprecedented number of musicians.

And who was even a composer himself.

I mean, of course, King Henry V.

I'm listening to an English song that's nearly 600 years old.

Not only was this song heard in King Henry's lifetime,

it also takes him as its subject .

This is a musical account of Henry V's overwhelming defeat of the French

at Agincourt in 1415,

when Henry's much smaller army overcame a far bigger one.

It's perhaps the moment at which the English came nearest

to achieving the centuries-old ambition of conquering France.

And it quickly became the stuff of legend, as in this carol here.

Ripped By mstoll

Nowadays, we think of carols as only for Christmas.

But then they were used to celebrate any joyful event.

Mostly the sacred, like the birth of Christ,

but sometimes the apparently secular, like this great military victory.

To our ears, the English verses, with their uninhibited glorying in battle and bloodshed

and the refrain, with the solemn liturgical phrase, "Deo gratias" -

thanks be to God - belong to different worlds.

But to Henry V and his people, they were one and the same.

And their combination of military ambition and the church militant

is the foundation of royal music in England.

By the time the King went into battle on that famous St Crispin's Day,

he'd already heard Mass, and not a hurried, makeshift service,

but a beautifully-sung one .

For, alongside the knights, archers and horses,

the King had also brought with him to Agincourt his own mobile choir.

These were the most important military supplies of all -

the dozens of priests, singing men and choirboys of Henry's Chapel Royal,

along with all their equipment -

the rich vestments, the altar plate of massive gold,

the relics, the choir books and the sacred banners.

Henry's cannons were there to batter down the walls of Harfleur.

His Chapel Royal had a more vital task -

to bombard the gates of heaven with praise

so that God smiled favourably on his enterprise

and gave him the victory.

This was a holy war to be fought with the sacred weapons of prayer and song and music.

The year after Agincourt, Henry's forces again triumphed against the French.

This time at the Battle of the Seine .

Henry celebrated the news immediately

at the heart of English Christianity - Canterbury.

He offered thanks to God with magnificent music

and in the company of a most distinguished guest.

In a diplomatic coup equal to Henry's military victories,

the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund was in England

and about to sign a treaty with the King .

I am standing where king and emperor stood 600 years ago

and I'm hearing the kind of English royal music they heard.

For me, it's one of those moments

when the centuries dissolve

and a window opens into the past.

Sigismund, on the other hand,

despite his Europe-wide travels,

would never have heard anything so fine.

The Emperor would have been treated to a pioneering new style

called La Contenance Angloise - the English sound .

It went on to conquer Europe even more effectively than Henry's armies.

His leading proponents worked for the royal family,

chief among them the first great English composer

whose name has come down to us John Dunstable.

This piece by him - Preco Preheminencie -

could be one that was sung on that very day,

and a contemporary copy remains at Canterbury.

Continental church music of the time often sounded rather angular,

intellectual and hollow .

Dunstable's music, by contrast, was smooth and sweet.

He underpinned strong melodies with rich harmonies.

It's wonderfully incantatory.

And you've just heard chords that last for a long time.

So that he's extending all the wonderful vocal lines

in the same sonority.

So this is why this sense, almost of a languor,

a lingering on the note?

Some of the parts they are singing are very florid

and rhythmically very intricate

and it would have been really remarkable in the time.

So this is really professional music of the highest calibre.

And he's making demands.

He must have been able to teach these people and demand from them

even more than they'd done before because what he's doing is new.

The victory celebrations for the Battle of the Seine

weren't just an opportunity to show off England's musical splendours

to one of the most powerful rulers in Europe .

They were also a turning point in the history of royal music.

The victory took place on the 15th of August, 1416 -

the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

For Henry, the coincidence of the victory and the holy day

was proof positive of divine intervention in English affairs

and proof also that his prayers and sacred music had worked.

So immediately he decided to multiply

the already elaborate devotions of his Chapel Royal.

He added three antiphons - that is sung anthems -

to the daily High Mass sung in his chapel

and no fewer than six antiphons to the evening service.

Never had there been such profusion of praise and thanksgiving.

Never such demand for music.

The Chapel Royal was expanded to meet that demand.

In earlier centuries it had a dozen or so singers .

Under Henry, there were 50 - three times the size of any cathedral choir .

They travelled with the King from palace to palace,

and in each there was a place of worship where they sang

called the Chapel Royal, too .

And this is one of the books they would have used,

which includes compositions by four of the chapel's gentlemen.

But the most surprising composer of all is this.

Le Roi Henri.

King Henry himself,

who composed this Sanctus

and another part of the Ordinary of the Mass, a Gloria, elsewhere in the book.

Henry led his armies from the front

because that was how he inspired his men to win victories.

He was equally hands-on as a composer and liturgist

because that was how he believed you won God over to your side.

And that was the most important victory of all.

Barely heard in the intervening centuries,

this is music that came from Henry V's soul .

It's a simple, harmonised chant,

pretty much in the style of its time,

musically competent,

spiritually impeccable .

Such piety wasn't enough to save Henry from death at the age of only 35,

in 1422, on another of his French campaigns .

He was succeeded by his infant son, Henry VI .

During his disastrous reign,

Henry VI lost all of his father's gains in France and more.

He was a worthier heir, however, to his commitment to England's music.

He maintained the Chapel Royal in its full splendour

and he gave his kingdom a more permanent legacy than his father's military victories

in two great institutions .

One was Eton College .

Today it's the most famous school in the world .

When established, however, its chief purpose was not to educate,

but to pray and to sing for the souls of Henry and his family.

In the late Middle Ages, a college was first and foremost

a non-monastic community of priests .

The collective worship of the chapel and its music was most important,

as can be seen from this early charter .

The official title of the college is

The King's College Of Our Lady Of Eton Besides Windsor.

And here is Henry VI and the Blessed Virgin Mary,

whom Henry VI believed, like his father,

was the special protectress of England.

And here and here and here

are the choirs of angels

who sing praises to the glory of God.

Henry's intention was that the clerks, or singing men, and choirboys of the foundation

would echo the heavenly choirs here on earth in his college.

Henry's chapel is still in daily use by the school .