British music has thrived under our Queen – but has she encouraged this?
With the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee looming, let’s talk about royalty and music. There’s more to say than some might think. Some monarchs have had a massive effect on the music of their times. It’s likely, for instance, that Wagner would never have written his greatest operas – or at least not on the grand scale that he did – without lavish patronage from the more-than-slightly-bonkers Ludwig II of Bavaria. Similarly, Louis XIV’s ostentatious cultural requirements at Versailles boosted developments in music that were aped across Europe. The Prussian king Frederick the Great could talk serious counterpoint with Bach. And it’s quite possible that, had Prince Albert not died at 42, his wide-ranging cultural links (particularly with Mendelssohn, to whom he and Victoria were devoted) would have made 19th-century Britain a powerhouse of the arts, as well as of commerce and industry.
On the whole, though, the British monarchy isn’t renowned for its musical interests. George V’s response when someone asked him why La bohème was his favourite opera – ‘It’s the shortest’ – seems typical of a dynasty whose sense of duty compels its scions to sit through wodges of culture without necessarily showing much enthusiasm for it.
How, then, will our present monarch’s 70 years on the throne be rated, musically? There’s no doubt that the reign of Elizabeth II has coincided with a many-splendoured musical renaissance in Britain. From Britten to McCartney, from Janet Baker to Adele, from Jacqueline du Pré to Sheku Kanneh-Mason, from Bowie to Benedetti, the parade of top talent nurtured in these islands has surely been as impressive as anything Germany has produced in the same period. But the very word ‘coincided’ implies that the Queen herself has had little to do with it. Is that a fair judgement?
In my mind I’ve drawn up a balance-sheet, yet I still can’t quite decide. On the minus side, she has rarely commissioned new music and employs few musicians except in her chapel choirs (and, indirectly, in the military bands that supply the oom-pahs at state parades). Though it’s called the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden rarely gets a royal visit – or at least not since the death of Princess Margaret, something of a ballet groupie. And the Queen isn’t exactly an avid concertgoer. She was 68 before she attended her first Prom, even though the world’s greatest classical music festival is only a bugle-call from her back garden.
None of that suggests a galvanising impact on musical life. Yet in 200
