For the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, there was a bloom of music.
On Monday, Scottish composer James MacMillan’s chorale setting of the text “Who shall separate us,” written for the occasion, served as a powerful, earthy anthem for the long-reigning monarch. Higher voices floated ethereally over a chasmic bass at London’s Westminster Abbey, illuminated by the Choir of Westminster Abbey.
It’s an adaptation of Romans 8, verses 35-38: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? ... For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Alleluias followed, burning bright sonic trails before settling and resting with chords of utter tranquility.
MacMillan is a familiar name to fans of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, which premiered his solemn “Larghetto for Orchestra” in 2017 and will debut another new work of his in March.
On the way to the Abbey, by contrast, the band of the Scots Guards and the band of the Grenadier Guards supplied mournful marches like Beethoven’s funeral marches 1-3. The first march in particular, which may not have actually been written by Beethoven, also accompanied the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral in 2021, the procession to the lying in state of the Queen Mother and the funeral of King Edward VII.
The bands also included a funeral march by Mendelssohn, a favorite composer of Queen Victoria, as well as a march by Chopin, punctuated by the tolling of church bells and gun salutes.
Inside the Abbey, a selection of music for the organ, the “king of instruments,” by Williams, Edward Elgar, Peter Maxwell Davies and others served as prelude, with the heavy-hearted Fantasia in C Minor by Bach (BWV562) accompanying the coffin’s departure from the abbey.
English chorale hymns during the service included “The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Is Ended,” “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” and “The Lord’s My Shepherd” — a personal favorite of Queen Elizabeth, by all accounts, and a bit of musical comfort if there ever was one in honor of a queen whose taste in music was said to favor more popular, well-known tunes.
Another new work, “Like As the Hart,” a musical setting of Psalm 42, was written for the occasion by composer Judith Weir, Master of the Queen’s Music.
A second anthem followed MacMillan’s, Hubert Parry’s “My Soul, There Is a Country,” followed by a setting of Psalm 34 by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
After the anthems, trumpets sounded the Last Post, one of the most distinctive tunes in the trumpet world, originally played in wartime to signal the end of battle.
In music, space between notes can be as important as melody. Fully two minutes of silence followed the Last Post before trumpets called a final reville.
To close, “God Save the King,” and a traditional bagpipe lament, “Sleep, Dearie, Sleep.”
Jeremy Reynolds: jreynolds@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1634; twitter: @Reynolds_PG. His work at the Post-Gazette is supported in part by a grant from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Getty Foundation and Rubin Institute.
First Published: September 19, 2022, 9:03 p.m.