Anyone who was lucky enough to have snapped up one of the tickets for Friday’s concert will remember it for a long time I suspect. And yes, that was Friday and not Monday – so we are talking Handel, Parry and Vivaldi rather than Lionel Richie and Katy Perry! Seriously, though the BWS/Godolphin performance at Wilton’s magnificent church was an absolute triumph for all concerned. The choice of the music was inspired and evidently made with precision of forethought in the autumn, as ‘I Was Glad’ and ‘Zadok’ both reappeared during the Coronation on the following day in Westminster Abbey. On both occasions the pieces did exactly what they were designed to do – inspire and strike awe into the congregation. Those walls of wonderful choral sound that were so dramatic on Friday evening repeated in Westminster as a 12 hour echo.
The past few weeks have felt strange, slightly surreal even as the combination of bank holiday interruptions and two strike days have compressed the time in school down while the weather has stubbornly refused to admit that May has arrived. It really doesn’t feel like the summer term is here and yet we are but three weeks shy of June and the external exams are upon us. That, together with the weekend’s events have created a degree of unreality which will take a little while to dispel. What we all want now I suspect is a sustained, uninterrupted period of routine so that we can get focused on annual tests first and then the other amazing things that the summer term has to offer in the way of extra-curricular excitement of one sort or another.
Having said that I found the coronation itself absolutely fascinating; history unravelling before our eyes, made accessible in way that has never happened before. When succession was announced in the autumn I think I described the process as seeing the cog wheels of constitution, democracy and power meshing together. This time the pomp and ceremony focused entirely on the duties and responsibilities of the new monarch, as well as the limitation of his powers and the guaranteeing of the place of the Established Church within the machinery of the State. I wasn’t previously aware of many of the rites and symbols that are component parts of the coronation as I wasn’t around for the last one (though my PA did actually ask me if I remembered it, I think as a joke!). The viewing figures suggest that a huge proportion of the British People were just as fascinated (and perhaps as ignorant) as I was, and that’s a good thing. Surveys suggest that the monarchy will need to continue to adapt to the times if it is to retain its relevance – and personally I wish our new King the very best of luck for the coming years after decades of preparation.
SDS
