Westminster Abbey and its Choir: singing Elizabeth into eternity

When the world focuses its eyes on London, Westminster Abbey and the memory of Britain’s longest-reigning monarch this Monday, they will be glancing at a different world. For two hours, the pomp and pageantry, the sacred solemnity of state, will be accompanied by the music of one of the world’s oldest choirs. For a short time, and in no way for the first, the ears of the world will be attuned to the singing of a group of young boys singing the music they have given for departed monarchs for hundreds of years. Much has been made in the last week of Queen Elizabeth’s timeless quality, her feat of durability in a world of change. On Monday, in the gargantuan space of Britain’s central Church, it will feel like time has stood still.

Two weeks ago, the boys of the Westminster Abbey Choir had no idea what was to hit them. The Queen’s death will have thrown their schoolboy lives into tumult; there is simply no event like a royal funeral or a coronation. This September, they returned from the summer holidays to the tiny Choir School which remains the only exclusive School of its kind. They expected simply the daily grind of services – at least eight per week – attended by the usual thousands of tourists and worshippers. Aged eleven, twelve and thirteen, they were unaware that the biggest gig in the world was coming their way.

James O’Donnell, who has led the Choir for twenty-two years, will have known what to do the moment the news came through. When I was a choirboy at Westminster Abbey, there were only two things we knew to learn: work hand and adapt fast. It is the best life lesson I’ll ever hear. Within hours, they would have known what music they were to sing – the music that would get a hearing beyond the imaginations of any other choir. Every note that these boys sing will echo around the world – will echo in the minds of listeners for whom Britain and its daily troubles are nothing, for whom the world of red robes and triforium galleries are another world. They will be the tones that cloak the British monarchy in its magical aura for decades to come. For many, they will be the accompaniment to the nation’s new chapter, its new age.

The Choir, a combination of boy trebles and men that has been directed by the nation’s greatest composers like Henry Purcell and Orlando Gibbons, will have rehearsed like never before. Every note has been scrutinised, every element of the service questioned, every television angle adjusted. Yet nothing will be able to erase the nerves that boys will feel as they process out into the familiar nave of the Abbey, into the choir stalls where Empires and dynasties have passed and fallen in the long passage of Britain’s history. They will walk past the graves of the scientists and scholars, poets and politicians who have shaped the globe in their actions and their understandings in ways we can but faintly grasp. I know that they will walk in excitement, fear and wonder at the moment, the majesty, and the mourning. They will express in music the mystical power of monarchy, which makes the materially insignificant passing of one elderly woman, the late Queen Elizabeth II, a paramount affair of state and a truly seminal event in that state’s history. For a time, the supernatural, the traditional and the hereditary will be linked together for praise in a secular, democratic and meritocratic world. The Choir will remember every moment, every step and every note that they sing. When they finish, when the echoes fade, when the moment passes, they will have made the music of a national era past and have sung the new song to an uncertain future. And they will continue to do so for long after the current leaders, laws and legacies have been swept away.

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