Every second of Queen Elizabeth II‘s funeral was planned years in advance, including a special piece of music that was played at Westminster Abbey. Composer and conductor Sir James MacMillan was commissioned to write an eight-part choir for the funeral in 2011. The piece was never performed until Sept. 19, and McMillan had never even heard it rehearsed.
MacMillan was invited to the funeral, but could not attend because he stayed at home in Scotland with his wife, who had recently broken her foot. “I watched it with my wife on the television,” MacMillan told BBC News on Dec. 3. “It was a pinch-me moment really.” MacMillan said he was “astonished” to be part of the first funeral for a U.K. monarch since 1952.
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Now that his piece has been performed, MacMillan can describe how it came to be. He said he was approached by Westminster Abbey in “deep secrecy” in 2011. “It was for the commendation part of the funeral service and I was asked to keep very quiet about it and not tell anybody,” the Scottish composer told BBC News. “It was the text ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?‘, which I was told was one of the Queen’s favorite passages from scripture and that strangely hadn’t been set a lot to music.”
Although MacMillan knew how important the piece would be, he wrote it very quickly. He wanted the music to feel intensely personal, but still appropriate for such an important and spiritual moment. When he completed the piece, he submitted it to Westminster Abbey and it remained in secret until September. “They didn’t want any indication of these plans coming out,” MacMillan recalled.
After learning of the Queen’s death on Sept. 8, MacMillan remembered that his music would play an important part in the funeral. He pulled the score out of his records to remind himself what it would sound like. “It’s always different when you play it on the piano – but that’s what composing is, you’ve got to imagine sounds that are not in the room with you,” he said.
MacMillan is unsure how much input Queen Elizabeth had on the music chosen for her funeral. He met her several times, including in 2015 when he was knighted. He also knows that King Charles III has been a fan of his work. He believes Queen Elizabeth chose the Bible text, which is taken from Romans Chapter 8. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,” reads the text.
“There’s a sense of hope for the future,” MacMillan said of the text. “The words pointed to her deep faith, she was a persuasive and quiet advocate of the Christian perspective, communicating in a way that many clergies can’t manage.”
MacMillan was the only living composer whose work was played at the funeral. He was already considered among the world’s leading composers, but the funeral has only risen his profile. “I’m beginning to hear about performances of the piece all over the world,” he told BBC News. “It’s one the most significant things that has ever happened to me.”
