BBC - David Starkey's Music and Monarchy (2013) Part 3 Great British Music

David Starkey's Music and Monarchy

Historian David Starkey presents this documentary exploring the role Britain's kings and queens have played in shaping the nation's music. In much the same way as artists from other fields, musicians were often reliant on royal houses for patronage - with the vast resources possessed by the rulers of the nation often necessary to fund or stage the most ambitious projects. Starkey explores the influence of such patronage on the growth of music in Britain, tracing how even composers such as Purcell, Handel and Elgar were influenced by royal requirements, and the political significance of much of the resulting music.

Part 3: Great British Music

Dr David Starkey's exploration of how the monarchy shaped Britain's music reaches the 18th century, when Great Britain became a dominant military and economic power, and the century which brought us patriotic classics such as God Save the King - the world's first national anthem - and Rule Britannia. Yet this was a time when the monarchy had never been more fragile, having lost much of its political and religious power and imported its ruling house from abroad. The supreme irony was that it was a musician from Germany, George Frideric Handel, who gave Great Britain and its new royal dynasty its distinctive musical voice. David also discovers the true stories behind Handel's Water Music, written to accompany George I on a trip along the Thames, as well as his Music for Royal Fireworks, full of military instruments at the insistence of the soldier-king George II. He also visits the country estate of Cliveden in Buckinghamshire, where Thomas Arne's Rule Britannia was first performed as an act of defiance by an heir to the throne.

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