#coronation-music

#coronation-music

David Beckham is co-designing a garden at the Chelsea flower show with King Charles, and he has been given a garden gnome to paint for charity.

Buckingham Palace confirmed that King Charles and Queen Camilla's state visit to the US will occur in late April, marking the king's first visit as monarch.

The Royal Philharmonic Society, founded in London in 1813, is one of the oldest music societies in the world. Among other things, it's famous for commissioning Beethoven's 9th Symphony. It's a charitable organisation that quietly sits at the heart of the British classical music world, with projects that include helping young players fund professional-standard instruments, empowering female conductors, and supporting commissions for composers.

Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

Perhaps it's fitting that Al Bowlly's death is as well-remembered as his life, or rather, as his voice. After all, his most celebrated appearance in popular culture wasn't physical, but spectral. In Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), when Jack Torrance enters the ballroom and the ballad titled Midnight, the Stars and You (1934) plays, the film reaches one of its most memorable moments.

Music and England's royal coronations are inextricable. Since the mid-eighteenth century, the coronations of the nation's monarchs have been elevated by the works of prominent composers, most notably the opulent coronation anthem, "Zadok the Priest." This piece, with its regal instrumentation that consists of orchestra-including timpani and brass-and choir, was one of four anthems written by the prolific and celebrated eighteenth-century composer George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) for King George II's coronation on October 11, 1727.

When did you last read a good news story about classical music? Think of the stories that have made the headlines in recent years: funding cuts to national opera companies, closure threats to university music departments, councils axing local provision, classroom music-making in decline. Successes reported only tend to be reprieves or salvages in the face of such crises, fought for by a sector running out of fuel to keep defending itself.

In a social media post reporting that the King would cooperate with the police investigation into his brother Andrew's ties with the late serial sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, CBS News mistakenly referred to the monarch as King Charles II a distant ancestor of King Charles III who died more than 300 years ago in 1685. The mistake, which was slapped with a community note on X, quickly went viral, with social media users dunking on the suggestion that a 17th-century monarch had been reached for comment.

Many said travelling to the US at this moment would hand Donald Trump an unwelcome diplomatic win and risk appearing to legitimise policies and rhetoric they strongly oppose. Some argued the King's presence could be interpreted as an endorsement of the current administration, particularly given criticism of its approach to foreign policy, immigration and international alliances.

This was the Trial of the Pyx - an ancient ceremony that is still, in every sense, a proper legal process. Held annually, it exists to answer a simple question - is the coin in your pocket good and true? As Master of the Royal Mint, the Chancellor is technically in the dock. If the Mint were found guilty, m'Lord, of fiddling the figures, the responsibility would be hers.