Andrew Nethsingha: The man who made the coronation sing

A man who overcame the pressure of directing the music for the King’s coronation in front of an audience of hundreds of millions must have a few stress-busting tips.

It turns out that Andrew Nethsingha, Westminster Abbey’s director of music, has just that - but his method is not for the faint-hearted.

The organist, who previously worked at St John’s College, Cambridge, for 15 years, revealed he simply wrote down a list of “the 70 or 80 things” that could go awry during Saturday’s coronation service so he could prepare for every eventuality.

“It’s a colossal responsibility - I’ve been trying to build up my personal techniques for coping with pressure,” he says.

“One technique I use is to get a notebook and write down all the things that you can think of that might go wrong so that when one or two of them happen in a rehearsal the idea, theoretically, is you then just serenely tick them off in your head, as opposed to getting into a complete state over them. Because my natural tendency is if something goes wrong that I get extremely agitated.

“If you can manage to stay positive, reassuring and encouraging and seem not to mind too much, then it puts the choir at ease, but if you get agitated about it, it makes people quite uptight and that’s not good for them mentally. It also makes the music sound not as good if people are very nervous.”

Andrew only began working as the abbey’s director of music and principal conductor of its choir in January, but he was appointed last summer. After Queen Elizabeth’s death in September, he knew one of his first tasks would be the coronation for King Charles III.

He explains: “I think I’m only the fourth organist of Westminster Abbey to do this since the time of Henry Purcell in the late 17th century, so it’s quite a privilege. I’ve been reading biographies and autobiographies of people who’ve been in charge of the service before and last time around the man who was in charge then tried very hard to resign three days before. The one who did it for Edward VII was very ill afterwards because it had taken a toll. it’s kind of the ultimate test of mental resilience in a way.

“I was appointed in July, before the Queen had died, and I certainly didn’t expect to be doing the Coronation so soon. But I suppose statistically there was a reasonable chance that the coronation would come up at some point in the next decade or so. But I have been thrown in the deep end and I had to do a great deal of the planning while I was still working in Cambridge. Having got to London at the beginning of January, it’s been pretty full on.”

Part of that planning included working with King Charles to choose the music for the service, something he had not expected.

“I had a lot of interaction with the King about it,” says Andrew.

“I think probably my predecessors in the previous four coronations would have been left to their own devices much more. But King Charles has a very strong interest in music so he wanted to be much more closely involved. And that’s exciting, to have a monarch who is curious and who is so interested in knowledgable about the art form.

“I had a very enjoyable meeting with him in Windsor before Christmas, which was when we finalised most of the content. It was lovely discussing it with him and again amazing to be able to say, why don’t we do this piece that was written in 1937 for your grandfather’s coronation? And to be able to pick up a piece of music and take it over to him and point things out…”

The music during the service certainly appeared to go off without a hitch and showcased a range of musical styles and performers blending tradition, heritage and ceremony with new musical voices. Among the pieces were 12 new commissions, all composed for the occasion by world-renowned British composers from the worlds of sacred, classical, theatre, film and television music. They included a Coronation Anthem by Andrew Lloyd Webber, a Coronation March by Patrick Doyle, a commission for solo organ by Iain Farrington, and new works by Sarah Class, Nigel Hess, Paul Mealor, Tarik O’Regan, Roxanna Panufnik, Shirley Thompson, Judith Weir, Roderick Williams and Debbie Wiseman.

Music from former coronations included Handel’s Zadok the Priest, which was sung as the King was being crowned, and Parry’s I Was Glad, which was played as the King entered the abbey.

Andrew says: “There are so many highlights really, but to be conducting an iconic piece like Handel’s Zadok the Priest, which every singer in the world knows and loves, that was specifically composed for the moment when a king was anointed in Westminster Abbey, and to be performing it for the very moment when a king is anointed in Westminster Abbey nearly 300 years later, that was a pretty extraordinary experience.”

Describing Parry’s I Was Glad, he said: “I struggle to think of another piece of sacred music that is perfectly and specifically designed for a particular occasion.”

Another highlight for Andrew was bringing girl choristers into the service, something which his predecessor at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation had expressly forbidden.

He said: “Having girl choristers singing was a wonderful thing. Because actually that didn’t happen in the 20th-century coronations. I have a whole file of letters from the man who was in charge of the music then between him and then Archbishop of Canterbury in 1953, with their advice about the next coronation that under no circumstances should anybody allow girls to sing. So I was very pleased to be able to disobey my predecessors in that respect.”

The enormity of the task of directing the music at the coronation did weigh on him and Andrew admits to some emotional moments in the build up to the big day.

He says: “I’m sure lots of people felt emotional watching on the telly. But when you’re in the dress rehearsal and everyone is there apart from the King and Queen and all this great procession comes in at the beginning of the service, it’s overwhelming. And then somebody says over the speaker, the diamond state carriage is arriving at the west front and Queen is entering the west front and the King has now arrived. The enormity of the thing gets to you.

“In the dress rehearsal I found myself crying about five or six times before just before the service and the beginning part of the service. And then I had a day off the the day before the service itself and wandered around in London. I found myself bursting into tears again. Because you just go around the corner and you see a thousand people dressed in Union Jacks. Everywhere you turn you’re reminded just how huge this event is. I had lots of policemen with machine guns outside my front door for 72 hours before the service. There were police everywhere. Just the scale of the event is unlike anything else that’s happened in the last 70 years. It was pretty extraordinary. But I’m back down to earth now.”

Andrew is married to Cllr Lucy Nethsingha, the Liberal Democrat leader of Cambridgeshire County Council. She attended the dress rehearsal but was watching the actual coronation on TV in a house next door to the abbey.

Andrew says: “We managed to get the TV fixed up the night before so my family could watch it. There was a fair amount of partying after the service as you can imagine. They were able to be part of that so I was very glad to have them around.”