CORONATION CHATTER.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue 7395, 22 February 1902, Page 2 (Supplement)

CORONATION CHATTER.

| We aeem likely to be "obsessed" by the Coronation until it is over and done with. Definite information as to festivities by which it will be marked is scanty, but out of the rumours, reports, and understandings, enterprising journalists extract an abundance of copy. One tells us that "Coronatia" will be a favourite name for daughters this year. Another, apropos of the assiduous hunting of the rabbit which supplies the lining for Coronation, robes, bursts into this neat little couplet in the "Onlooker":— "Hail, day of buntingr, Britain's gone a hunting. To find her peers a rabbit skin To view the Coronation in." It is definitely settled that immediately at the close of the Easter services, on Ist April to be precise, Westminster Abbey will be closed to the public and handed over to the Chief Commissioner of Works to be transformed and decorated for the ceremony. The ancient structure is likely to be somewhat the worse for wear when all the stands that must be erected to accommodate some 4000 spectators are finally dismantled. Among those invited will be the Lords and Commons, Judges of the High Courts, Knights Grand Cross, Lord Mayors, Royal and State Officials, and representatives of reigning, families and foreign nations. Sir Frederick Bridge is to be responsible for the musical arrange1 ments, and is to submit suggestions to the King. It is tolerably certain that the musical programme will be a good deal shorter than it was at Queen Victoria's Coronation, when there were four anthems, the Litany, Boyce's Te Deum, the Hallelujah Chorus, and several . other pieces. Doubtless Handel's anthem, "Zadok, the Priest," composed for George ll's. coronation, and used at every coronation since, will be sung on this occasion also. Probably the body of performers will be smaller than that in 1838, when there was a band of 117 players, and a chorus of 288 vocalists; the instrumentalists being dressed in scarlet uniforms, with the male singers in surplices, and the women in white dresses, and the whole party being stationed on a special gallery or orchestra erected on the site of the present organ screen, bxit extending far into the nave. Nor are there likely to be any of the scandals in connection with the music that existed at Queen Victoria's Coronation, when the Earl Marshal had to pay £500 to redeem the Abbey organ, as it was claimed as a perquisite, and when thanks to the Court fiction that the choir of Westminster Abbey for this ceremonial became a Chapel Royal, and was under the control of the Bishop of London as Dean of the Chapel Royal, Sir George Smart was pitchforked into the office of Composer, although wholly unsuited to the post, and despite the fact that the Queen had expressed a well-merited preference for Sir Henry Bishop, composer of I'Home, Sweet Home." Sir George Smart on that occasion sold some of the seats in the choir and orchestra to outsiders wholly ignorant of music and anxious only to see the ceremonial. Even the price Sir George asked was openly stated, namely £30 . a seat. No doubt he considered it more or less a perquisite, for even the great Purcell sold to the public seats in the organ loft in the Coronation of William and Mary, but was promptly brought to book by the Chapter, who ordered that his salary should cease until he had paid back the money to the Treasurer, which accordingly he did.

Apropos of music, it is not yet settled whether we are -to refer to the King in the National Anthem as "Our Lord the King-," "Our Gracious King," or "Our Noble King." Some publishers appealed to the King himself to fix the official version, but His Majesty modestly refused to decide.

"You'll get run in," said the pedestrian to the cyclist without a light. "You'll get run into," responded the rider, as he knocked the other down. "You'll get run in, tolo," said the policeman as he stepped from behind |i -tree and grabbed the bicycle. Just then another scorcher came along

without a light so .the policeman had to run in two.