The Queen’s state funeral will be a day that highlights the “wonderful things that can happen in music”, the Master of the King’s Music has said.
Judith Weir served the late monarch as Master of the Queen’s music until her death, having become the first woman appointed to the position in 2014.
After Charles’s ascension to the throne, Ms Weir becomes Master of the King’s Music until her term ends in 2024.
She the Queen’s funeral will be an “important day” that will touch millions.
“It will be a beautiful day, we will see the most wonderful things that can happen in music,” she told the BBC. “I think also an important moment for us to really realise that we will not be seeing the Queen again.
“She won’t pop up as she so often did, even in the last year doing some delightful things, cutting a cake at the WI or something. She has died, this is our reality moment.”
The composer and musician, 68, also spoke about the Queen’s delight for music.
She said: “In my experience, she was a person who had a lot of music in her life. She had had a very musical upbringing, piano lessons, used to sing amateur theatricals when she was young.
“But of course, in her mature life she was surrounded by music, she really admired those wonderful military bands.
“She was a committed church-goer and head of the English church, she went at least once a week and she and her husband really listened to that beautiful Anglican music and could really differentiate between it.
“I would say also, of course, she was a young person in the 40s and would have heard a lot of great show music of that time.
“I don’t remember her being assertive about pieces of music but she was very clear about good or bad performances, whether people had done well or not.
“I think that is why a good word from her was worth having.”
Follow the latest updates as Queen Elizabeth II is laid to rest
