By John Quincy Adams - The Princely Collections, Vaduz-Vienna, Public Domain, Wiki Commons
Queen Elizabeth II has just overtaken Johann II of Liechtenstein as the third-longest verified reigning monarch in history. But who exactly is Johann II?
Born 5 October 1840 in Elsgrub, Margraviate of Moravia in the Austrian Empire, Johann II was the elder son of Aloys II, Prince of Liechtenstein and Countess Franziska Kinsky of Wchinitz and Tettau. Johann II ascended to the throne shortly after his 18th birthday. His reign is considered the longest precisely documented tenure of any European monarch since antiquity in which a regent, was never employed (that is a regent of a minority regency.)
The Countess would act as regent from 10 February 1859 to November 1860. She was not head of a minor regency but was appointed by her son to fulfill his duties as he wanted to finish his education before he began his rule.
In 1862, Johann II issued Liechtenstein’s first constitution and several years later in 1866, Liechtenstein left the German Confederation. Following World War I, in 1921 Johann II granted a new constitution that made the principality of a constitutional monarchy and gave political rights to commoners. The constitution would go on to survive with revisions, most notably in 2003.
Johann II would help mend relations with Liechtenstein’s traditional ally, Austria-Hungary as well as its successor states. This was in an effort to have closer relations with Switzerland, particularly after World War I. During the war, Liechtenstein would stay neutral and broke its alliance with Austria-Hungary. This led to a customs union with Switzerland.
Johann II followed in the footsteps of several family members and never married nor did he have any children. Following his death in 1929, he was succeeded by his brother, Franz I.
Johann II’s reign lasted 70 years and 91 days. He is considered the second-longest of any monarch in European history. King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand was known for his record-long reign as well.
The symphony was written for a full orchestra and was Mendelssohn's second extended symphony. It was not published until 1868, 21 years after the composer's death – hence its numbering as '5'. Although the symphony is not very frequently performed, it is better known today than when it was originally published. Mendelssohn's sister, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, chose the name ReformationSymphony.
By the time, Mendelssohn began writing his ReformationSymphony in 1829, he was still only 20 but had moved far beyond child-prodigy status. In fact, he had already launched a revival of Bach's music with his celebrated performances of the St. Matthew was one of the most renowned musicians in Germany as a pianist and conductor as well as composer. But this Symphony was to become one of the few major disappointments in a career marked more by triumphs than failures.
With his growing celebrity, Mendelssohn had every expectation he would be called upon to compose music for the gala commemoration of the 300th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession — Martin Luther's declaration of the doctrines of the new Protestant faith — in Berlin on June 25, 1830. Though born into an illustrious Jewish family — his grandfather was the noted philosopher Moses Mendelssohn — Mendelssohn was baptized at seven and reared in the Lutheran Church. Thus, the Augsburg tercentenary stimulated the most ambitious orchestral work he'd yet tackled, grand and heroic in tone and scored for a large ensemble with full brass complement.
However by the time he completed the work in May 1830, Mendelssohn already knew his new symphony would not be played at the Berlin celebration. Many commentators have claimed the festivities were cancelled, but musicologist Judith Silber has recently produced contemporary newspaper evidence that they did in fact take place, with music by the now forgotten Eduard Groll. Why was Mendelssohn passed over for this occasion? No one knows for certain, but it seems that choral music to appropriate religious texts was used and that Mendelssohn's purely instrumental symphony may not have seemed suitable. And anti-Semitism may also have played a part.
Believing in his symphony, over the next two years Mendelssohn urgently but vainly sought a premiere in Munich, Leipzig, and Paris. Paris dealt him a wounding blow when, after one rehearsal of the work, he was told the Conservatoire musicians found the work “too learned, [with] too much fugato, [and] too little melody.” No performance took place, though a cholera epidemic in the city that closed all theaters may have sunk the symphony rather than the musicians' quibbles. Finally, a belated premiere took place in Berlin on November 15, 1832 to mixed reviews.
Gradually, Mendelssohn turned against his ill-starred symphony and declared it a failure. In 1838 he wrote: “I can hardly stand the Reformation Symphony anymore and would rather burn it than any other piece of mine; [it] shall never be published.” And indeed the work was not published until 1868, two decades after his death. Therefore, it received the misleading designation of “Symphony No. 5,” though it was actually the second of his mature symphonies, predating the “Scottish” and the “Italian.”
This stirring, richly contrapuntal work, however, has finally come into its own as one of Mendelssohn's most frequently performed scores. Its first movement rises from the low strings in a solemn layering of instrumental entrances that Silber calls “a brilliant orchestral evocation of Renaissance polyphony.” Last to enter are the violins, who softly sing the traditional Protestant “Dresden Amen,” which Wagner later exploited in his religious opera Parsifal (heard here last season). Wind fanfares accentuate the ceremonial mood. A bold and militant ascending theme introduces the Allegromain section; marked “con fuoco” — “with fire” — it seems a musical portrait of the pugnacious Luther and the fierce struggle between Catholics and Protestants in the 16th century. Fanfares drive the middle development section, which grows steadily in volume and turbulence. Then a surprise: the violins softly repeat the “Dresden Amen,” and Luther's fiery theme returns, now subdued and almost gentle.
The two middle movements are lyrical interludes, contrasting with the heroic outer movements. First comes the scherzo: a robust German folk dance emphasizing crisp rhythms and including a wonderfully outdoorsy (with trilling woodwind birds) trio section in the middle. Movement three is a lovely “Song Without Words” for the first violins with discreet orchestral accompaniment.
Mendelssohn meets Queen Victoria and Prince Albert
This leads without pause into the opening of the finale, with a solo flute chastely singing Luther's great hymn “Ein feste Burg” — “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” Gradually, other instruments join in, swelling the majesty of the chorale. Phrases of the chorale in different instruments over a galloping rhythm lead to the Allegro maestoso of a movement Silber calls “a hybrid of sonata form and chorale variations.” Throughout, elaborate fugal passages recall another great Lutheran musician, J. S. Bach. A grandly stretched-out reprise of “A Mighty Fortress” by the full orchestra makes a splendidly triumphant conclusion.
Her Majesty has been ‘actively involved’ in every detail of the plans for Duke of Edinburgh’s memorial service in Westminster Abbey
The Queen on Tuesday fulfilled the Duke of Edinburgh’s final wishes with a moving service of thanksgiving, incorporating the hymns, themes and guests he was denied in his Covid-19 lockdown funeral.
The Queen has been “actively involved” in every detail of the plans for the Westminster Abbey service, which included flowers paying tribute to their wedding day, honoured guests from his hundreds of charities, and the rousing sound of the full congregation singing Guide me, O thou great Redeemer.
The Queen attended the service in person, entering via Poet’s Corner for a short walk to her seat and a 45-minute-long service to maximise her comfort.
The Duke’s older great-grandchildren attended giving the younger generation of his family the chance to honour their much-loved great-grandfather.
Only 30 people were allowed to attend his funeral in April, where the Queen sat alone in line with coronavirus rules.
The Queen sat alone at her husband's funeral last year amid Covid rules CREDIT: WPA Pool
The service of thanksgiving is intended to allow the Duke’s wider friends and family, as well as hundreds of people connected to his charity patronages, the chance to come together in loving memory and admiration of his 99 years.
The Queen’s personal touch was felt during the service, with the orchids that formed part of her 1947 wedding bouquet being incorporated into small posies of flowers.
The spiky blue flowers of eryngium, known as sea holly, represented the Duke’s naval career and lifelong affection for the sea, in larger floral arrangements which have been thought through in meticulous detail.
All flowers were red, white or blue, in a final act of patriotism from the Duke who gave up his naval career for a life of public service.
The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh look at their homemade wedding anniversary card, given to them by their great grandchildren, ahead of their 73rd wedding anniversary
The event, which was attended by more than 30 members of foreign Royal families as well as all senior working members of the British Royal Family, was broadcast on BBC One.
Other notable guests included Sir David Attenborough, who has known the Duke and Queen for much of their working lives after producing Her Majesty’s Christmas broadcast for the BBC and finding kinship over their shared love of the natural world.
Dame Floella Benjamin, the broadcaster who has said he was “kind and supportive to me on many occasions” and Baroness Grey-Thompson, the chairperson of trustees of the UK Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme who last year described the programme as a “testament to his imagination and thoughtfulness”.
The Duke of York accompanied the Queen to the Abbey as his daughters and sons-in-law were present . The Duchess of York was absent, as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
The service saw the Duke celebrated for his “gifts of character; for his humour and resilience; his fortitude and devotion to duty”.
The congregation also heard of his “service as a Consort, liege man of life and limb, and of earthly worship to Her Majesty”, of his “devotion to family, to nation and to Commonwealth” and of his “strength and constancy”.
The congregation also heard Prince Philip's 'earthly worship to Her Majesty' throughout their marriage CREDIT: The Countess of Wessex
Duke's 'energy and spirit of adventure' to be celebrated
In particular, the congregation celebrated his “energy and spirit of adventure”, both in working with the young to improve their chances in life and his “good stewardship of the environment”.
His interest in bringing different religions together will be reflected in a guest list from numerous “faith communities”, as well as his charities.
An address was be given by 28-year-old Doyin Sonibare, who attained her Bronze, Silver and Gold Duke of Edinburgh Awards through her youth club in Barking, London, and credits them with changing her life and prospects.
Nine recent Gold Award holders lined the Abbey steps as guests arrive, along with young members of the UK Cadet Force Associations.
Doyin Sonibare, who attained her Bronze, Silver and Gold Duke of Edinburgh Awards through her youth club in Barking, London
The Duke became Colonel-in-Chief of the Army Cadet Force in 1953, and was particularly proud of his influence in changing the lives of young people through practical programmes.
He also hoped to include something of his active role in running the Royal Estates of Windsor, Sandringham and Balmoral, which will be represented by three of the Queen’s domestic chaplains - one from each estate - offering prayers.
While the Duke’s funeral service took place without hymns from the congregation, with singing banned under lockdown rules, the 1,800-strong congregation were invited to sing Guide me, O thou great Redeemer.
The hymn had been part of plans for the funeral drawn up pre-Covid, code-named “Forth Bridge”, at the Duke’s specific request.
The Duke had also asked for the choir to sing Te Deum in C by Benjamin Britten. The eclectic list of music included the moving Pacific theme by Blake Neely and Hans Zimmer, composed for a television mini-series about a US marine corps fighting in the Pacific during the Second World War.
The final piece of music, The Seafarers, was played by The Band of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines Portsmouth as the guests depart Westminster Abbey.
The service was sung by the Choirs of Westminster Abbey, and Her Majesty’s Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace.
The Dean of Westminster, The Very Reverend David Hoyle, also conducted the service and gave the bidding describing the late Duke as "a man of rare ability and distinction, rightly honoured and celebrated, he ever directed our attention away from himself".
"Working at pace, with so many claims on his attention, he encouraged us to focus, as he was focused, on the things that matter," he will say.
More than 200 of Duke's charities were represented
"His was a discipline and character that seized opportunity and overcame obstruction and difficulty.
"We recall, with affection and respect, the sustained offering of a long life lived fully."
The Right Reverend David Conner, the Dean of Windsor who led the funeral service, gave the address, and the Archbishop of Canterbury with the Blessing
More than 200 of the Duke’s charities were represented, with two guests invited from each.
They range from the Royal College of Physicians and The Royal Academy of Engineering and the Worldwide Fund for Nature to the Crathie Cricket Club, the Garrick Club and the Guinea Pig Club with its membership of men who had experimental plastic surgery after being grievously injured in the Second World War.
Buckingham Palace said the service “will give thanks for The Duke of Edinburgh’s dedication to family, Nation and Commonwealth and recognise the importance of his legacy in creating opportunities for young people, promoting environmental stewardship and conservation, and supporting the Armed Forces.”
“The Queen was actively involved in the plans for today’s Service of Thanksgiving, with many elements reflecting Her Majesty’s wishes,” a spokesman confirmed.
The Queen, who has recently suffered mobility problems, was on Monday still hoping to lead her family at the event.
The service showcased his dedication to family, Nation, and Commonwealth and paid tribute to his contribution to public life & steadfast support for over 700 charitable organisations.
n the plans that exist for the death of the Queen – and there are many versions, held by the plans that exist for the death of the Queen – and there are many versions, held by Buckingham Palace, the government and the BBC – most envisage that she will die after a short illness. Her family and doctors will be there. When the Queen Mother passed away on the afternoon of Easter Saturday, in 2002, at the Royal Lodge in Windsor, she had time to telephone friends to say goodbye, and to give away some of her horses. In these last hours, the Queen’s senior doctor, a gastroenterologist named Professor Huw Thomas, will be in charge. He will look after his patient, control access to her room and consider what information should be made public. The bond between sovereign and subjects is a strange and mostly unknowable thing. A nation’s life becomes a person’s, and then the string must break.
There will be bulletins from the palace – not many, but enough. “The Queen is suffering from great physical prostration, accompanied by symptoms which cause much anxiety,” announced Sir James Reid, Queen Victoria’s physician, two days before her death in 1901. “The King’s life is moving peacefully towards its close,” was the final notice issued by George V’s doctor,Lord Dawson, at 9.30pm on the night of 20 January 1936.
Not long afterwards, Dawson injected the king with 750mg of morphine and a gram of cocaine – enough to kill him twice over – in order to ease the monarch’s suffering, and to have him expire in time for the printing presses of the Times, which rolled at midnight.
Her eyes will be closed and Charles will be king. His siblings will kiss his hands. The first official to deal with the news will be Sir Christopher Geidt, the Queen’s private secretary, a former diplomat who was given a second knighthood in 2014, in part for planning her succession.
Geidt will contact the prime minister. The last time a British monarch died, 65 years ago, the demise of George VI was conveyed in a code word, “Hyde Park Corner”, to Buckingham Palace, to prevent switchboard operators from finding out.
For Elizabeth II, the plan for what happens next is known as “London Bridge.” The prime minister will be woken, if she is not already awake, and civil servants will say “London Bridge is down” on secure lines. From the Foreign Office’s Global Response Centre, at an undisclosed location in the capital, the news will go out to the 15 governments outside the UK where the Queen is also the head of state, and the 36 other nations of the Commonwealth for whom she has served as a symbolic figurehead – a face familiar in dreams and the untidy drawings of a billion schoolchildren – since the dawn of the atomic age.
For a time, she will be gone without our knowing it. The information will travel like the compressional wave ahead of an earthquake, detectable only by special equipment. Governors general, ambassadors and prime ministers will learn first. Cupboards will be opened in search of black armbands, three-and-a-quarter inches wide, to be worn on the left arm.
The rest of us will find out more quickly than before. On 6 February 1952, George VI was found by his valet at Sandringham at 7.30am. The BBC did not broadcast the news until 11.15am, almost four hours later. When Princess Diana died at 4am local time at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris on 31 August 1997, journalists accompanying the former foreign secretary, Robin Cook, on a visit to the Philippines knew within 15 minutes. For many years the BBC was told about royal deaths first, but its monopoly on broadcasting to the empire has gone now. When the Queen dies, the announcement will go out as a newsflash to the Press Association and the rest of the world’s media simultaneously. At the same instant, a footman in mourning clothes will emerge from a door at Buckingham Palace, cross the dull pink gravel and pin a black-edged notice to the gates. While he does this, the palace website will be transformed into a sombre, single page, showing the same text on a dark background.
Screens will glow. There will be tweets. At the BBC, the “radio alert transmission system” (Rats), will be activated – a cold war-era alarm designed to withstand an attack on the nation’s infrastructure. Rats, which is also sometimes referred to as “royal about to snuff it”, is a near mythical part of the intricate architecture of ritual and rehearsals for the death of major royal personalities that the BBC has maintained since the 1930s. Most staff have only ever seen it work in tests; many have never seen it work at all. “Whenever there is a strange noise in the newsroom, someone always asks, ‘Is that the Rats?’ Because we don’t know what it sounds like,” one regional reporter told me.
All news organisations will scramble to get films on air and obituaries online. At the Guardian, the deputy editor has a list of prepared stories pinned to his wall. The Times is said to have 11 days of coverage ready to go. At Sky News and ITN, which for years rehearsed the death of the Queen substituting the name “Mrs Robinson”, calls will go out to royal experts who have already signed contracts to speak exclusively on those channels. “I am going to be sitting outside the doors of the Abbey on a hugely enlarged trestle table commentating to 300 million Americans about this,” one told me.
For people stuck in traffic, or with Heart FM on in the background, there will only be the subtlest of indications, at first, that something is going on.Britain’s commercial radio stations have a network of blue “obit lights”, which is tested once a week and supposed to light up in the event of a national catastrophe. When the news breaks, these lights will start flashing, to alert DJs to switch to the news in the next few minutes and to play inoffensive music in the meantime. Every station, down to hospital radio, has prepared music lists made up of “Mood 2” (sad) or “Mood 1” (saddest) songs to reach for in times of sudden mourning. “If you ever hear Haunted Dancehall (Nursery Remix) by Sabres of Paradise on daytime Radio 1, turn the TV on,” wrote Chris Price, a BBC radio producer, for the Huffington Post in 2011. “Something terrible has just happened.”
Having plans in place for the death of leading royals is a practice that makes some journalists uncomfortable. “There is one story which is deemed to be so much more important than others,” one former Today programme producer complained to me. For 30 years, BBC news teams were hauled to work on quiet Sunday mornings to perform mock storylines about the Queen Mother choking on a fishbone. There was once a scenario about Princess Diana dying in a car crash on the M4.
These well-laid plans have not always helped. In 2002, when the Queen Mother died, the obit lights didn’t come on because someone failed to push the button down properly. On the BBC, Peter Sissons, the veteran anchor, was criticised for wearing a maroon tie. Sissons was the victim of a BBC policy change, issued after the September 11 attacks, to moderate its coverage and reduce the number of “category one” royals eligible for the full obituary procedure. The last words in Sissons’s ear before going on air were: “Don’t go overboard. She’s a very old woman who had to go some time.”
But there will be no extemporising with the Queen. The newsreaders will wear black suits and black ties. Category one was made for her. Programmes will stop. Networks will merge. BBC 1, 2 and 4 will be interrupted and revert silently to their respective idents – an exercise class in a village hall, a swan waiting on a pond – before coming together for the news. Listeners to Radio 4 and Radio 5 live will hear a specific formulation of words, “This is the BBC from London,” which, intentionally or not, will summon a spirit of national emergency.
The main reason for rehearsals is to have words that are roughly approximate to the moment. “It is with the greatest sorrow that we make the following announcement,” said John Snagge, the BBC presenter who informed the world of the death of George VI. (The news was repeated seven times, every 15 minutes, and then the BBC went silent for five hours). According to one former head of BBC news, a very similar set of words will be used for the Queen. The rehearsals for her are different to the other members of the family, he explained. People become upset, and contemplate the unthinkable oddness of her absence. “She is the only monarch that most of us have ever known,” he said. The royal standard will appear on the screen. The national anthem will play. You will remember where you were.
When people think of a contemporary royal death in Britain, they think, inescapably, of Diana. The passing of the Queen will be monumental by comparison. It may not be as nakedly emotional, but its reach will be wider, and its implications more dramatic. “It will be quite fundamental,” as one former courtier told me.
Part of the effect will come from the overwhelming weight of things happening. The routine for modern royal funerals is more or less familiar (Diana’s was based on “Tay Bridge”, the plan for the Queen Mother’s). But the death of a British monarch, and the accession of a new head of state, is a ritual that is passing out of living memory: three of the Queen’s last four prime ministers were born after she came to the throne. When she dies, both houses of parliament will be recalled, people will go home from work early, and aircraft pilots will announce the news to their passengers. In the nine days that follow (in London Bridge planning documents, these are known as “D-day”, “D+1” and so on) there will be ritual proclamations, a four-nation tour by the new king, bowdlerised television programming, and a diplomatic assembling in London not seen since the death of Winston Churchill in 1965.
More overwhelming than any of this, though, there will be an almighty psychological reckoning for the kingdom that she leaves behind. The Queen is Britain’s last living link with our former greatness – the nation’s id, its problematic self-regard – which is still defined by our victory in the second world war. One leading historian, who like most people I interviewed for this article declined to be named, stressed that the farewell for this country’s longest-serving monarch will be magnificent. “Oh, she will get everything,” he said. “We were all told that the funeral of Churchill was the requiem for Britain as a great power. But actually it will really be over when she goes.”
Unlike the US presidency, say, monarchies allow huge passages of time – a century, in some cases – to become entwined with an individual. The second Elizabethan age is likely to be remembered as a reign of uninterrupted national decline, and even, if she lives long enough and Scotland departs the union, as one of disintegration. Life and politics at the end of her rule will be unrecognisable from their grandeur and innocence at its beginning. “We don’t blame her for it,” Philip Ziegler, the historian and royal biographer, told me. “We have declined with her, so to speak.”
The obituary films will remind us what a different country she inherited. One piece of footage will be played again and again: from her 21st birthday, in 1947, when Princess Elizabeth was on holiday with her parents in Cape Town. She was 6,000 miles from home and comfortably within the pale of the British Empire. The princess sits at a table with a microphone. The shadow of a tree plays on her shoulder. The camera adjusts three or four times as she talks, and on each occasion, she twitches momentarily, betraying tiny flashes of aristocratic irritation. “I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service, and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong,” she says, enunciating vowels and a conception of the world that have both vanished.
It is not unusual for a country to succumb to a state of denial as a long chapter in its history is about to end. When it became public that Queen Victoria was dying, at the age of 82, a widow for half her life, “astonished grief … swept the country”, wrote her biographer, Lytton Strachey. In the minds of her subjects, the queen’s mortality had become unimaginable; and with her demise, everything was suddenly at risk, placed in the hands of an elderly and untrusted heir, Edward VII. “The wild waters are upon us now,” wrote the American Henry James, who had moved to London 30 years before.
The parallels with the unease that we will feel at the death of Elizabeth II are obvious, but without the consolation of Britain’s status in 1901 as the world’s most successful country. “We have to have narratives for royal events,” the historian told me. “In the Victorian reign, everything got better and better, and bigger and bigger. We certainly can’t tell that story today.”
The result is an enormous objection to even thinking about – let alone talking or writing about – what will happen when the Queen dies. We avoid the subject as we avoid it in our own families. It seems like good manners, but it is also fear. The reporting for this article involved dozens of interviews with broadcasters, government officials, and departed palace staff, several of whom have worked on London Bridge directly. Almost all insisted on complete secrecy. “This meeting never happened,” I was told after one conversation in a gentleman’s club on Pall Mall. Buckingham Palace, meanwhile, has a policy of not commenting on funeral arrangements for members of the royal family.
By the time, Mendelssohn began writing his ReformationSymphony in 1829, he was still only 20 but had moved far beyond child-prodigy status. In fact, he had already launched a revival of Bach's music with his celebrated performances of the St. Matthew was one of the most renowned musicians in Germany as a pianist and conductor as well as composer. But this Symphony was to become one of the few major disappointments in a career marked more by triumphs than failures.
The two middle movements are lyrical interludes, contrasting with the heroic outer movements. First comes the scherzo: a robust German folk dance emphasizing crisp rhythms and including a wonderfully outdoorsy (with trilling woodwind birds) trio section in the middle. Movement three is a lovely “Song Without Words” for the first violins with discreet orchestral accompaniment.
