Seven fascinating stories about the Queen’s relationship with music

There's a tale told by Lady Elizabeth Anson, the Queen's cousin, about her early exposure to opera, which appears to have had a lasting effect: "She told me the other day that when I think Princess Margaret was about 11 and she was about 13 they were taken to The Ring, to Wagner. And instead of being just terribly bored by it, they found it hysterically funny that someone was singing a sentence as opposed to hurrying-up and saying it.

And I think she said they got shoved to the back of the Royal Box, because nobody wants to see the fact that they were giggling so much. I have a feeling that was the last of her opera days."

They would probably have preferred this 90-second explanation of Wagner's epic, by Richard Miles from the Wagner Society.

When the Royal Family visits Scotland, there's one musical sound that begins and ends each day, the bagpipes, an instrument on which Her Majesty is something of an expert.

The Honourable Margaret Rhodes, one of the Queen's first cousins, explains: "Every morning at 9 o'clock there's a piper who plays round the house for about quarter of an hour. The sound of bagpipes is always better out of doors, though the Queen always has a piper at the dining room table who goes round at the coffee stage of dinner. He goes a couple of times round the dining room table and goes out. And that's nice because you can hear the pipes slowly fading in the distance."

Brigadier David Allfrey of the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo adds: "I wouldn’t want to get into a competition on pipe tunes with either her or indeed her mother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother."

The Royal Family share an abiding affection for comedy, and the Queen in particular is said to be extremely fond of the lightly ribald songs of George Formby (just as the devoted fans are in the clip below). So much so, according to Gyles Brandreth, that she had to be discouraged from taking up the post of president of the George Formby Appreciation Society by her correspondence secretary.

He recounts the conversation, starting with her correspondence secretary saying, with due deference: "'I don't honestly think, if you don't mind me saying so, this is appropriate; you're the head of the armed forces, the head of the Church of England, I don't think you can really be president of the George Formby Appreciation Society.'

"So the Queen apparently said, 'Well, I do see that, but you see I love George Formby.' And the correspondence secretary replied, 'Really?' 'Oh yes. I know all his songs and I can sing them.'"

While opera may not be to her taste, its friendlier cousin, musical theatre, most certainly is, and having grown up during the heyday of the Broadway show, these are the songs that would form the background of most social occasions.

Lady Anson said: "She loves the theatre and she loves going to the theatre. At the time there were all these wonderful musicals like Showboat, Oklahoma! and Annie Get Your Gun; all these wonderful things with all these wonderful tunes. Those were the tunes that remained in one's head and were very danceable to."

Having grown up during an era when television was still in its infancy, Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret were both keen participants in parlour room games and music, with one music hall knees-up proving particularly popular, as Lady Anson (pictured below with Eve Pollard) explains: "We did a lot of singing at Kensington Palace, with Princess Margaret, who was competent enough to be a concert pianist, and my Great Aunt Queen Elizabeth [The Queen Mother] would do anything to break into song.

"So therefore as children nobody would think it was odd after dinner if we put on a gramophone record and we’re all doing The Lambeth Walk."

On VE Day, the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were allowed out in their military uniforms to join a huge crowd of revellers, celebrating the end of the war in the London streets (as remembered below by Baroness Trumpington). And despite the company of a disapproving King’s Equerry in an immaculate bowler hat, they managed to get into a bit of mischief, as the Honourable Margaret Rhodes recalls:

"We got to Trafalgar Square where there were huge amounts of people. And by some extraordinary chance we got hold of a Dutch officer’s cap, and we then had the Dutch office with us for the rest of the day, trying to get his hat back."

And then there was the now infamous conga through the dining hall at The Ritz: "I think there were about 10 or 12 of us going through The Ritz: a string of us going through the main room. All the old ladies looked terribly disapproving: 'What are all these mad people doing?' The conga!"

The Very Reverend Dr John Hall, Dean of Westminster tells how the Queen, then Princess Elizabeth, took a hands-on role in shaping one of the hymns for her wedding, famously used as the theme music to The Vicar of Dibley:

"There was a moment in the Queen's wedding… when, I think this was a definite request from the Palace, that The Lord is My Shepherd should be sung to the tune Crimond, and I don't think it was very well known in England at the time. But there was also a request that the descant be sung in the last verse so the boys sing a higher note.

"Our director of music at the time, William McKie, didn't know the descant… and so Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret sang it to him and he jotted it down in shorthand… the descant that has been sung to Crimond ever since is the one that they sang."

• Oklahoma! by Howard Keel
• Anything You Can Do (Annie Get Your Gun) by Dolores Gray and Bill Johnson
• Sing by Gary Barlow and The Commonwealth Band featuring the Military Wives
• Cheek to Cheek by Fred Astaire
• The White Cliffs of Dover by Vera Lynn
• Leaning on a Lamp-post by George Formby
• Praise, My Soul, The King of Heaven (hymn)
• The Lord is My Shepherd (hymn)
• Lester Lanin Medley
• Regimental March Milanollo