I have just listened to this score and I agree with others that it is a well crafted score but that the use of 'British Grenadiers' is annoyingly anachronistic. Waxman was a skilled composer well able to produce scores for period films and his use of this tune is disappointing.
The only possible redeeming feature for his use of this tune is that it is believed that the tune was derived from a dance tune published by Playford in the 17th century. It is always possible that the tune was known before it was published and, if it was known in Tudor times and that was why Waxman used it, then he is to be congratulated for his research.
That's over 80 years after Elizabeth's death, but the tune was almost certainly around much earlier than Playford's publication of it. You're right, the Grenadier Guards as it is normally heard is more suggestive of the Duke of Wellington than The Virgin Queen, but I enjoy Waxman's flamboyant treatment of it all the same. He uses it in a regal "fanfare and overture" kind of way, rather than as military march in a fife-and-drum style. Personally, I like the whole score. Fine sound too.
This Varese CD reminds me why I used to get excited about their upcoming Club release announcements. Seems a long time ago.
It just doesn't work. What was going through his mind? Raleigh if anything was a sailor (though a proper Renaissance man, who wrote histories etc.) and the piece is just wrong on every level.
The structure of the tune is in no way in keeping with anything Tudor. The harmonics, the intervals, everything's wrong. The piece can't be dated to before the late 17th Century.
I just can't understand how Waxman could do this, it's not as though he's some hack.
