Respected composer becomes first female Master of the Queen’s Music.

Buckingham Palace has announced that the composer Judith Weir CBE will become the new Master of the Queen’s Music when the 80-year-old Sir Peter Maxwell Davies steps down next week after 10 years in the job. The appointment confirms speculation in the press over the last month that the monarch would choose a woman to fill the role for the first time in the over 388-year history of the post.

Weir, now aged 60, takes the job for a fixed term of 10 years. She says that she will use the roughly $25,000 stipend to tour the country taking the temperature of the nation’s music-making and encouraging education projects.

“It is a great honour to take up the position of Master of the Queen’s Music, in succession to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, who has given his musical and personal gifts so freely to this unusual national role,” Weir said in a statement. “I hope to encourage everyone in the UK who sings, plays or writes music, and to hear as many of them as possible in action over the next 10 years.”

Born in Cambridge to Scottish parents, Weir studied initially...