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Wedding music?

A reader writes:

I recently stumbled on to your blog site, and while looking through it found a few random comments about church music and weddings. I wonder if you have any broader suggestions to offer? I am planning a wedding for this summer and want it to be as reverent and fitting as possible, yet I have very little knowledge of music. I am afraid to leave everything up to the music director at the parish (as I would hardly call the normal fare there reverent or fitting for any mass). I know we will have an organ and a fairly talented and cooperative tenor soloist. Any suggestions for musical settings (or anything else), appropiate motets, or processional/recessional music? Many thanks.

I’ll provide my own slanted suggestions shortly, but in the meantime, does anyone wish to share their ideas?

Posted 02.17.2004
by Aristotle Esguerra
7 comments.
Filed under: Liturgical Music on Paper.

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7 Comments

Since we couldn’t have the Widor Toccata at our wedding (the organ was old and rusty), we asked the organist to pick a favorite piece that he would never get to do otherwise. He pick the David Johnson Trumpet Tune, which was nice, festive without being baroque, and perfect for the situation.

Not that you should pick that specific piece, but asking the organist for an unplayed personal favorite is a great way to engage the musician, and probably have him/her play better.

BTW — a year or two after the wedding, the parish got a Casavant Freres. I always knew we should have waited longer to get married! :-)


Hugh
02.17.2004 @ 1:53 pm #

Suggestions:

Processional: “St. Anthony Chorale” attributed to Franz Josef Haydn

Offertory: “Largo” from “Xerxes”–George Frideric Handel

Communion: “Panis angelicus”–Cesar Franck (tenor solo). By the way, I think this is a sublime composition that is breathtakingly beautiful. I would seriously question the musicianship of someone who belittled it.

Recessional: Psalm 19–Benedetto Marcello


Mark P.
02.17.2004 @ 10:17 pm #

Processional (bridesmaids et al.): Air from Orchestral Suite no. 3 by J. S. Bach

Bridal procession: Elsas Brautzug zum Münster from Lohengrin. Note that this is not the famed “bridal chorus” but the actual procession into the cathedral from Act II. It’s sublime. You can fake it from the Liszt piano transcription or just read it from the Pno/Vocal score.

I also like to play Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring for weddings, but since it’s in 3, it’s not the best sort of march. Sometimes good for the seating of the mothers.


Jonathan
02.18.2004 @ 8:44 am #

If I may make a suggestion, of all of the Western music that I have heard, the best, most beautiful, and most reverent wedding prelude that I have ever heard (far surpassing Mendelsohn’s or Richard Wagner’s) was and is Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Prelude on Rhosymedre”. I can’t get the popup to work on my antiquated machine, but I believe that one can hear it if one accesses this web listing:

http://www.stclementchurch.org/weddings/popup/WilliamsRhosy.html

In the east, the most beautiful wedding hymn that I have ever heard is the Georgian Wedding Hymn, “Shen Khar Venakhi”. You can google either, but I’m afraid that I can’t find an MP3 of it yet. It has been translated into English, and I believe I can get my hands on the sheet music.


Bernard Brandt
02.18.2004 @ 12:16 pm #

“Bridal procession: Elsas Brautzug zum Münster from Lohengrin. Note that this is not the famed “bridal chorus” but the actual procession”

I have always wondered why this wasn’t used more widely.
Agree that it’s sublime.

“I also like to play Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring for weddings, but since it’s in 3, it’s not the best sort of march.”

That recommends it in my book, I don’t think anything that encourages women in high heels to try to walk in time to it should be used! (And please, no hesitation step!!!!!)

I like Come, My Way, My Truth, My Life for weddings.
Vaughan Williams could do no wrong in sacred music, from what I’ve heard. (Ohm everyone makes mistakes, there must be something somewhere, but I have yet to encounter it.)


Geri
02.18.2004 @ 12:48 pm #

Ultimately, one must be one’s own judge of the music that one will have at one’s wedding (a lot of ones here; sorry). De gustibus non disputandum est. One good website, where one may find many samples of decent contemporary Catholic wedding music, as well as a fair statement of the structure of the Wedding Mass, is as follows:

http://www.stclementchurch.org/weddings/WeddingMusicNew2.html

I dare say that one couldn’t go far wrong by starting out here, and finding what one likes.


Bernard Brandt
02.18.2004 @ 1:45 pm #

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the musical guidelines/suggestions:

http://www.stclementchurch.org/weddings/WeddingMusicNew2.html


Mark P.
02.18.2004 @ 5:22 pm #

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