A Doomed Marriage, A Doomed Marriage, a Catchy Canon, and Fairies in Church:Three Wedding Music Favorites
What sounds first come to your mind when you think “wedding music”? Perhaps the oh-so-catchy “Here Comes the Bride” starts parading through your mind, endlessly looping as good ear worms do. Maybe you hear smooth and romantic violin strains of Pachelbel’s canon. Or maybe it’s something less specific. Perhaps your go-to wedding sound consists of regal trumpets proclaiming marital bliss supported by a hefty pipe organ. Or maybe you hear an acoustic arrangement of your favorite pop chart. Regardless of whether your personal wedding music preferences tend toward the tried-and-true traditions or toward something a bit outlandish and unconventional, there’s a good chance that you’ve heard these three wedding favorites: the bridal chorus from Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin, the extremely famous canon by Johann Pachelbel, and the Felix Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Richard Wagner is one of the more famous and contentious 19th century figures in Western music history. We could spend many, many pages discussing the controversial issues surrounding Wagner and his music, but these troubling debates have not prevented the bridal chorus from his opera Lohengrin from becoming the iconic sound of a bride’s grand entrance. “Here comes the bride, all dressed in white, she slipped on a banana peel and went for a ride...” okay maybe not with those words. In Lohengrin, a choir of women sing the bridal chorus to accompany the newly-married Elsa to her bridal chamber. They sing of love, faithfulness, courage, virtue, and youth. Elsa’s husband, Lohengrin, is a knight who magically appeared in a boat drawn by a swan when Elsa prayed for help during a trial in which she was falsely accused for the (supposed) death of her brother. Lohengrin’s one request of Elsa on the occasion of their betrothal is that she not ask him about where is from or who he is. Elsa definitely should have seen the red flags at this point. But, as is sadly the case for most women in opera, she is doomed by the male librettist and composer to die of a broken heart. And that’s what many brides may not realize when they choose to walk down the aisle to “Here Comes the Bride”: that the original love story this music is attached to ends tragically with mythic manipulation, vow-breaking, and loss.
Act Three of Wagner’s Opera Lohengrin - The famous Wedding March
Unlike Mendelssohn and Wagner, Johann Pachelbel isn’t remembered outside of college music history courses for much beyond his eponymous canon. Of course, it’s important to remember that just because an individual isn’t given their own chapter in a history textbook doesn’t mean that their work is of lesser quality. How history is remembered and created is a messy, contingent, and, to be completely frank, chance-driven process. But back to the subject at hand...Pachelbel was a 17th century German organist, teacher, and composer. He actually wrote quite a lot of music, but today he is primarily known for the canon for three violins and continuo (continuo refers to an instrument that basically serves as the bass instrument, and was usually a keyboard or string instrument). Thankfully Pachelbel’s canon is free from the legends and myths of doomed love. But it has taken on a legendary status of its own; many musicians have put Pachelbel’s sequence to use in their own music. A sequence is a string of pitches and rhythms—basically a melodic fragment—that gets repeated several times, either ascending or descending in pitch. The Beatles used this sequence a lot. “Please Mister Postman” and “A Hard Day’s Night” are just two examples. Sting, Led Zeppelin, Meatloaf, The Rolling Stones, Prince, Justin Bieber, and Whitney Houston represent only a small sampling of artists who’ve also relied on Pachelbel’s sequence in one way or another in their music.
Mendelssohn’s Wedding March from A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Our final wedding music classic isn’t referenced by today’s artists nearly as much, but its composer did write it to accompany a super famous play. Felix Mendelssohn wrote his well-known “Wedding March” not to be played on its own, but as a set piece for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Simply put, “The Wedding March” was a piece of background music that was meant to simply accompany the on-stage action. King William of Prussia commissioned Mendelssohn to write music for some of his favorite plays, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Those of you who had to read Shakespeare in high school or maybe in a college English course will remember that the play ends happily with all the couples resolving their differences and marrying. But because of the music’s connection to the magical and fantastic themes associated with Shakespeare’s play, Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” has met a bit of controversy over the years. Not everyone is comfortable with the idea of playing music that’s connected to fairies and magic spells in a church or other sacred space. However, ever since it was performed at the wedding of Princess Victoria and Prince Frederick of Prussia in 1858, Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” has remained a popular option for couples wanting joyous and pomp-filled music to escort them down the aisle as newlyweds.
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