Wedding March: A Song History

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Felix Mendelssohn wrote his concert overture to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the summer of 1826 and signed the finished score on 6 August; its first public performance came at Stettin in February 1827.[1] At the wish of the King of Prussia he later returned to the play, and a production with his incidental music was staged at the New Palace in Potsdam on 14 October 1843.[1] The Wedding March is one of the twelve numbers in that score, which also includes a Scherzo, a Notturno and a Bergomask dance.[1]

Etching of a long royal wedding procession winding through a street, with captions in German

Abraham Hogenberg, Marriage procession for the wedding of Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James I, and Frederick V, Elector Palatine, 14 February, 1613, etching, 1613 or after. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). A royal wedding of an earlier age, shown for its subject.

A 1957 church-music article credits Samuel Reay, organist at Tiverton in Devon, as apparently the first to play the march in church, in 1847, but says it caught on at weddings only after the 1858 marriage of Victoria, the Princess Royal, to Prince Frederick William of Prussia.[2] A London music weekly printed the musical arrangements for that January ceremony.[3] Inside the Chapel Royal the bride’s procession entered to a Handel march from Judas Maccabaeus, and Mendelssohn’s march was chosen for the royal party’s departure.[3] The same report says a Guards band had already played the march at Buckingham Palace before the party set out.[3] The journal itself disapproved and urged organists not to play in church a piece written for “the fictitious nuptials of a fairy king and queen.”[3] In that report, Wagner appears only in the programme of the evening state concert, which included a selection from Lohengrin billed as bridal procession, wedding march and epithalamium.[3]

The “Bridal Chorus” comes from Lohengrin, which Liszt first produced at Weimar in 1850.[4][2] The 1957 article treats Wagner’s chorus as the customary processional and Mendelssohn’s march as the recessional, while a 1981 record sleeve calls the pair the best-known wedding pieces, above all in the United States, whichever end of the service they are used for.[2][5] Their stage origins have drawn objections.[2] In 1952 the Joint Commission on Church Music called both marches unsuitable for church weddings, and the 1957 article was written to answer that charge.[2]

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Sources

  1. Wikisource (George Grove, A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 2): "Midsummer Night’s Dream Music".
  2. The Living Church, 8 September 1957 (Internet Archive): Frederick Young, "What’s Wrong with the Traditional Wedding Marches?".
  3. The Musical Gazette, 30 January 1858 (Internet Archive): report on the music for the marriage of the Princess Royal.
  4. Wikisource (George Grove, A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 2): "Lohengrin".
  5. Musical Heritage Society (Internet Archive): "Wedding Music" LP liner notes (1981).