When I contemplate retirement, one of the thoughts uppermost in my mind is “No more weddings!” I may be willing to play a few Sunday services as a substitute, and I have entertained the thought of becoming a Funeral Home Organist, if such positions still exist (they are being replaced by canned music, for the most part) -- but No Weddings. Not for any amount of money.
In the planning process, I have been screamed at and cursed by mothers, once by a father (who was an ordained minister; that one was over the question as to whether his other daughter, the vocal soloist, could use a microphone and a portable sound system. I said “No,” and stood my ground). I have mediated between the family and the trumpet player who would not open his case without $200 cash money in hand – all this some thirty minutes before the wedding, for which I was being paid $50. I have had to preludize for ten extra minutes, twenty, thirty… I have started a five-minute piece to fill the extra time and within the first four bars been told “They are ready to roll; cut it short.” I have wondered whether the two-year old flower girl would make it down the aisle or sit down in the middle and start counting flower petals (as I vamped on Pachelbel’s Canon, playing the last page three times).
Any organist has stories. Clergy doubtless have stories to match, some of them about their organists. Some of the worst days of my professional life have been Wedding Days. And yet… some of the best days of my professional life have been Wedding Days.
I was in high school when I played my first wedding, and it was the first time I played an organ – a little electric thing with one octave of stubby pedals, in an Assembly of God church. The groom had been my neighbor and best friend when we were quite small, preschool and the early grades. Our paths diverged as I gravitated to music and he to sports (he is now well respected as a small-college basketball coach); the bride was likewise a close friend. She alone of the friends of my childhood and youth attended my mother’s funeral; she told me that day of something I had not known – through the early years while they were in town and I was off at college, my mother was the only adult who believed in them, that they would make it as a married couple (they have: forty-plus years so far).
And there was a day when the young woman who was probably my best friend in college – and is the only friend I still have from those days – was married in the living room of her home. She and I had gone to the music store and selected a rental piano for the event, a spinet. I played Mozart and Bach and Chopin and Beethoven and it was a Good Day, one that remains in my heart as a landmark.
I was at the Presbyterian church in Tennessee long enough for a generation of choristers to grow into adults, and played quite a few weddings for them. There was the one where the girl whom I had known since she was a toddler married a farmer, and the reception was out in the country, complete with bluegrass band and old-style flatfoot dancing. There was another where the bride decided that the place she wanted to wait before the wedding was upstairs in the organ/choir gallery because that was the place in the church where she felt most at home after all her years in choir – she sat on a stool beside the organ console, her bridesmaids around her – all of them former choirgirls – as I played the preservice music. I felt as if I were playing for the Bride of Christ, the holy Marriage Supper of the Lamb for which we long.
Every wedding, every marriage, is a glimpse of that eternal Day, when sorrow and pain shall be no more.
But in this life, there is plenty of sorrow and pain, and marriage is one of the places where it is most acute, for the pain comes to those whom we love the most, and the path is often very hard. One of the women I have described is now a widow; another cares for her husband who is disabled, while working a demanding full-time job and parenting teenagers.
Marriage is one of the Seven Sacraments, and like the others, much about it is a mystery. It is in the providence of God that He has set us in families, with the union of man and woman as the foundation. One finds that it is in the times of sickness, of pain and bereavement and anguish, when God is most present, and that Presence is manifested very often in the patient daily care of husband and wife for one another through the darkest of times. Or parent for child, or child for parent.
One ought not to think too much on these things on Wedding Days – but it is right there in the marriage vows, and a good thing it is; I have needed the remembrance of these vows many times over the years:
In the Name of God, I, N. take you, N. to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow.***************
Some might be interested in what I play for weddings. It depends, of course, on what the Bride and Groom desire, within the limits of what is acceptable for Christian worship. Here is today’s music list, with some commentary:
Two short movements by Felix Mendelssohn: Adagio from the First Organ Sonata, and the Andante tranquillo from the Third Sonata. This latter Sonata he wrote for the marriage of his beloved sister Fanny – and then he was unable to play it, being injured in a carriage accident shortly before the day. I have used the majestic opening to the first movement, the Con moto maestoso, as a bridal procession, but the fugue that makes up the rest of the movement, based on the chorale Aus tiefer Not, is a bit much.
Vaughan Williams: “Wedding Tune for Ann,” from “A Vaughan Williams Organ Album” (Oxford Univ. Press) – a fine three-minute piece which is thoroughly suitable to the occasion. It is hard to find music by Real Composers that they intended for weddings and that still work in current practice. The only other that I can think of offhand is the Siciliano for a High Ceremony (Herbert Howells), a fine eight-minute piece composed for a 1953 wedding – but it is not for everyone; it has to be someone that would appreciate Howells’ musical style.
Chorale setting: Schmücke dich, O liebe Seele (J. S. Bach, from the Leipzig Chorales) – this was a favorite of Mendelssohn’s, and of many other organists since. It is a communion text, but the spirit befits a wedding – “deck thyself, my soul, with gladness.”
Canon in D (J. Pachelbel, arranged for organ by S. Drummond Wolff, Concordia Publishing House). For today’s service, the couple wanted “Pachelbel’s Canon,” but not as the processional, a purpose for which I have played it scores of times. Many serious musicians turn up their nose at this – there was a time when we had three excellent violinists in our parish, and I tried to get them to play the Canon for church – they looked at me as if I had committed an Unpardonable Sin and absolutely would not do it. But it is a terrific piece of music, and the mood of it is exactly right. Further, it can be cut short or stretched out to fit a procession – my poor copy is marked with so many cuts that I can hardly make out what I am doing. And today, I played the whole thing for the first time in quite a few years – I had to work on the middle parts, which I most often have cut.
More Bach: Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, from the Schübler Chorales. This is the one piece that I always play, because of the connection of the chorale text with the Bridegroom. And for a wedding two days before Advent, it is essential.
At this point, the procession begins:
Bach: “Jesu, joy of man’s desiring,” from “The Biggs Book of Organ Music” (ed. E. Power Biggs, H. W. Gray Publications). This is a useful volume for the church organist, not least for this arrangement of “Jesu, joy.” Like the Canon in D, it is a wedding staple, and very practical – it can be cut or extended to some degree, though not so readily as the Pachelbel.
On this day, the brother of the bride played a piano piece of his own composition for the brides’ procession. I worried about this, especially after he launched into the Darth Vader theme from Star Wars as the people gathered for the wedding rehearsal. But he was just poking fun at his sister; in the event, the piece was thoroughly appropriate, and far more meaningful than anything I could have done.
When it is up to me to play the procession, one of my staples is the Jeremiah Clarke Trumpet Voluntary (The Prince of Denmark). I play this from "Incidental Music for Weddings and Other Occasions, As played at the Royal Wedding at St. Paul's Cathedral, 29 July 1981," edited by Christopher Dearnley (the organist for that Occasion)- Basil Ramsey, publisher. It is a lovely little volume, complete with the stoplist for the very large instrument in that Place, and photos of various parts of the instrument.
And I am not above "Here comes the bride," or more properly, the Wedding March from Lohengrin (R. Wagner). Like the Pachelbel, it is a piece that can be trimmed or expanded to fit the time needed. I always include it in my suggestions to the couple; some laugh at me, for others it is precisely what is suitable. There are some clergy (and some organists) who forbid this piece; I am not one of them.
The recessional:
Trumpet Tune (Henry Purcell) – another wedding standard. At this point, I very often play the Wedding March from Midsummer Night’s Dream (Mendelssohn) which is my favorite. Or the piece that on this day followed the Purcell:
Overture and The Rejoicing, from “Firework Music” (G. F. Handel) – this is from the Biggs Book, which contains many other arrangements from Bach and Handel.
I used to play the Widor Toccata (Final, from the Fifth Organ Symphony), but that was on an instrument with electric action. On our mechanical-action Pilcher, my hand starts to fall off after about three pages, so I refuse to play it. But it is very effective if the instrument and organist are up to it. The Final from the First Symphony of Louis Vierne is another good choice if the circumstances are fitting.
*********
I was pleased this day to play my first wedding with our current rector. She does a splendidly dignified wedding, by far the best of any clergy with whom I have worked; it was indeed a delight to work with her this day. And she used the long form of the Blessing, which I have not heard since my own wedding, many years ago:
Most gracious God, we give you thanks for your tender love in sending Jesus Christ to come among us, to be born of a human mother, and to make the way of the cross to be the way of life. We thank you, also, for consecrating the union of man and woman in his Name. By the power of your Holy Spirit, pour out the abundance of your blessing upon this man and this woman. Defend them from every enemy. Lead them into all peace. Let their love for each other be a seal upon their hearts, a mantle about their shoulders, and a crown upon their foreheads. Bless them in their work and in their companionship; in their sleeping and in their waking; in their joys and in their sorrows; in their life and in their death. Finally, in your mercy, bring them to that table where your saints feast for ever in your heavenly home; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Posts
