A professional musician friend supplied the music for our wedding. Since he often got me up to play Celtic tunes with him at various gigs, and my wife loved the music, we decided to have it at our ceremony.
She came up the aisle to a beautiful rendition of the “Pride of Erin” waltz and we went back down the aisle to “Mairi’s Wedding.” Both were played on the fiddle.
There were also classical guitar renditions of various Celtic folk tunes before the ceremony and during the signing of the register.
Of course, with our friend, myself, and plenty of amateur musicians (a few of whom had brought their instruments) in attendance, the reception turned into a ceildh.
Like CalMeacham, we had the shaker song, “'Tis a Gift to be Simple,” as well as “Amazing Grace” and a beautiful “Ave Maria” at out wedding. American church “classics.”
Beethoven’s Ode to Joy Fabulous. I have the soundtrack to Shine and its on there with the chorus and everything. Brings tears to your eyes.
Lizt’s Hungarian Rhapsody #13 You’ll remember this one as the theme running behind Tom and Jerry when Tom is playing a concert and Jerry butts in. I think Bugs Bunny did it too.
Bach’s Organ Fugue in G Minor. You know - the Phantom of the Opera song, but it’s quite a bit more beyond that. I love organ music!
Handel’s Messiah I’ve listened to it enough that I can sing along now - not that anyone would want to listen! If I had a dog, he’d be howling.
We had the theme from The Man from Snowy River for our entrance and the Hallelujah Chorus for our exit music.
See, now you’ve embarrassed me. I honestly don’t know. I was going to say, “…and it has a bunch of numbers after it, but I’m not sure what they are.”
It’s a song that I like to play (I play piano). It’s fun to play, a bit dramatic in parts, and overall a very pretty piece. In the book that I have that it’s in, it has in big letters, “Pathetique”, then all the other stuff underneath it, but I can’t remember what it says. I’m sure you’re correct, though.
I know, I know, I’m a bad example in the whole fight against ignorance thingy you all keep going on about.
I, too, have too many to even THINK of trying to pick one. But some that come to mind are: Saint Saens “The Swan”, Bizet’s “Third Entracte” to Carmen (heck, the entire opera is a fave!), and some of the classic liturgical stuff.
For our wedding in June, I put my foot down and said NO WAGNER and NO MENDELSSOHN. Instead, we used Schubert’s “Ave Maria” for the bridesmaid’s processional, “Panis Angelicus” for the bride’s processional, and Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” (All right, it was the hymn book version, aka “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee”) as the recessional. Very appropriate, we thought, to end the ceremony!
We had some of my favourite classical pieces played at our wedding last year. They were:
Prelude: Sheep May Safely Graze (Bach)
Processional: Sleepers Wake (Bach)
Signing of the Register: Pathetique Sonata* (Beethoven)
For the recessional we had a piece called Highland Cathedral by Roever & Korb, at the recommendation of our minister. It was written for the Cathedral where our wedding was held (which has become popular lately, thanks to Madonna). I couldn’t tell you how the tune went, never having heard it before nor since, but it sounded great.
*“Piano sonata in C minor, Opus 13 no. 8, right?”
I also can’t confirm this, but it is the one Billy Joel used for “This Night.”
We had a traditional Catholic wedding, but wanted to avoid some of the usual musical chestnuts. I mean, I LOVED Schubert’s “Ave Maria” the first 20 million times I heard it, but it lost something after that.
Like Tomndeb, we used a Handel hornpipe for the recessional. As an old Emerson Lake & Palmer fan, I made the Promenade from Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” the processional (not TOO pompous, eh?). And we used a Bach/Gounod “Ave Maria” instead of the Schubert.
All in all, it sounded great- quite apart from the fact that I was the groom, I actually got to enjoy my wedding as a music fan!
Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, specifically the second movement. A previous girlfriend of mine (this the brilliant one that I described in the Seinfeldian breakup thread) played the oboe in the Minnesota Youth Symphony, and the oboe solo about 30 seconds into it still makes me weak in the knees.
Pachelbel’s Canon in D, as other people have said. It brings back a lot of memories- some happy, some very painful, but it’s the most evocative song for me.
Bach’s Toccata & Fugue in D Minor, as someone else mentioned, but I always considered it the Dracula music rather than Phantom of the Opera music.
The latter two are pretty common selections, but I’ve yet to run into someone who names Scheherazade as their all-time favorite.
Some that I agree with:
Beethoven’s 9th (of course)
Pachelbel
Scheherezade
Pictures at an Exhibition
Mathis Der Maler (and whoever else mentioned it gets massive brownie points)
Some more that have not been mentioned:
The Firebird Suite by Stravinsky
In my opinion, this wonderful piece (beautifully animated in the vastly underrated Fantasia 2000 does a near-perfect job of introducing unorthodox, modern things (like 7/4 time and crazy near-cacophany) without going so far into modernity that it loses melody, harmony, etc. The last couple of bits, in particular, from the bassoon lullaby onward, are gorgeous and inspiring.
Mahler’s 2nd Symphony (The Ressurection, and well named it is). My favorite kind of classical music is dramatic and emotional and loud orchestral thunder. And no one does it better than Mahler… many of his Symphonies are wonderful, but my favorite is probably the 2nd.
Mozart’s and Verdi’s Requiem
Carmina Burana
Shostakovitch’s 5th Symphony
For classical, I like several pieces from many of the masters, but I especially enjoy Lizt’s Bohemian Rhapsody, and anything at all from Chopin.
Wedding:… Jewish wedding, so there was a lot of jewish music/folk dances… first time I’d really heard any. Only thing I recognized was Hava Teq…I mean, Neguila (sp), but it sounded pretty cool.
That’s Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2, in C# minor. At least from the Tom and Jerry I saw.
And, while it’s a good song, “Bohemian Rhapsody” was written by Queen. That’d be on the list of top classic rock songs, but that’s another thread.
And the best pieces of classical music are:
Beethoven’s 5th symphony (first and fourth movements, especially),
Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude, and Polonaise in Ab,
Mozart’s first Salzburg symphony (written when he was like 12 or something),
Beethoven’s Appassionata sonata…and I guess the third movement of his Moonlight sonata, and the whole Pathetique,
Mendelssohn’s Italian symphony,
Rossini’s Barber of Seville/William Tell overture,
And Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.
My favorites are:
“Clair da Lune” by Debussy
“Dance of the Hours”
“Funeral March”, thes ones by Chopin and by Mahler
“Victory March” from Aida
“Hoppengalop” by Offenbach (often associated with The Can-Can Dance)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Overture by Mendelsohn. The music of course includes the ubiquitous “Wedding March”.
Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus” is most played at weddings, but I really prefer for the groom what preceeded right before it, the prelude to Act III of Longherin
Anything by Nobuo Uematsu (http://www.nobuouematsu.com/), who’s done music for a ton of videogames, some of his greatest being from Final Fantasy 2 and 3 (I didn’t really like most of Final Fantasy 7 or 8’s music…it went into a weird techno sort of area). Specifically the main theme music to FF3, and the intro song to FF8 (“Liberi Fatali”, it’s all over the net if you want to hunt it out).
Of course, this assumes that by “classical” you mean the general style of music (symphonies and opera type music and such), not just “anything written by famous dead people”, heh…
Tsugumo (and yes, I consider videogame music actual valid music (though I’ve found a lot of people don’t, because videogames are still just “kid stuff”)…and in one game alone, a composer has to do up 30+ songs with different moods and such…and I HAVE listened to Beethoven and friends (grew up with a pianist who played them all the time), and I don’t see much difference, heh…so there’s my “I’m not an un-cultured idiot!” disclaimer. Longer than my actual post, heh…)
erghh…Forgot about the translation thing. If you decide to go download some MIDIs from the Nobuo site, FF6 is what I meant when I wrote FF3 (6 was released as 3 in North America, causing all kinds of confusion when people found out there were a bunch of un-released ones, heh…).
I also meant to say “Almost longer than my actual post”, oyy…sorry, I haven’t slept in a while, heh.
Oh for crying out loud, I can’t beleive I actually wrote that. DUH. Sorry, I had just heard BR before writing this and it was stuck in my head. I’m such a moron sometimes.
The theme from Gattaca is a favorite of mine. I don’t know if it has another name.
Legend has it that I first walked to Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Some car commercial from the 80’s had it and I walked to the beat for a whole 5 seconds.
Some of my fave classical pieces: Beethoven’s 9th. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #2. Debussy’s nocturnes for orchestra Nuages and Fetes. Ravel’s ballet Daphnis et Chloé. And many, many more. Scheherezade is among them.
There is sometimes unnoticed meaning in the choice of wedding music.
Mendelssohn’s Wedding March was meant to be incidental music to the wedding of Titania and Bottom in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Bottom, a human, has had his head magically transformed into that of a jackass; and Titania, a fairy, has been enchanted to fall in love with him. Doesn’t say much for either one of them.
I was once in a chorus where one of the other men was getting married, so the chorus sang for the wedding. One of the pieces chosen by the couple was Randall Thompson’s very beautiful piece, “The Last Words of David” (referring to the Biblical King David). And the groom’s name was (you guessed it) David. He claimed nobody noticed it until somebody in the chorus pointed it out a few days before the wedding. Everybody thought it was amusing. He’s divorced now.
Then there’s the weddings where “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from “Jesus Christ, Superstar” was sung. Oh sure, she’s “had so many men before.” Wonderful choice for a wedding!
