What is the Story behind Mendelssohn Wedding March?

Beloved by brides and grooms everywhere, Mendelssohn’s Wedding March is probably the most well-known, well-loved and frequently played wedding march in the repertoire, and that’s in the face of some pretty stiff competition from the likes of Wagner, Purcell, Jeremiah Clarke and others.

But there’s much more to this piece than meets, the eye. Far from being a one-off work intended for nuptial events, it actually is taken from a much larger piece, a set of incidental music for Shakespeare’s play ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’

The story of how this came to be written is a fascinating one, starting when the composer was starry-eyed 17-year old and ending just a few years before his death…

A Precocious Overture

The Overture to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ was written by Mendelssohn in 1826 at the age of just 17 after he read a German translation of Shakespeare’s play in 1826. It is a startlingly mature work, cast as a substantial single movement lasting around 12 minutes in sonata form. It contains many subtle pictorial elements and references—a magical four chord introduction by woodwind; the sound of rushing fairy feet in strings in the passage that follows; horn sounds signifying a hunt; and a country dance that includes the sound of a braying donkey, representing the character Bottom’s transformation into the animal. The work also quotes a theme from Weber’s opera ‘Oberon’, a character that features in Shakespeare’s play.

Incidental Music

Following the success of a previous commission to write incidental music for Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone, King Frederick William IV Prussia asked Mendelssohn for some incidental music for a performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This took place in 1842, just five years before the composer’s tragically early death at the age of 38.

Mendelssohn chose to incorporate his earlier work as the overture to this performance, adding 12 more movements, two of which also include a choir. The Wedding March is the 9th movement, occurring after the reconciliation and double marriage at the end of the fourth act of Shakespeare’s play.

Overture:

1. Scherzo (After the first act):

2. L’istesso tempo
3. Lied mit Chor (song with choir):

4. Andante
5. Intermezzo (After the end of the second act):

6. Allegro
7. Con moto tranquillo (Nocturne)

8. Andante
9. Wedding March:

10. Marcia funebre
11. Bergamask

12. Allegro Vivace Come I
13. Finale

Separation and Suite

The incidental music contains some of the most brilliant music Mendelssohn wrote, so it comes as no surprise that the purely instrumental parts of it—the Overture, Scherzo, Intermezzo, Nocturne, Wedding March and Bergamask—are often grouped together as a suite, or else performed as standalone works. In this way the Wedding March became detached from the work as a whole, becoming a popular choice in wedding ceremonies.

The Wedding March Goes Viral

Royalty has a long history of trend setting. The selection of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March for the marriage of Queen Victoria’s daughter to a Prussian Prince in 1858 quickly led to its adoption by aristocratic and upper-class families across Europe. This was reinforced by the publication of arrangements of the work for organ that made it easy to play for any provincial church musician. In the twentieth century it was popularised by the advent of mass media, to the point where nowadays a movie marriage scene is hardly complete without it.

If all this sometimes makes the work sometimes sound a bit cliched, it’s always good to remember its origins, as part of bigger masterpiece. With context and fresh ears we can hear that Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, far from being a conjugal cliche, is as fresh as the day it was written.