Mendelssohn's Greatest Hit: The Wedding March

It's probably the best known tune Mendelssohn ever wrote - the Wedding March he composed for a scene in Shakespeare's comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream. For generations, it was THE Wedding March, though in recent generations, it has become such a cliché, many people avoid it, now.

In this performance, Kurt Masur conducts Mendelssohn's own orchestra, the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig. (Check out the trumpets at the beginning!)

The first part of it (what we'd call the A-Section) - up to 1:24 - is what you'd hear in most weddings that might still use it today - but there are contrasting sections in between several returning statements of the famous march.

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This is usually reserved for the happy ending of the wedding ceremony.

It's ironic that the OTHER most popular wedding march, usually used for the quieter procession to start the ceremony, is by Mendelssohn's rival, Richard Wagner. Here's the bridal procession from Wagner's opera, Lohengrin, often sung to the words "Here comes the bride." This video is sung in German by a choir in Hong Kong! The basic part of the processional ends around 1:40.

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Have you heard them before?

- Dr. Dick