Music Selections for Wedding within Mass

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7discerning7

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Hi!

I was recently asked to provide music (organ, piano) for a few weddings within the Mass. I’m thinking of emailing the couples a list of songs to choose from in the form of a Google Form. Here’s the link: Wedding Music Selections

Can I please get some feedback on the form (if I need to add/remove something) and the song selections?

Thanks and God bless!
 
If you have a choir, try Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus” it’s beautiful!
 
Also “Panis Angelicus”.
I think my parents had that one for their wedding.
 
Bridal Chorus is from an opera and is not sacred music. It should not be used. Some dioceses also do not allow Ode to Joy, the melody is used for the national anthem of the EU. Mine did not allow Ode to Joy.

You have songs listed under Responsorial Psalm. Psalms cannot be replaced with songs, so I’m confused here.

I suggest you contact your diocesan office of Sacred Worship (or Liturgy or whatever they call it) because they may have specific guidelines for your diocese.
 
Check with the diocese and/or parish where you want to use this.

My parish church specifically permitted the Bridal Chorus and I had it at my wedding. It was the only song not in the hymnbook that they would permit as part of the service (as opposed to the overture music played before the wedding when the guests were taking their seats).
 
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I’ve been to a Catholic wedding in the Archdiocese of Southwark and the extract from Lohengrin was played at that. I have to say I don’t really understand the objection to it. Using the music doesn’t mean that one necessarily shares Wagner’s theological vision, any more than using music by Bach signifies adherence to Lutheranism or music by Arvo Pärt signifies adherence to the Eastern Orthodox Church. My only objection to it would be that it’s not a particularly original choice!
 
Your mention of a setting of Ubi caritas brought to mind the beautiful setting by the 20th-century French composer Maurice Duruflé.

The song Taste and see reminded me of another very beautiful a cappella anthem, O taste and see by Vaughan Williams.

Somebody mentioned Mozart’s Ave verum. I’d also suggest a wonderful setting of the same words by Elgar (who was of course a Catholic). To my mind, the simplicity of it is in some ways more reverent and mystical than the Mozart.

If you have a really good choir (and it does need to be really good!) I love Messiaen’s setting of O Sacrum Convivium! I find it a very profound meditation on the Eucharist.

If you have only organ available, another piece I love very much is Messiaen’s Le Banquet Céleste. Messiaen, of course, had a very deep Catholic faith, and this meditation on the heavenly banquet is wonderful. (I’m also a big fan of the piano work Vingt Regards sur l’enfant-Jésus, although I don’t know whether you’d use that for a wedding!)

I don’t know about where you are from, but in France a wedding (at any one in a church) is considered to be virtually in complete without a performance of Widor’s Toccata (Symphony for Organ No. 5 in F minor, Op. 42, No. 1, mvt. 5). I once heard a story about a French Catholic wedding at which the organist was taken ill during the service, and rather than allow the couple to leave the church without hearing Widor’s Toccata, the priest, who happened to be a decent amateur organist, played it for them.

I wanted to post links, but can’t as I am a new member.
 
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Again, not sure what’s wrong with the Beethoven tune. Plenty of hymns are sung to tunes that are actually folk songs. The hymn ‘Glorious things of thee are spoken’ is commonly sung to the hymn tune known as Austria by Haydn, which is also the German national anthem (originally it was an Austrian patriotic song, ‘Gott erhalte Franz, den Kaiser, unsern guten Kaiser Franz!’). Secular melodies are often appropriated as hymn tunes.
 
in the USA, the Widor Toccata is the type of thing one tends to hear only at the conclusion of big Cathedral Masses like the Midnight Mass at St. Patrick’s NYC.
A lot of the parish churches where people get married don’t even have organs, much less anybody who could play the Toccata on them.
 
Londoner said:
Again, not sure what’s wrong with the Beethoven tune.
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I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it. I said some dioceses don’t permit it. Which is their prerogative based on how closely it is associated with sacred or secular contexts in their locale.
 
Sorry, I didn’t mean that I thought that you personally had a problem with the Beethoven tune. I just meant that I sometimes find the guidelines of bishops’ conferences a bit funny. I also wonder whether the English and Welsh bishops are a little more liberal on these matters than they are in some parts of the world. I remember reading about one Italian diocese where the bishop banned Mozart on account of his being a Freemason. It just don’t understand banning music because it has secular or non-Catholic origins. No doubt it can all be put to the glory of God.
 
I can believe that. I think that most Catholic churches in Britain have an organ, but I don’t know that many of them have an organist who could play Widor’s Toccata. I was assuming that the OP was a professional organist. I was fortunate to spend much of my childhood as a chorister at a cathedral that had not one organ but two, meaning that we were able to do Vierne’s Messe Solennelle in its original version. Even more impressive were some of the organs we heard on tour in Paris and elsewhere in France.
 
I like the 11 Movement of Perogesi’s Stabat Mater, Inflammatus et Ascensus, it has a nice tune. The prior movement, Sancta Mater istud agas, is also good, but I am not sure if this would be propriate for a wedding. It is a religious song.
 
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Huh. That’s odd. Ode to Joy is from Beethoven’s Ninth, and it’s very definitely a religious song! Are so many people familiar with the national anthem of the EU that it’s the first thing they think of when they hear the tune? I wonder what the rationale was there. Interesting.
 
MrsAngelala said:
Huh. That’s odd. Ode to Joy is from Beethoven’s Ninth, and it’s very definitely a religious song! Are so many people familiar with the national anthem of the EU that it’s the first thing they think of when they hear the tune? I wonder what the rationale was there. Interesting.
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Actually, “Ode to Joy” was sung in the parishes where I grew up for years as a hymn called “Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee” that was in the standard Catholic hymnal. This was before the invention of the EU. I do not know if the hymn is still in the Catholic hymn books now.

As for people in USA knowing that it’s the EU national anthem, it’s not common knowledge, and a lot of 'Murricans don’t even really know what the EU is for that matter.
 
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