Marching Down the Aisle with Mendelssohn's Wedding March
The Backstory
Wedding March in C major, Op. 61, No. 9
I'm Felix Mendelssohn, and this is the backstory of my Wedding March. You'll find out how this famous tune began as stage music for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, long before any bride walked to it, and that makes it sound fresh next time. On this site my fellow composers and I also teach you to recognize our pieces the moment they start playing, so once you've read this, put yourself to the test with mine.
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A Teenager Meets Shakespeare
My story with this play starts well before the march does. I finished my concert overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream on 6 August 1826, when I was 17. It was first performed in Stettin on 20 February 1827 under Carl Loewe. I was having far too good a time with Shakespeare to wonder whether that was unusual.A King Rings the Doorbell
Sixteen years later, in 1842, King Frederick William IV of Prussia asked me for music to go with the whole play. That makes the march a late arrival, since the overture had already been out in the world for years. The king wanted music for the theater, and the theater is exactly where the march was meant to live. It felt a little like being asked to add a second course to a dinner I had cooked as a teenager.Number Nine of Fourteen
The music for the play is made up of 14 separate pieces, and the march is number nine. It belongs to the start of Act V, where the wedding celebrations begin. On stage it simply tells the audience that the troubles are over and the party can start. Only later did the rest of the world decide to borrow it.Opening Night in Potsdam
The music was first performed in Potsdam on 14 October 1843. Ludwig Tieck staged the production, so he looked after the play while I looked after the notes. People came for Shakespeare, and my music did what incidental music should do, which is to be noticed without stealing the show. Nobody in that room could have guessed how far this one number would travel.A Brass Cousin You've Never Met
I wrote for a generous orchestra, with woodwinds, brass and strings, plus a triangle and cymbals for extra sparkle. The score also calls for an ophicleide, which is a bass brass instrument with a wonderfully odd name. Today the march mostly lives on a church organ. One organist with a lot of pipes now does the work of that whole orchestra.A Very Full Calendar
At the time I was music director of the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, a post I had held since 1835. I was also working for the king in Berlin, although the plans for a music school there fell through. In 1843 I founded the Leipzig Conservatory, and at home I had my wife Cécile Jeanrenaud, whom I married in 1837, and our five children. So you can see I had plenty to do besides writing a cheerful tune for a wedding scene.The Quiet Debut in Tiverton
The first known use of the march at a real wedding came on 2 June 1847, in England. Dorothy Carew married Tom Daniel at St Peter's Church in Tiverton, and the organist, Samuel Reay, played it. I find it lovely that a parish church got there before any palace did. Reay took a piece written for the stage and quietly started a tradition.A Princess Makes It Famous
I died in Leipzig on 4 November 1847, aged 38, only a few months after that wedding in Tiverton. So I wasn't around when Princess Victoria chose the march for her marriage to Prince Frederick William of Prussia on 25 January 1858. That wedding is what made the march widely popular, and people sometimes call the couple the first to use it. They weren't, as Tiverton shows, but a royal wedding is a very good advertisement.Not the Other Tune
Many people think my march is the "Here Comes the Bride" melody, but that one is the "Bridal Chorus" from Wagner's Lohengrin. It's a different piece altogether, and couples often pair it with mine. For the bride's entrance they might also choose Jeremiah Clarke's "Prince of Denmark's March". A single wedding can end up with three composers on the program, and I'm happy to be the one people hear on the way out.Liszt Takes It for a Spin
After I was gone, Liszt made a virtuoso piano transcription of the march in 1849–50, called the "Wedding March and Dance of the Elves". It turns my brisk tune into a showpiece for nimble fingers, a bit like a famous chef taking a family recipe and cooking it for an audience. Vladimir Horowitz later made his own showpiece out of it. That's a long way from a stage in Potsdam, and I'm glad the tune made the trip.---
I hope you enjoyed learning about the backstory of my Wedding March as much as I enjoyed telling it. It started as a small piece of music for a Shakespeare play, and it ended up in more churches than I could ever have pictured. I find that rather lovely, because a tune written for the stage now belongs to so many people on the most important days of their lives. There's still plenty more to explore about this march. You could look at how it sounds on a church organ compared with a full orchestra, or at the piano showpiece that Liszt made from it in 1849–50. You could also find out more about the rest of the music I wrote for A Midsummer Night's Dream. If any of that sounds interesting, please click on the links provided and keep exploring the Wedding March for yourself. I'd be glad to have you along.