Sunday 3 May 2009
Tuesday 2 July 2024
Tune of the Day: Here Comes the Bride
Bridal Chorus from Richard Wagner's “Lohengrin”
This is the standard march played for the bride's entrance at many formal weddings throughout the Western world. The piece comes from Wagner's opera Lohengrin, but its usual placement at the beginning of a wedding ceremony is not entirely in accordance with its placement in the opera. In the opera, the chorus is sung after the ceremony by the women of the wedding party, as they accompany the heroine Elsa to the bridal chamber.
One curious thing is that the marriage between Elsa and Lohengrin is an almost immediate failure, reaching irretrievable breakdown twenty minutes after the chorus has been sung. However, as we all know, this has failed to discourage the widespread use of the piece.