Ironies in wedding music.

[randomness]

(For those of you who are familiar with Western Art Music, a. k. a. Classical Music, this may be very old news. Sorry if you're one of those people; I just learned this while doing some background research after reading about the wedding of HRH The Princess Victoria, Princess Royal of Great Britain and HRH Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia.)

"Here Comes the Bride" (a. k. a. "The Bridal Chorus"), often used as a wedding processional, is from Richard Wagner's Lohengren.

The Wedding March, often used as a recessional, is from Felix Mendelssohn's incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The irony is of the juxtaposition of Mendelssohn, born to Jewish parents (who, in the interests of assimilation, had him baptized in the Lutheran church) and the famously anti-Semitic Wagner in wedding ceremonies ever since Princess Victoria selected the two pieces for her marriage to Prince Friedrich Wilhelm on January 25, 1858.

Apparently Wagner even singled out Mendelssohn and his work, although when his article "Das Judenthum in der Musik" came out in 1850 it was published under a pseudonym, and it is not clear to me whether at the date of the wedding these views were well known.

At any rate, this is not a comment on whether either of these pieces should or shouldn't be played at a wedding, or on whether the personal lives of composers should affect how people feel about their work. It's agreed that both were great composers who wrote some fine music.

These two pieces have become such a traditional pairing, and yet I see a remarkable irony in having them played together.

---

HRH Princess Victoria, The Princess Royal was the daughter of Queen Victoria of Great Britain. Later, her son became Kaiser Wilhelm II.

HRH Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia became Kaiser Friedrich III of Germany but only reigned for 99 days before dying of cancer of the larnyx. He was then succeeded by his son, Wilhelm II.

Comments

[coraline]

also in lohengren, everyone dies at the end. not an auspicious omen for a wedding, i say.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

Hey, it works for me!

Then again, my parents wedding anniversary is the Ides of March, so....

[holmes-iv.livejournal.com]

Um? Not in the Lohengrin I saw—and I'm pretty sure that heavy an edit would have been noticed. Possibly that's one of the versions of it, but almost everybody survives the version Wagner set.

[coraline]

hm. well, that will show me not to listen to others without checking it out for myself.

[adamhmorse.livejournal.com]

Relying solely on the summary you linked to, however, it does appear that (for little apparent reason) the bride from the march dies and the groom ends up departing in sorrow. So it is still slightly dubious from that perspective, although I find that argument much less persuasive than for music that is traditionally performed with words.

[holmes-iv.livejournal.com]

Huh. Now hunting for a better reference—I'd read that as her fainting, because honestly, why the heck would she die? To my mind, the libretto is unclear, largely because "entseelt" is not a word that I or my dictionary have met before. However, a fair number of the synopses I got on a more detailed search have her dying, with the notable exception of the Seattle Opera synopsis. Considering that the Seattle Opera production is in fact the one I was referring to earlier, this begins to make sense, actually.

It seems to come down to how you read that "sinkt entseelt", and while I can't find a translation that make sense (dict.leo.org gives "dehumanized"), the consensus certainly seems to be that in Wagner it means "dies (but operatically)". So it would appear that while I may have been technically correct in citing "the Lohengrin I saw", the author's intent (perplexing as it seems) was to have her die.

So while I still don't think it makes sense, apparently coraline's source was at least as accurate as I was. Sorry about that!

[adamhmorse.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's really quite bizarre. I was reading it and thinking, "and then she lives happily ever after... no, wait..." I guess we'll just have to be baffled.