renaissance wedding

[erin-wood]

I am playing a wedding for the first time at a renaissance festival. My usual repertoire for a wedding is a variety of baroque, classical, popular tunes on the pedal harp. I do have a lot of Irish and renaissance music that I play on the lever harp but have never done a wedding with it. I am curious what your favorites are for this type of wedding!

[liath-hollins]

I love Come Live With Me and be my Love as a processional. Lord Willoughby’s Welcome Home is a good one too.

Any of the branles or voltes would make good recessionals.

I get asked for Greensleeves quite often, but try to dissuade people from that…

Hope it all goes really well!

[erin-wood]

Thank you for these great suggestions! Do you have any favorite collections of music? I have read through Deborah Friou’s book and I found some nice appropriate stuff in Kim Robertson’s book. I agree that Greensleeves is a little weird at a wedding. Is there a comparable website like Irish’s music thesession.org for renaissance music, where I could find these tunes?

[sarah-mullen–2]

Hey, which festival are you working? I play the harp at renaissance festivals all over the country. I believe I’m one of two harpists working faire circuit full time right now. Anyway, I’ve probably played for more than 100 renaissance weddings. The first thing I can tell you is that renaissance festival is to history as etch-a-sketch is to art. SCA events may care about historical accuracy, but renaissance festivals are basically theme parks, so accuracy takes a back seat to entertainment value. Your management and about 99% of the patrons cannot tell the difference between renaissance and baroque music, so if you’ve got lots of good baroque repertoire already, feel free to use it. In fact, most of my ren faire wedding favorites are technically baroque.

For processionals my favorite is Purcell’s The Hole in the Wall. I use that the most. I also use March of the King of Laois and Give Me Your Hand. Carolan’s Draught works well for both processional or recessional, and if you’ve got a couple who like minor key tunes (less traditional today, but certainly period correct) you can use The Amoroso, The Princess Royal, or even a Folia variation (Scarlatti or Handel, or you can just improvise.) Any Bransle or Gaillarde will make a good processional, just by the nature of the dance. Also, nobody will ever object to Canon in D, which I’m sure you’ve got in your repertoire, and be prepared with the Wagner Wedding March because once and while somebody requests it. I’ve also been known to break out any number of Handel pieces, including Lascia Ch’io Pianga, which I think makes a lovely processional.

For recessionals I’ve got a handful of Carolan tunes I love. I use John O’Connor the most, but Carolan’s Concerto is also a lovely choice, and as I mentioned you can use Carolan’s Draught as well. Sometimes people want a more recognizable tune, and that’s where I’ll use something like the first Spring movement from The Four Seasons or Handel’s The Harmonious Blacksmith. Really, the important part is that it not sound modern.

Yes, as liath-hollins mentioned, you will get requests for Greensleeves, but I try to talk them out of that one, as well as Scarborough Faire and She Moved Through the Faire. Nothing that involves infidelity, rejection, or the premature death of the bride who then haunts the groom, is appropriate for a wedding.

You’ll get two different sorts of groups of people who get married at the faire. There are the die-hard fans who are season pass holders, have a large social life built around the festival, huge costume wardrobe (they have a bigger budget and are often better dressed than the cast) and may very well travel to multiple festivals around the country. In Rennie parlance these are “playtrons.” They’re more likely to have specific requests or care about history and period correct music. The other type of couple I see a lot of are those who really don’t want to put a lot of thought into their wedding, are sometimes getting married in a hurry, and choose the festival because it’s an all inclusive package deal. The faire typically provides a location, food and drink for the reception, an officiant, music, entertainment for the guests, and often garlands and costume rentals for the wedding party. They may have attended the faire a few times, but they’re not hardcore about it. These couples generally do not care what you play as long as it’s pretty, although these are the ones who will occasionally ask for the Wagner processional or Canon in D because they want something familiar. You may or may not get to know the bride and groom. Occasionally I have a couple start talking to me about their wedding months ahead of time, usually I get a week or two of notice, and sometimes the festival just says “We need you in the garden in 30 minutes for wedding” and the first time I hear the brides name is as she says her vows.

I can’t help you much with music because I almost always write my own arrangements, and I don’t really write anything down. The only books I’ve got that I can recommend are the Deborah Friou books, Renaissance Ballads and Court Dances, Baroque Music for the Harp, and while I don’t have it, I assume her Renaissance Music for the Harp book will have lots of great tunes. Just play through those and you’ll find all sorts of wonderful selections. If you’re comfortable arranging, you can find melodies for all the Irish tunes I listed at thesession.org. You can also read through Playford’s English Dancing Master. Lots of great tunes there. It’s public domain and you can download it here:
http://imslp.org/wiki/The_Dancing_Master_%28Playford,_John%29

The SCA has a ton of online resources for court dances. Here are a couple of good websites to use as a starting point.
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/dance.html
and
http://ieee.uwaterloo.ca/sca/Music/

I hope this helps a little bit. Have fun working the festival.

[sarah-mullen–2]

My curiosity is piqued here. I assume by “Come Live with Me and be My Love” that you’re referring to a melody set to the poem “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Marlowe. It’s a great poem, certainly appropriate for a wedding, but I was unaware of any musical setting. Do you have a link to your source you could share?

[Gretchen Cover]

Harpist Patrick Ball has an excellent recording of “Come Live With Me and Be My Love.” You can listen/buy it on Grooveshark along with his other Renaissance/Celtic music – of which there is a lot!

[erin-wood]

Sarah, thank you so much for the detailed response! I really appreciate it. This will be at the fair in Kansas City. I am playing at a friend’s wedding. I don’t know if they have a harpist that plays there regularly. But I am really enjoying exploring this repertoire. Maybe I will be able to play a few more weddings there in the future! Thanks for your help.

[liath-hollins]

My version of ‘Come Live With Me’ is based on the one in Suzanne Guildemann’s book ‘The Three Ravens’.

It’s definitely a book worth having – super-easy arrangements that all fit on a 22 string harp. I use it a lot with my students.

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