traditional bridal marches

[Sylvia]

This year, I learned that we’re not supposed to use the traditional marches in the Catholic wedding ceremony. I’ve been using them for 30 years. Duh. I mean, nobody told me.

Almost all my church weddings are Catholic. It’s just been lately that the brides have been requesting the Canon in D (almost all of them ask for that) for their entrance. That means the other marches, padrinos and bridesmaids, have to be something else. The Trumpet Voluntary is nice for bridesmaids, but if I use that for them, I play it kind of laid-back because I don’t want the bridesmaids sounding triumphant and the bride wandering in on the more peaceful Canon.

Also, some churches want only classical music for the prelude, while others don’t care.
I was wondering what other harpists are experiencing in their Catholic weddings.

[barbara-brundage]

I’ve played in a lot of Catholic churches with a lot of different rules, but in my lifetime I’ve never encountered one that didn’t allow the traditional wedding marches. Are you saying that your diocese has this as a rule? It was the case back in the 1930s and Emily Post or someone kept reiterating it long after it stopped being true, so I’d be curious to know if any church has suddenly dug this up again.

[Sylvia]

This is S. TX where most people are Hispanic and Catholic, so I wondered if it was a regional thing. I don’t know what the diocese says because I’m not Catholic.

I checked on the Internet, and it does seem to be a long-standing rule. It never seemed to bother anyone until about last year when the girls started asking for a different entrance and exit.

Another thing that popped up 10-15 years ago is the Flowers to the Virgin. Usually at the end of the mass, the bride takes a bouquet (not the one she walks in and out with) to the statue and deposits it there…meanwhile, that is where the Ave Maria is played (or sung). There is not usually a singer, so I just play it (the Schubert). I’ve heard that it is a tradition in Mexico.

[Angela Biggs]

The Catholic Church in America is *extremely* confused about its music. I say this as a Catholic musician, and I could go on about it for dozens of pages. It’s very, very unfunny — especially given that the rules are, and always have been, quite clear. The changes of Vatican II were completely and deliberately misapplied in the U.S., and we’ve been suffering for it ever since. In the last 5-7 years or so there’s been a growing movement to bring back the dignity and worship necessary to the music in the celebration of the Mass. More priests are starting to climb on board, which may be where you’re suddenly seeing these changes.

Wedding marches such as the Bridal March from Lohengrin have always been inappropriate because of the context in their original operas; also, they are associated in popular culture with sentimentality rather than worship. But individual priests have a lot of leeway within their parishes, and some choose not to enforce the rules.

Conservative is usually safe (although there are parishes that will get very angry over conservative music choices). The questions to ask yourself are:
1. What is the origin of this piece? If it’s from a movie about vampires, don’t use it. (A music director I know once mentioned that a priest had approved “Bella’s Lullaby” for a Communion meditation! After I told the MD what that was, the priest rescinded his permission).
2. How does “the world” perceive and use this piece? If there are popular spoof words to the tune in your region, don’t use it.
3. What is the mood of the piece? Will it contribute or detract from worship? Joyful is good and appropriate, but anything raucous should be discarded.

I hope that helps.

[Sylvia]

That was informative. The person who told me about the marches is Catholic and plays the organ at her church.

I always thought that the marches were external, like bookends, and that appropriate music had to be just within the mass…
so the prelude could include pop stuff like From this Moment On. I go by whatever the bride wants because I figure she should know.

In the 80s, I usually played the Ave Maria for Communion. Then in the 90s, I worked with a Catholic choir for five years and was told that the Ave is a Marian hymn and shouldn’t be used for Communion.

[kreig-kitts]

Angela, I don’t think Vatican II is entirely to blame. The folk music revival and the coming into adulthood of the rock and roll generation caused many churches to experiment with other styles of music, for better or/and worse. I think because protestant, especially evangelical, churches tend to be more flexible in their worship styles, the changes both came and left sooner. In addition, because protestantism probably has greater freedom of movement between churches and even denominations, I’d wager that people tended to move to congregations that had service styles they wanted, hence some churches were able to stay with traditional music while others developed styles that resembled more popular styles as the strongest opinions both ways moved to churches that met their needs.

With the Catholic congregations, however, I imagine that their greater institutional inertia meant that in those that changed their music styles, what they adopted stuck around for a very long time, outliving people’s taste for it.

[Angela Biggs]

Kreig, you must live in a wonderful place. 🙂 The music in Protestant and Catholic churches where I live is equally inappropriate for its purpose. Protestants have never recovered, they’ve dug themselves in deeper; those that never gave in to the rock “worship” music have about ten members. There are two Catholic churches and a Baptist church (which my husband attends) within a 7-minute walk from my house, but I actually drive 40 minutes each way every week, and this is a big reason why.

Vatican II (the document was called the Sacrosanctum Concilium) gave the folk/rock movement an opening. No, it’s not entirely to blame. People were the ones making the decisions, not a document! The document did, however, give the tiniest little opening to music that had previously been considered rogue, and in America we took that and ran with it. Specifically, the following item:

116. The Church recognizes Gregorian chant as being specially suited to the Roman liturgy. Therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services. Other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action as laid down in Article 30.

The “by no means excluded” allowance was deliberately misread as positive encouragement. And this is where I could start writing a 15-page essay of related problems, so I’ll stop there. If anyone’s interested in the subject, you can read more at [MusicaSacra](http://musicasacra.com/about-cmaa/faq/)

[kreig-kitts]

Angela,

I don’t know, though in the areas I’ve lived in the longest after leaving home, Atlanta and Washington, DC, many of the churches with more traditional worship are doing quite well. There is an Episcopal church that does a full mass every week with incense and chanting, including congregational chanting, and the choir sings only traditional Anglican music, and it is very well-attended, including by younger people (under 40 would be “church young” and I think I recall families with children from my visit. Similarly, there are Methodists that keep a lot of the traditional hymns, with a large choir of probably 50 voices, and a full congregation that sings along, again with many younger adults attending as well as older members. They also include many spirituals in their service, which is fairly common in many protestant congregations, especially those in diverse communities. A friend of mine is a staff singer at one of the Catholic churches and I believe he does a lot of older music, though I’m not sure about Gregorian chant.

[Angela Biggs]

Kreig! Yes, I would call those wonderful places! 🙂

[alexandra-baldwin]

Wow, Angela, well said! An excellent description of the situation. I second Kreig Kitts, and if you’re ever in the Diocese of Arlington (Virginia, that is) let me know and I’ll point you to some parishes where they have a full ‘Missa Cantata’ every week. There is some really beautiful music being done here, by several different churches/ denominations. We had a Requiem Mass for All Saints Day with the Duruflé Requiem (just the organ version, sadly, no harp!)

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