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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?
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%29The 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.
Thanks for sharing your experiences Allison! I’m looking forward to Eleanor getting big enough to toddle and explore, but I hadn’t really considered how I’m going to keep her away from my harps. When we’re at festivals we live in our rv, so it’s not like I can just put our instruments in another room and close the door. I’ll figure something out. I’m glad your children enjoy music so much, and I hope you can get back to a regular practicing schedule soon.
Hi Sherri,
Sorry to hear about your parents. It’s nice that they have you so close. I’m sure your husband will do fine on his tour. It looks like a great itinerary.
My husband does the full show, costume and mask and all. Frank hasn’t done Disney in a long time, but he’s solidly booked at events around the country. Cyrus does a lot of the renaissance festival bookings so that I can perform at the same show and we can keep the family together. Cyrus has learned a great deal in six years! He’s a great carilloneur,but his knowledge is fairly limited to the CiB show. He hasn’t studied the larger carillon repertoire.
The carillon really is an investment. Frank was gifted his first set by an anonymous benefactor, and he built his second carillon after acquiring the larger part of a set of bells that had just been sitting in somebody’s garage. He had them matched in Holland to get a full set and then worked with an engineer to create a mobile frame. The new CiB carillon is pretty impressive, but still small compared to the bells in most towers. There are only three mobile carillons on this continent. Frank DellaPenna has two, the third is with Jeff Crook. We’ve rented it for CiB a few times. I think Jeff is interested in selling his, but I’m sure it’s very expensive. I have no idea what he’s asking.
My husband plays for the touring carillon show Cast in Bronze. He isn’t a member of any of the carillon associations. He’s only been playing carillon for about 6 years now, but he’s been playing various keyboards all his life. He was trained by Frank DellaPenna, who created the act. When Frank had the prospect of building a second mobile carillon for the show he had already begun training Cyrus, so my husband fell right into doing Cast in Bronze once the second carillon was completed. It’s pretty much a full time job these days. We try to book ourselves at the same venues so we can keep the family together. Your husband’s tour sounds like fun. Are you going to go too? We tried to do a CiB show in Prague while we were on vacation, since there was a mobile carillon in the main Christmas market while we were visiting. The guy who owned the carillon was willing, but it fell through because we couldn’t secure a sound system and CiB is played with backing tracks.
Angela, I got asked about the harp and my belly a lot, but it was never an issue. My belly only barely brushed against the back of the harp a week before I had my daughter. I could have played until the end without difficulty in that regard. It might be an issue if you were pregnant with twins,but even then I think a mother could play for a long time. My back was more of an problem. I started having some extreme back pain (they think a pinched nerve) during my third trimester. It did strike a few times while I was playing the harp, but it also happened while I was driving, washing the dishes, playing with the dogs, and sleeping. It was unpredictable and there wasn’t much to be done when it happened.
I’ve tried to wear the baby while practicing, but I haven’t gotten it to work yet, in part because my daughter really likes to kick her legs. She’s happier in her front carrier (ergo baby) but that is in the way of harp. She’s not quite as comfortable in the side sling (maya wrap) but I can adjust it so it doesn’t touch the harp. The issue with that is she pulls me off balance and my technique goes to hell. I can’t play for long that way. She’s not quite big enough for a backpack style carrier, but I think that has the most promise. Right now I just wait until Daddy has some free time and hand her over.
I don’t think the harp is too loud for her ears. I’ve already taken her to listen to Daddy play the carillon and she loved that. She’s been to hear friends at bars (slept through the whole time) she’s been to several big parties. My baby loves music and the sounds of people talking. I try to keep her well away from speakers and take her outside if it gets too crazy loud. What I’m trying to say is that harp is so much quieter than our lifestyle in general that I’m not concerned.
That’s something I hadn’t even really thought about Janis. Of course she’ll want to make some noise when she gets bigger. I could give her my first harp. It was a really cheap lap harp, one of the Pakistani harps you can get for a few hundred, but that was all the money in the universe to me when I bought it (I was 11.) You can’t do much with it, but it’s sturdy and you can pluck out a melody. It’s a perfect baby harp. We also have a piano at home and she can always play Daddy’s carillon when she’s bigger. She can’t possibly break a carillon.
I completely understand. I was only able to start this thread because my daughter fell asleep on the changing table for an hour this afternoon. Get some sleep while you can! I look forward to your stories when you have the time.
I’m often so envious of musicians who get to spend a lot of their time performing with others, and then I read posts like this and I remember why I’m so glad to be a soloist. I tune however I want, which is 440, and if I drift a little bit during the day that’s okay, as long as I keep the harp in tune with itself.
I did once have problem on one of my recordings. I always record the harp parts first, and then fill in the other instruments. I had a track I’d arranged for harp, cello and wooden flute. When we finally got to record the flute parts it was over 100 degrees in Houston, and the room was not sufficiently regulated. The flutist recorded the easier accompaniment parts first, but waited too long to record the main part. By the time he got to it the temp and humidity had made his wooden flute so sharp that it couldn’t be forced into 440, so he switched to a tin whistle, which was entirely the wrong tone for the piece of music. The flute was the melody line at this point in my arrangement, so I couldn’t bury it in the mix, and so we had to work with it. We tried adding filters to make the tone of the whistle closer to that of a wooden flute, which did not work at all. What we did succeed in doing was making a tin whistle sound like a calliope, which turned out to be kind of cool, so we used it. If our instruments had been able to agree on a tuning I wouldn’t have a funky sounding electronic calliope on one track.
I do at least half my performances in a costume, but I work the Ren faire circuit. It’s tricky designing Renaissance style gowns that give me the range of motion I need in my shoulders.
I travel to events all over the country. People regularly send me emails asking me to perform at their events, and they never say where! On my website, where people can send me an email for bookings, it specifically asks for that vital piece of information, and still nobody ever says. Odds are they saw me at an event in Phoenix and are asking me to play a gig in Scottsdale, and by that time I’m in Charlotte. I don’t know why it’s so hard to include that simple fact.
