It’s funny that it’s taken nearly 2 years for me to finally get round to writing an entry about the music I chose for our wedding in 2006. Perhaps it’s that of late I’ve felt the urgent desire to write and recollect about so many things in life that I’ve been writing long and numerous entries here. So, for friends like Ann and Grace (maybe) who visit this blog to get their capsule versions about Singapore Current Affairs, er, I’ll get back to that… soon enough.:)
Now on the topic of Wedding Music itself, here are perennial favorites for this sort of thing. Like the Wedding March from Mendelssohn’s Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Pachebel’s Canon in D for string ensemble or quartet, the Bridal Chorus from Wagner’s Lohengrin, and Panis Angelicus by St. Thomas Aquinas and made wildly popular by Welsh singer Charlotte Church when she was still a wee bit of a teenager. There’s even a little cottage industry for wedding music albums, and any Google search will throw up hundreds of these albums for purchase.
One thing I resolved to do however was to go entirely off the beaten track. I looked through dozens, conservatively, of the Wedding albums, made notes on which ones had been used, and eliminated everyone of those off my list immediately. In other words, I wanted to use music that haven’t been used in Weddings before, or at least not in memory or media.
Tall resolution eh? Well, something helped. As Ling knows, I’ve started to gradually be forgetful. I used to miss just maybe 1 in 20 things. But these days, it’s whittling down to 1 in 15, maybe 10. But one thing I continue to retain is pretty good music memory. No, it’s not about hearing a music piece just once and unfailingly being able to recall it completely. Rather, it’s about remembering music textures, patterns, and (usually) melody lines.
Ling wanted a share of the action too, since she’s also musically trained. So she got to choose the closing hymn and also got alumni from the Hai Sing choir to sing a number during the church service at Wesley. But I got to choose everything else, and that specifically were the processional, the opening hymn, the recessional, and the second entrance music for the evening banquet.
To be continued in the next post! :)
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