Music 101 Class Notes: Wedding Music
  • Suggested listening: In Gabriels's Garden. Wynton Marsalis, trumpet, with the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Anthony Newman.  Sony Records, SK 66 244.  This CD includes Rondeau by Jean-Joseph Mouret, The Prince of Denmark's March (sometimes known as Trumpet Voluntary) by Jeremiah Clarke, Prelude from Te Deum by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, and Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2.
  • For a list of music appropriate for weddings, visit our Wedding Music page.
  • Mouret's Rondeau and Charpentier's Te Deum are both in Rondo form.  The standard rondo has 5 sections: ABACA.  The A section is the principal theme, and is alternated with subsidiary sections (B & C).  The French rondeau of the Baroque period led to the rondo form of the Classical period. Rondo is an Italian word, and is really the same thing as a French rondeau.  I hope this isn't too confusing...
  • Voluntary:  An English organ piece performed or improvised before, during or after an Anglican church service.  The word "Voluntary" can mean "growing wild or naturally; of spontaneous growth", and it is from this definition that we get its musical meaning.
  • Some prominent composers of Voluntaries: 

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    Jeremiah Clarke c.1674-1707
    William Croft 1678-1727
    Thomas Roseingrave 1688-1766
    Maurice Greene 1696-1755
    William Boyce 1711-79
    John Stanley 1712-86
    John Bennett 1725-84
    Samuel Wesley 1766-1837
    Thomas Adams 1785-1858
     

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