Here Comes The Bride by Richard Wagner

Album: they didn't have albums back then (1850)

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This is the standard wedding march played as the bride walks down the aisle at weddings. It came from Wagner's opera Lohengrin, where it was used in a wedding scene between the characters Elsa and Lohengrin. In the opera, the marriage is doomed to fail.
This is usually played on an organ with no vocal accompaniment, but in Wagner's opera, there were words that went along with it. It is sung by the bridal party after the wedding.
Wagner was notoriously anti-Semitic. As a result, the song is rarely played at Jewish weddings.
There are 2 wedding marches that are used all over the world: this and Felix Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" (like Wagner, Mendelssohn was from Germany, but he was Jewish). These two pieces became a tradition for weddings that started with Victoria, Queen of England... she chose Wagner's one for the entrance of the bride and the Mendelssohn one for the exit of the couple. In modern times it is normally used the other way around. >>>
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Miguel - Guayaquil, South America

Comments: 5

Dave from Oak Park, MiJewish weddings usually have more traditional Hebraic songs, so a song like 'Here Comes The Bride' would probably never be played anyway, regardless...
Chinchu from Guayaquil, South AmericaI agree with this guy below me...
Miguel from Guayaquil, South AmericaWagner was a raging nationalist and anti-semitic... And that shows in his operas... All their topics are about German mythology trying to bring back the nationalism to Germany... I'm not anti-semitic, but I do think his music was great. He's such a huge influence on John Williams, composer of the Star Wars soundtracks; you can tell just from hearing them.
Brandon from Brooklyn, NyIt is extremely ignorant to say Wagner was a "loud-mouthed Anti-Semite." His music was quite powerful and heavily influenced by lore, but he predates the Nazi Regime by over 50 years, and was not hte contemporary of any living Nazi. He may well have been an Anti-Semite, bht this was simply not an explicit theme in his work, which is some of the greatest opera ever peened. Hitler's obsession with powerful art and his love of all things German led him to adopt the long-deceased Wagner for his own purposes. To appreciate Wagner's musical genious today does not benefit anti-semites in any way; not to only avoids the reconciliation that will only serve to bring humanity together.
Caitlin from Claremont, CaBecause Wagner was such a loud-mouthed anti-semite, and to an extent believed in the purity of the white race as a whole (which shines forth in his operas based on the old folk stories of German heritage), Hitler was one of his biggest fans. It was not uncommon in some concentration camps for Wagner's works to be piped through Concentration Camps at certain times.

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