So you've got the 'walking-down-the-aisle' music sorted for your wedding, but how about some songs for the big day? Here are ten of the best wedding songs in history.
Best wedding songs
Thomas Tallis: If Ye Love Me
This anthem by the English composer Thomas Tallis was first published in 1565 during the reign of Elizabeth I. Four and a half centuries later, it’s still one of the most elegant, beautifully simple and moving musical expressions of devotion. So all credit to Harry and Meghan for including it in their wedding ceremony in 2018.
Léo Delibes: Flower Duet from Lakmé
British Airways might have appropriated it for not-entirely-romantic purposes. But, objectively speaking, this duet from the first act of Delibes’s tragic opera Lakmé is certainly beautiful and joyous enough to be a wedding song.
Claudio Monteverdi: Pur ti Miro
No moment in opera is more morally ambiguous than the end of Monteverdi’s Il Coronazione di Poppea, where Poppea has just fulfilled her ruthless ambition of marrying the megalomaniacal emperor Nero. Indifferent to the collateral damage they have left in their wake, Poppea and Nero sing this ecstatic love duet.
Its words translate as ‘I adore you, I embrace you, I desire you.’ But while the narrative context may be dodgy, the song itself is exquisite, which is why I included it in my own wedding ceremony (don't worry, my husband is nicer than Nero).
We included Monteverdi in our list of the best Italian composers of all time. And, as he straddles both the Renaissance and Baroque periods, he also features in our lists of best Renaissance composers and best Baroque composers.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Laudate Dominum
Although it’s part of a much larger work, the 'Vesperae solennes de Confessore', KV 339, composed for Salzburg Cathedral, ‘Laudate Dominum’ is often performed as a standalone piece. Tranquil and celestial, with a soprano rising ethereally into the stratosphere, this Mozart masterpiece has dignified many a funeral. But its lightness and purity is just as well suited as a wedding song.
Louis Armstrong: Wonderful World
Ah come on, who hasn’t cried like a baby listening to this song? Yes, I’ve been there. Odds are, you have too. It’s hard to imagine a piece of music more suffused in childlike optimism and wonder, which is exactly the right kind of vibe for a wedding song.
More best wedding songs
Eva Cassidy: Somewhere over the Rainbow
Judy Garland made this song famous, but I love the gentle version by Eva Cassidy. Unlike some artists, Cassidy holds back because she was always much too classy to score cheap points. And it makes for so much more emotional impact. The perfect wedding song.
Édith Piaf: Hymne de l'amour
The iconic French singer Édith Piaf wrote ‘Hymne à l’amour’ in 1949 for the love of her life: the married French boxer, Marcel Cerdan. The two had a year-long affair before he was killed in a plane crash en route to visit her .
- The history of French art song
- The 25 best French composers
- The most famous French singers of all time
You could say there was something eerily prophetic about the song’s last verse: 'If one day life tears you away from me/If you die and are far from me/It does not matter if you love me.’ But that doesn’t take away from the fact that it is one of the most passionate and best love songs ever written.
George Frideric Handel: Eternal Source of Light Divine
There’s a reason why Meghan walked down the aisle to this one in 2018: it’s gorgeous. Written by Handel for Queen Anne’s birthday on February 6 C.1713, it praises the Queen’s virtues as peacemaker with music of ethereal purity and serenity.
Over the years it has been sung by many sopranos, but I personally like to hear it performed by a countertenor (as in the clip below). And preferably one of Iestyn Davies’s calibre, given that this song responds less kindly than some to out-of-tune singing.
- Meet the breakdancing countertenor, Jakub Józef Orliński
- Who is Reginald Mobley, the countertenor who sang at the Coronation?
Robert Schumann: Widmung
The day before their wedding, in September 1840, Robert Schumann presented his beloved Clara with a collection of songs. The first of these was ‘Widmung’, whose great flurries of passion, optimism and rapture perfectly conveys what Schumann must have felt on being finally being allowed to marry Clara after years of opposition from her father. I’d recommend this to anybody as a wedding song - as long as you can find a half-decent soprano to sing it.
Johann Sebastian Bach/Charles Gounod: Ave Maria
Originally published in 1853 as ‘Méditation sur le Premier Prélude de Piano’ by Bach, Ave Maria has been hugely popular ever since the French Romantic composer Charles Gounod snazzed up the melody. Given its religious nature, it’s not everyone's perfect choice of wedding song. Still, its sense of tranquility does strike the right note for anyone embarking on (hoping for?!) a life of nuptial bliss.
