Seniors Network

Wedding music

In the show Sweet Charity, lyricist Dorothy Fields pleads 'I Love To Cry At Weddings';

Stephen Sondheim in Company points a much bleaker picture with Getting Married. Away dull care, isn't this the spring-bound month when we Ring Out The Bells for the Royal romantic wedding of them all, for Kate and William?  

My own recalls of Royal weddings stretches to the November 1934 nuptials of Marina of Greece and the Duke of Kent. A few years on I walked along a bedecked Mall following the November 1947 linking of then Princess Elizabeth to Prince Philip; not forgetting the so-called 'Fairy-tale' 1981 joining of Prince Charles and Lady Diana.

Memories of happy days, all with trappings of State and crowds, recalled by M-G-M in Royal Wedding re-named Wedding Bells here in the UK - were the British arm of Metro concerned about the Royal connection? Not these days, Americans are already making a film of same.

But back to the Wedding ceremony whose first line reads 'Dearly Beloved, a phrase immortalised by Jerome Kern and Johnny Mercer in the Fred Astaire - Rita Hayworth WW2 picture You Were Never Lovelier. As far as I can recall one of the few times The Book of Common Prayer inspired Hollywood and Tin-Pan-Alley.

Forgive these digressions, let's get back to Love and Marriage this song success from Frank Sinatra and dozens of others, is great enough set aside Mendelssohn's, almost traditional, Wedding March - Here Comes The Bride; doubtless heard a thousand times a month across the world! It will resound across Westminster Abbey - and the entire universe on Friday 29 April, booked as the love holiday of the year!

Love songs in general so much in mind for this day - and month, I'm recalling a few as I scribble. Several from George and Ira Gershwin, include the solid Love Walked In, and from a score discovered after George's death, far too young in 1937, For You, For Me, Forevermore, and the beautiful ballad, Our Love Is Here To Stay, completed for the film The Goldwyn Follies by composer Vernon Duke. Then with cheeky countenance let's recall Fred Astaire in the film A Damsel In Distress, and the zippy Nice Work If You Can Get It

1947 - when Elizabeth and Philip tied the knot hit parades were singing People Will Say We're In Love from Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! Then playing Theatre Royal, Drury Lane~ meanwhile a mile away, at the Adelphi Theatre, Strand, nightly the Vivian Ellis all-British success Bless The Bride. This spawned all-time hits. Sometimes still heard on radio - especially from Internet outlet UK Light Radio - the effervescent delightful This Is My Lovely Day perfect duet from Lizbeth Webb (still with us in her 90's) and the French tenor Britain loved - Georges Guetary.

This precis - scratched from memory in a hospital ward - remembers with affection so many love songs. Let's indulge. The Tender Trap, trap the mood, get out the treasured side via Frank Sinatra Debbie Reynolds. Then from the great orchestral composer-conductor, Leonard Bernstein, his terrific Broadway bouncer Wonderful Town, there's It's Love! Then another R & H ballad - No Other Love first an orchestral piece, Beneath the Southern Cross, with added Oscar Hammerstein lyric for the aptly titled Broadway musical: Me and Juliet.

At the after wedding Big Ballroom Bonanza I would toast Kate, or as Perry Como sings Katherina, and to William none better than Bill direct from the Jerome Kern - Oscar Hammerstein score for sensational Showboat. Then, what better than several whirling Waltzes to complete a more than memorable day.

Among these Robert Farnon's Westminster Waltz - where the day began, to fine sparkling sensations such as One Love and Our Waltz from British- born, but all his life American based, prodigious David Rose. No doubt whatsoever I'll Dance At Your Wedding, to Amor, Amor or Love Is In The Air culminating in Blessings to both Bride and Groom with Always In My Heart, and the beautifully British - world renowned, toast to the twosome Good Luck, Good Health, God Bless You. Congratulations from us all and raising a glass! - Let There Be Music!

Neil Stevens