Background:

I've played at weddings before, and was familiar with what was expected. First, there was to be music for the pre-ceremony when guests are arriving. For this, the music has to be low-key enough that it works as a background for those people who will be standing and chatting until the ceremony actually starts, yet interesting enough so that the less social types will be entertained as they sit for what almost surely will be a long wait, as these things always start later than expected.

The couple had given me carte blanche as far as style goes, and I knew that the attendees were a pretty modern crowd, so I tried to be somewhat eclectic in what I wrote. I ended up writing things in four different genres; jazzy, melodic pieces that followed song forms; calm, ambient pieces based on repeating fingerpicked figures; fast strumming songs to perk things up a bit; and faux-classical works. The ambient and strumming pieces came together the easiest, as it was more a matter of choosing chord progressions than really writing melodies. The jazzy pieces took a bit more work, but the time I put in last year on jazz harmony helped out a lot with ideas for chord shapes, which led to compositional ideas.

The classical pieces were the hardest to complete. I really wanted to be as "classical" as I could be, using my skeletal knowledge of counterpoint and shallow familiarity with the music (I adore Bach, but have really only listened deeply to the solo violin and cello suites, other than that all I know is Sharon Isbin and a few John Williams records, besides the random pieces I've worked on to play), which meant using triadic harmony, resolving as expected, and using tonal progressions. The first one I finished was only two minutes long, which ended up being a good one for the bridesmaid's entrance. However, after that I felt a bit stymied; I had starting ideas aplenty, but I didn't feel able to carry things very far, and I ended up with a lot of eight-bar bits and pieces.

Finally, the breakthrough came when I was working with one of those short fragments, and had the idea to model a composition very loosely after Bach's "Chaconne" for solo violin, which is a long piece that takes a simple theme through an incredible journey over thirteen minutes or so. I realized that the Chaconne repeated the same chord progression throughout most of the piece. While I had come up with a few ideas for extending my piece, which involved taking off in a different direction. I scrapped them and, instead, wrote the chords of the initial progression out again, with the goal of finding another way to interpret them. That was exactly what needed to happen - I found myself visualizing a longer shape for the piece, and with the chord progression as a constant guide, began writing furiously. This discovery coincided with a week where I was alone at home, and I worked for seven or eight hours a day on this piece. It was growing beyond what I imagined, and some of the parts came together like I wasn't really writing them, just transcribing from somewhere else. It was quite an amazing experience, and I was glad to be able to find a good spot for it in the wedding, at the climax of the ceremony, when the bride and groom were pronounced husband and wife and the whole bridal party exited, followed by the guests.

The ceremony went much as I'd hoped, the music seemed to be appropriate for the special day and I received a number of compliments afterward.

I'd enjoy doing this again. I had had some trepidation that I'd feel limited by the requirement to write things that were very tonal and pleasant to listen to, but instead it proved to be a good challenge (and I still managed to sneak in some odd time signatures and unusual modulations). The best part was feeling like I contributed something meaningful to the ceremony, and it's an additional bonus that I now have these pieces as part of my personal repertoire.