Weddings provide great opportunities for hairy music moments — those instances which rarely happen in a normal church meeting, but which occur more often at weddings because of factors like the involvement of less experienced musicians and slightly crazy musical requests.
I had one of my hairiest wedding music moments this summer at a wedding I wasn’t even supposed to be playing at. I’d thought it was quite strange when the visiting band stood up a couple of minutes before the entrance of the bride to play ‘La rejouissance’ from Handel’s Fireworks Music. I wasn’t sure how Handel was going to mix with electric guitars so I sidled up to the keyboard player and asked him if he was playing it from the piano. ‘No’, he said, ‘you’re playing it on the organ’.
Running for the organ
As I ran towards the organ past the bride who was waiting to make her entrance, my only thoughts, in between frantic prayers, were, ‘I can’t even remember how La rejouissance goes; how about I play Jeremiah Clarke’s trumpet voluntary? — those trumpetty things all sound the same to me — they’ll never know the difference’. I got to the organ with seconds to go, and it was then that I witnessed again the sovereignty and glorious humour of God: I’d been playing through some wedding music for another bride-to-be the previous Thursday, and the last piece I played her was ‘La rejouissance’. It was still there on the music stand.
