Rachel and Pierluigi's Wedding
Previous | Home | NextThe ceremony. Given that the wedding was on a Sunday,
in order to allow the Mass to fulfill the Sunday obligation for the Catholics
in attendance (almost everyone), Archbishop Miller maintained the Scripture
readings for that Sunday, but along with the more tailored prayers, he
allowed us to substitute one of the readings with one for weddings. In
this case it was the First Reading, Tobit 8:4b-8 ("Allow us to live
to a happy old age.") In selecting the reading, this one struck me
as the one which most encompassed what marriage should represent to the
lives of the couple (click here for the text
of it). My father read this reading in English, while Pierluigi's uncle
Mario read the second one in Italian. Gabriella read the Prayers of the
Faithful in both languages, and Klaas and Dorothy Tadema, longtime family
friends from Texas, brought the gifts to the altar.
Some of the music, chosen by Maestro Paolini, Maestro
Lo Muscio, and me, included selections from Seventeenth Century masses
by Lasso and Taverner (the Kyrie, Gloria, and other sung parts of the
Mass). During Communion, the cantors sang Choral T from Bach's Cantata
140 ("Zion hört die Wächter singen") in German, my
only non-negotiable contribution to the music and my Dad's all-time favorite
piece. It gives me chills every time
I hear it, and for whoever doesn't already know it, I suggest listening
to a good recording of it sometime before you die, or you can listen to Dario's version of it here, which he re-recorded for me with his cantors (in it, Dario himself is at the organ). Press the "play" button on the screen after you download it and use headphones or good-quality speakers for best results. This chorale is also particularly suited to evening
wedding Masses--click here to see the text
of it. Also, the text of other parts of the longer cantata are taken from
Song of Songs in the Bible, passages of which are used as Scriptural readings
for weddings.
For the offertory, at his suggestion, Maestro Lo Muscio
played "Gabriel's Oboe" on the organ. It is a short, melodic
piece from the soundtrack of the 1986 film "The Mission" about
some priests in South America. I had never heard of this film before,
but the composer, Ennio Morricone, is Italian, and the piece appears to
be popular in Italy for weddings.
Wedding ceremonies in Italy also include the civil
function of signing the register along with witnesses. In this case, they
were my two sisters, Dominique Varner and Gabriella Mackin, Gabriella's
husband Brock, and Pierluigi's cousin, Carlo Pergolari. As the photo partially
shows, they were seated at either side of the bride and groom during the
ceremony. The register was signed after the Mass, and for this part I
chose "Air on the G String," also by Bach. For the recessional,
Maestro Lo Muscio and a trumpeter played "Hornpipe" from "Water
Music" by Handel. The guests heard the strains of this piece from
the Cloister, where they were gathering up the rice to pelt at us when
we came out (Padre Nello had encouraged them to go outside during the
picture-taking.)
