Heard It in an Ad · Story 9
1858 · a British royal wedding
The Wedding March began in a play with a donkey-headed man
Mendelssohn's Wedding March, played as the couple leaves, comes from a Shakespeare comedy.
Da-da-da-DAH, da-da-da-DAH. The fanfare that sends the newlyweds back down the aisle was first written for a play full of fairies, mischief and a donkey's head.
Where you heard it
The British royal family did much to make it wedding music. It was played in 1858 when Princess Victoria, Queen Victoria's eldest daughter, married Prince Frederick William of Prussia, and from there it spread widely.
The real story
Mendelssohn was seventeen when he wrote an overture to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1826. The Wedding March came seventeen years later, in 1843, when the King of Prussia asked him for more music for a staging of the play. The play includes a scene where the fairy queen, under a spell, falls in love with a man who has been given a donkey's head.
Tell a friend
The march couples leave to was written for a Shakespeare play in which a fairy queen falls for a man with a donkey's head.
Felix Mendelssohn1809–1847Read the story of Mendelssohn →