FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: Classical Guitar Wedding Music

Question:
I have been playing classical guitar for approx six months (love it, totally addicted!), I am getting married May 2005, Civil ceremony, I intend to select the music for the different parts of the ceremony, would like to select classical guitar music, but don't know any suitable for weddings, can anyone advise?

Answer:
Many of the wedding standards (Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, the Purcell/Clarke Trumpet Voluntary, the ubiquitous Pachabel Canon in D) are readily available (and work pretty well) on classical guitar. Outside of that it's hard to go wrong with Bach-- and pretty much everyone likes it. Speaking of Mr. Pachabel, many years ago, my sister asked me to play for her wedding. Her only request was the Canon. Now at this point, I played fingerstyle, but really wasn't into classical guitar. I found a piano arrangement and started further reducing it to make it playable on the guitar. After a couple of weeks, I thought it wasn't sounding too bad. So i decided to play it for my wife (who loves the piece)-- she hadn't heard me practice since she was in grad classes at night. I got done and she said, Wow, that's pretty... My elation transformed to deflation as she went on, ... you know, that middle part sort of sounded like Pachabel's Cannon. You should of seen her face when I quietly responded, uh, that **was** Pachabel's Canon. Lots more practice followed... it turned out fine. By the way, if I play the piece today, my wife will often look at me with an impish twinkle in her eyes and say, You know that sort of sounded like Pachabel's Canon.