Epithalamium

What it means

The epithalamium, from the Greek for “at the bridal chamber,” is a wedding song honouring a newly married couple. The genre dates from antiquity, when such songs were sung before the bridal chamber or during the wedding procession, and it was later taken up again and again in poetry and music.

Musical use

In the Renaissance and Baroque, epithalamia were written as festive occasional compositions combining blessings, praise of the couple, and the guests' joy in text and music, partly for chorus, partly for solo voices with instruments. In later periods wedding music remained an occasion for festive vocal and instrumental works, the ancient genre name then usually serving as a deliberate reference to the classical tradition.

The epithalamium should be distinguished from the epicedium, the funeral lament, which sings of the opposite occasion, death rather than marriage. It differs from liturgical wedding music in that it is usually secular in character and meant as a festive contribution to the celebration, not as part of the church rite.

Performance practice

When studying an epithalamium, keep the festive mood in mind and shape the performance with a clear, radiant tone and a lively but not rushed tempo. Read the text carefully beforehand, since it usually contains allusions to the couple or to ancient images of love and fertility that can shape how you phrase individual passages.