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Music for the Wedding Service



Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton are pleased to announce the music for their Wedding Service.  The music has a largely British theme. The Couple have put considerable thought into selecting the music, and their choices blend traditional music with some newly commissioned pieces.

Before the Service

The music before the Service will begin with a selection of organ pieces: Fantasia in G (Pièce d’orgue à 5) by Johann Sebastian Bach, followed by Veni Creator Spiritus by the Master of The Queen’s Music, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies; Prelude on St. Columba Op. 28 by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford and Sonata for Organ Op. 28 (Allegro maestoso and Allegretto) by Edward Elgar.

Following this will be seven orchestral pieces:

Serenade for Strings in E minor Op. 20 (Allegro piacevole, Larghetto and Allegretto) by Edward Elgar

Courtly Dance V: Galliard from Gloriana (Symphonic Suite) Op. 53a no. 7 by Benjamin Britten

Fantasia on Greensleeves by Ralph Vaughan Williams

Farewell to Stromness by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies

On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring by Frederick Delius

Touch Her Soft Lips and Part from Henry V Suite by William Walton

Romance for String Orchestra Op. 11 by Gerald Finzi

Three of these pieces – Farewell to Stromness, Touch Her Soft Lips and Part and Romance for String Orchestra Op. 11 – were played at the Service of Prayer and Dedication for The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall in 2005.  The Couple specifically chose these pieces for that reason.  The final piece of music before the Service begins continues the broadly British theme: Canzona from Organ Sonata in C minor by Percy Whitlock.

Processional Music

The Service will begin with a Fanfare by The State Trumpeters of the Household Cavalry to mark the arrival of The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh.  The Fanfare will be followed by three Processionals.  For the Procession of The Queen, Prince William and Miss Middleton have chosen March from The Birds by Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry.  Prelude on Rhosymedre by Ralph Vaughan Williams will accompany the Procession of the Clergy, and was chosen for its Welsh echoes.  The Couple have selected ‘I was Glad’, also by Parry, for the Procession of the Bride.         

Hymns

Prince William and Miss Middleton have chosen three hymns for the Service: ‘Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer’, words by William Williams, translated by Peter Williams and others, and music by John Hughes.  The second will be ‘Love Divine All Love Excelling’, words by Charles Wesley and music by William Penfro Rowlands.  The third will be ‘Jerusalem’, by Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, words by William Blake.  All three hymns have been chosen because they are favourites of the Couple.

The Anthem and Motet

The Anthem, ‘This is the day which the Lord hath made’, has been composed specially for the occasion by John Rutter.  It was commissioned by Westminster Abbey as a wedding present for Prince William and Miss Middleton and will be performed by both the Choir of Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal Choir.  Mr. Rutter is a British composer, conductor, editor and arranger who specialises in choral music. 

The Anthem will be followed by the Motet ‘Ubi caritas’ by Paul Mealor, a Welsh composer, who is currently Reader in Composition at The University of Aberdeen.

Mr. Mealor’s composing studio is on the Isle of Anglesey, where Prince William and Miss Middleton live. This version of ‘Ubi caritas’ was written on Anglesey and premiered at the University of St. Andrews in November 2010.

The National Anthem will be sung immediately before the Signing of the Registers.

The Signing of the Registers and the Recessional

During the Signing of the Registers, the choirs will sing ‘Blest pair of Sirens’, words by John Milton from At a Solemn Musick, music by Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry.

Following the Signing, there will be a Fanfare by the Fanfare Team from the Central Band of the Royal Air Force.  The Fanfare, called Valiant and Brave, after the motto of No. 22 Squadron (Search and Rescue Force) was specially composed for this Service by Wing Commander Duncan Stubbs, Principal Director of Music in the Royal Air Force.

The Recessional, for the Procession of the Bride and Bridegroom, will be Crown Imperial by William Walton.  Toccata from Symphonie V  by Charles-Marie Widor and Pomp and Circumstance March no. 5 by Edward Elgar will follow the Service.

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Google Music Beta Launching At Google I/O 2011

Google announced on Tuesday that it will launch the beta version of its cloud-based music service, Music Beta by Google. Get an early look at the service (here) and find out what Music Beta means for you.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google will be announcing an online music service at its I/O 2011 event. The Journal's "people familiar with the matter" suggest it will be similar to Amazon's Cloud Drive, which launched earlier this year and is more like a Web-based hard drive than a subscription service like Spotify or Rdio.

Launching as an invite-only beta today, Google's simply titled 'Music Beta By Google' service will reportedly function as an online music locker that can store 20,000 songs for free -- Amazon only offers 1,000 songs. Reports suggest Google had trouble negotiating with record labels, and is pushing ahead without a music store or the ability for users to share songs. Google's Jamie Rosenberg told All Things D's Peter Kafka, "Unfortunately, a couple of the major labels were less focused on the innovative vision that we put forward, and more interested in in an unreasonable and unsustainable set of business terms."

Much like Amazon's Cloud Drive, the service is likely to let users upload music, and then stream it over the Web to their desktop, Android phone, tablet, or any other device that supports Flash. This, of course, will probably leave iPad and iPhone users out at launch.

All Google users in the U.S. should have access to the service "within weeks," and The New York Times reports that invites for the service will go first to Motorola Xoom users, leaving everyone else to sign up at music.google.com.

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Maybach Music Group Talks Signings and Being Inspired by Bad Boy

As of February, Rick Ross has taken Maybach Music Group to new heights. Rawse has hand picked rappers such as Wale, Pill, Meek Mill, Gunplay, Torch - and singer, Teedra Moses - to build a well oil machine, crafting one of many of the hip-hop imprint's collaborative projects to come, compliation album, 'Self Made Vol. 1' due next week, May 23.

Exclusive: Teedra Moses Signs to Rick Ross' Maybach Music Group

On the eve of the 'Self Made' listening session in New York City, Maybach Music Group's Rick Ross, Wale, Pill and Meek Mill sat down with Billboard.com's The Juice to tell of the making behind the group. In part one of our two part interview with Maybach, Rick Ross discusses why he chose Pill, Wale, and Meek Mill, what former models he was inspired by (i.e. Bad Boy, Cash Money, No Limit) and the guys share their stories of being signed to Maybach.

"Building Maybach Music Group, building this empire, of course I was inspired by some of the earlier movements and earlier dudes that came along such as Cash Money [and] Bad Boy Records. To me, when I really think about the greatest era of hip-hop, that was the greatest eras of hip-hop; when I turned on the TV and saw Big, Mase, Junior Mafia, and the Lox. That was the most exciting era of hip-hop. I looked at the No Limit era and saw that camaraderie that they had, that unity, that brotherhood that they shared. I think it spilled over from [their] music," Rick Ross says.

Check back Wednesday, May 18 for part two of our two part interview with Maybach Music Group.

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Mary J. Blige and Lil Wayne to team up at Billboard Music Awards


Sunday night’s 2011 Billboard Music Awards will feature a host of unique artistic collaborations. Lil Wayne will join Mary J. Blige on stage at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas for her single, “Someone to Love Me.” Far East Movement will perform “Rocketeer” with OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder, and will also team up with Snoop Dogg on “If I Was You (OMG).” Finally, Pitbull will sing “Give Me Everything” with Ne-Yo and Nayer.



Ken Jeong will host the 2011 Billboard Music Awards this Sunday night at 8:00 E.T., live on ABC.

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