The Prince of Denmark’s March by Jeremiah Clarke, formerly known as Trumpet Voluntary by Purcell, under whatever name has had a profound impact on my life. It’s not in my top five favorites but it’s certainly in the top ten.
As a teenager and young adult in the late ’50s I was beginning to encounter Baroque music, especially for brass and trumpet, and loving it. A lot of the old guard in our home church in Minneapolis were retiring and we young people had to take up the slack. My girlfriend and future wife was taking both piano and organ lessons and took over as church organist at age 16 or 17. Not long after, the church pipe organ was under repair for several months. What to do. Gloria had managed to buy an antique pump organ for $25 and she and her brother restored it into working condition. They brought it into the church and she played two services a Sunday, pumping and playing away until the pipe organ was fixed. We were a Lutheran church with a lot of liturgy, four hymns a day, Prelude and Postlude, plus choir accompaniment so that was quite the task.
Gloria belonged to AGO (American Guild of Organists) and was already getting wedding gigs in other churches. At one AGO conference the subject was weddings and she bought a book of wedding music. Organists were getting tired of the less appropriate wedding marches of Wagner and Mendelsohn and had accumulated better alternatives. One outstanding example was Trumpet Voluntary. She had already talked some brides into using it and decided to play it one Sunday for the Prelude. On the pump organ. Of course it was impossible to play the pedal part on that instrument. She asked if I could read bass clef. Because of five years of piano lessons plus several years in church choirs singing both tenor and bass, of course I could. She had me practice the pedal line and we later practiced together, me standing over her left shoulder and playing the pedal line with my left hand. It worked very well both in practice and at both services. As a result, every time I hear the piece (preferably with organ and trumpet or with a good trumpet stop) I still get the shivers and could play that part in my sleep.
A couple of years later, we used Trumpet Voluntary as the processional for our wedding. The piece has had a profound impact on both my and our lives and has a permanent niche in my memory.