(Lat., from Gk.: ‘bride chamber’; It. epitalamio).
A marriage song or poem usually in praise of the bride and bridegroom; sometimes an instrumental piece intended to be played at a wedding or evocative of the ceremony. The verses of several epithalamia by Sappho in the form of choral songs survive. It is thought by some that Psalm xlv was a wedding song for the marriage of Solomon. There are examples of the genre from all periods. Du Fay's Resvelliés vous, et faites chiere lye was written in 1423 for the marriage of Carlo Malatesta and Vittoria Colonna. An epitalamio begins the Trionfi di musica (RISM 15793) dedicated to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany and consisting of pieces performed at her wedding to Francesco de' Medici; it comprises a sonnet and a sestina, each stanza of the latter being set by a different composer (among them Andrea Gabrieli, Merulo and Vecchi). The most celebrated English poem bearing the title, Spenser's Epithalamion (1595), was not set to music by contemporary musicians, nor were the verses for which he coined the title Prothalamion (i.e. a song sung before a wedding), published the following year.
Drawn by peacocks, Juno appropriately blessed the marriages of the lovers in the epithalamium ‘Thrice happy lovers’ in Act 5 of Purcell's The Fairy-Queen (1692). In the third of Kuhnau's Biblische Historien (1700), Jacob's Heyrat, a section mainly in the treble register of the keyboard represents the wedding song of Rachel's companions. Epithalamia, even if not so designated, are not uncommon in operatic contexts: for example, ‘Treulich geführt’ in Wagner's Lohengrin (Act 3 scene i) is one in all but name. The title Epithalamion has also been used for orchestral compositions by Fartein Valen (op.19, 1933) and Roberto Gerhard (1966).
MICHAEL TILMOUTH