Ubi Caritas at a wedding — Ola Gjeilo’s setting
Most wedding music is about love by association. Ubi Caritas is about love outright: the Latin says that where charity and love are, God is there. Ola Gjeilo’s setting is the modern choral piece couples ask us for most, and the first one we suggest when a couple has run out of ideas for the register signing.
Our choir singing Ubi Caritas by Ola Gjeilo. Hear more recordings.
The text is about love, and about little else
The standard wedding repertoire is mostly about something else. Schubert’s Ave Maria is a prayer to the Virgin. Panis Angelicus is about the Eucharist. Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring is a chorale about faith. All three are beautiful, and all three are borrowed. They get used at weddings because they sound right; marriage is not what any of them is about.
Ubi Caritas is the exception. The antiphon is sung on Maundy Thursday during the washing of feet, and its opening line is the whole argument: Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est — where charity and love are, God is there. Then comes the line that does the real work at a wedding: Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor, love has gathered us together into one. That is a description of the room. A hundred and twenty people who would otherwise never be in a building together have been assembled by two people’s affection for each other, and the piece names it while they sit there.
If you are not religious, you may worry that a Latin sacred text will feel imposed on your guests. Print the translation in the order of service and it reads as the plainest statement of the day’s purpose anyone will hear, including the address.
Gjeilo’s setting, and how it differs from Duruflé’s
Two settings of this text are in regular use. Maurice Duruflé wrote his in 1960, as the first of his Quatre motets sur des thèmes grégoriens. It keeps the plainsong intact and wraps modal harmony around it, lasts about two minutes, and ends where it started. Ola Gjeilo, a Norwegian composer then in his early twenties, wrote his in 2001 from the same chant.
Duruflé stays quiet throughout: austere, restrained, and best in a building with a long acoustic and an audience that already listens to choral music. Gjeilo states the chant plainly, then divides the voices and lets the harmony thicken underneath it until the piece opens out into a full climax before settling back down to close. It has a shape guests can follow without knowing anything about plainsong.
That swell in the middle is why we suggest Gjeilo for weddings and Duruflé for quieter occasions. A guest who has sat through two hymns and a reading will follow a piece that goes somewhere further than one holding a single mood. Both are unaccompanied and both use the same chant, so you can put them side by side and hear the difference in about ninety seconds.
One practical note: Gjeilo’s setting is still in copyright, so a choir needs bought copies rather than photocopies. We deal with that as part of the booking.
It runs about three minutes, which covers the heart of the register signing
Signing the register takes two to four minutes in most churches, depending on how many photographs the registrar allows and how slowly your witnesses write. Gjeilo’s Ubi Caritas runs to roughly three minutes, and it has a proper ending, so nobody has to fade it out or vamp until the pens go down.
It is a duller reason than the text, and it is why couples keep booking it. A great many beautiful choral works are the wrong length for the moment you want them in. Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus runs to three minutes too, which is why it turns up at the same point in so many services. Anything much shorter leaves a gap; anything much longer and the choir is still singing while the wedding party stands about waiting to process out.
If your signing is likely to run long, pair it with an organ meditation afterwards rather than choosing a longer choral piece. For the full sequence of musical moments in a ceremony, our guide to wedding ceremony music walks through it from prelude to recessional.
It needs no organ, and four singers will do
Ubi Caritas is unaccompanied. That makes it one of the few pieces of this quality you can have in a building with no organ, a bad organ, or an organ nobody has tuned since 2009 — which covers a fair number of the country houses, barns, and school chapels where people now get married.
Four singers can sing it, one voice to a part, and it works. Five or more makes a real difference: the music divides the voices at its fullest points, and the extra singers cover those divisions instead of leaving them folded back into the line. With eight in a resonant church you get the full spread of the chords. See our pricing for what each size of ensemble costs.
Acoustics matter more here than with a hymn. Unaccompanied voices need something to sing into: a stone church, or a hall with a high ceiling. Outdoors the sound has nothing to reflect off and the piece thins out, so we would add singers or suggest something else for an open-air ceremony.
Where to place it in the ceremony
The signing of the register is the obvious home for it, and the one we recommend first. The congregation is seated, the couple are occupied, and there is a defined stretch of time for the piece to fill.
At a nuptial Mass it also works during communion, where its length and its stillness suit a queue of people moving quietly. Some couples put it immediately after the vows instead, as a few minutes of held breath before the service carries on; that placement lands harder and carries more risk, because it depends on the vows finishing when the order of service says they will.
We would not use it for the processional or the recessional. It has no pulse to walk to, and asking someone to time their entrance to a piece with no beat is unkind to everyone involved. Keep the organ for those, or see our guide to the best organ pieces for a wedding.
If your ceremony is not in a church
A civil ceremony on approved premises in England and Wales — a hotel, a country house, a registry office — must be free of religious content, and the registrar will ask to see your readings and music in advance. This catches couples out. Ubi Caritas is in Latin, but registrars go by what the words mean, and the text names both God and Christ. It will not be approved.
That does not rule the piece out of your day. Have it at the drinks reception, during the wedding breakfast, or at a blessing held after the civil formalities, where nobody is checking. Several of our couples do this: the registrar gets a string quartet, and the choir sings Ubi Caritas twenty minutes later with a glass of champagne in every guest’s hand.
If the whole ceremony is secular, our list of pop songs for a wedding choir covers what a choir can sing instead.
It is just as popular at funerals
The same qualities that suit a wedding — unaccompanied, about three minutes, a text about love rather than doctrine — make Ubi Caritas one of the pieces families ask for most at funerals and memorial services. Most place it at the entry of the coffin or as a reflection after the eulogy. Our guide to choosing funeral music covers where it fits alongside hymns.
Frequently asked questions
What does Ubi Caritas mean?
Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est is Latin for “Where charity and love are, God is there.” The words come from an antiphon sung on Maundy Thursday during the washing of feet.
How long is Ola Gjeilo’s Ubi Caritas?
About three minutes; the signing itself usually takes five to ten, and the organ can cover the remainder.
How many singers does Ubi Caritas need?
Four is enough, with one voice to each part. Five or more makes a real difference, because the music divides the voices at its fullest points and the extra singers cover those divisions instead of leaving them folded back into the line.
Can we have Ubi Caritas at a civil ceremony?
Not during a civil ceremony on approved premises in England and Wales. The text names God and Christ, and the ceremony itself has to be free of religious content. You can have it at the drinks reception or the wedding breakfast instead.
Talk to us about it
If Ubi Caritas is on your shortlist, we can tell you how it will sound in your building and what size of choir it needs there. If you have heard it somewhere and cannot remember whose setting it was, describe it to us and we will work it out. The conversation is free and there is no obligation.
You might also find these useful: our guide to the best choral pieces for a wedding sets Ubi Caritas alongside the other options for the signing, lesser-known choral pieces goes further off the beaten track, and choosing wedding hymns covers the congregational side of the service.
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