Ave Maria (Bach/Gounod)

"Ave Maria" is a popular and much-recorded setting of the Latin

Ave Maria
prayer Ave Maria, originally published in 1853 as "Méditation
sur le Premier Prélude de Piano de J.S. Bach". The piece Art song by Bach/Gounod
consists of a melody by the French Romantic composer Charles
Gounod that he superimposed over an only very slightly changed
version of Bach's Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 846, from
Book I of his The Well-Tempered Clavier, 1722. It was published
with a French text in 1853, but it was the 1859 version with the
Latin Ave Maria which became popular.

Contents
History
Composition
Charles Gounod in 1859
Recordings
Native Méditation sur le
References
name Premier Prélude de
External links
Piano de S. Bach
Key C major
History Text Ave Maria
Language Latin
Gounod improvised the melody, and his future father-in-law
Based on Bach's Prelude No. 1,
Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume Zimmermann transcribed the
BWV 846
improvisation[1] and in 1853 made an arrangement for violin (or
cello) with piano and harmonium. The same year it appeared with Published 1853 (French text)
the words of Alphonse de Lamartine's poem Le livre de la vie 1859 (Latin text)
("The Book of Life").[2] In 1859, Jacques-Léopold Heugel
published a version with the familiar Latin text. The version of Scoring voice · piano
Bach's prelude used by Gounod includes the "Schwencke
measure" (m.23), a measure allegedly added by Christian Friedrich Gottlieb Schwencke in an attempt to
correct what he or someone else erroneously deemed a "faulty" progression, even though this sort of
progression was standard in Bach's music.[3]

Alongside Schubert's "Ave Maria", the Bach/Gounod "Ave Maria" has become a fixture at funerals,
wedding Masses, and quinceañeras. There are many different instrumental arrangements including for
violin and guitar, string quartet, piano solo, cello, and even trombones. Opera singers, such as Nellie Melba,
Franco Corelli and Luciano Pavarotti, as well as choirs have recorded it hundreds of times during the
twentieth century.

Later in his career, Gounod composed an unrelated setting of Ave Maria for a four-part SATB choir.

Composition
Gounod based the work on Bach's prelude, which is a study in harmony in broken chords. He used the first
four measure for a prelude, repeating them for the first entry of the voice. He used Bach's composition, in
the version with an inserted measure after the original 22, the so-called Schwencke-measure which was
common at the time. To this measure, the voice has a repeated expressive "Maria!". He added a tempo
marking, Moderato, pedal markings for the pianist, and dynamic markings.

Recordings
Alessandro Moreschi, one of the last castrato singers, performed "Ave Maria" and several other pieces on
recordings for the Gramophone & Typewriter Company in the early 1900s.

A rendition by Yo-Yo Ma and Bobby McFerrin was used as the main theme in the 2017 Palme d'Or
winning Swedish film The Square.

Noa (Achinoam Nini) performed her own lyrics for "Ave Maria" for Pope John Paul II at the Vatican in
1994 (https://www.facebook.com/AchinoamNini/videos/noa-performs-ave-maria-at-vatican-city-with-pope-
john-paul-ii-1994/241344530620736/)

The piece also features as a recurring theme during Disney's A Christmas Carol.

References
1. "La musique religieuse de Charles Gounod" (http://www.musimem.com/gounod.htm).
Musica et memoria (in French). Retrieved 5 October 2014.
2. "Score: Gounod Bach" (http://gallica.bnf.fr/Search?ArianeWireIndex=index&p=1&lang=EN&f
_typedoc=partitions&q=Gounod+Bach+). Gallica. Retrieved 5 October 2014.
3. Barber, Elinore (1970). "Questions to the editor". Bach. 1 (1): 19–22. JSTOR 41639775 (http
s://www.jstor.org/stable/41639775).

External links
Ave Maria: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
Free sheet music (http://cantorion.org/music/555/Prelude_and_Fugue_No._1_Ave_Maria%2
C_based_on_Prelude) for voice and piano on Cantorion.org
Free scores of the Ave Maria in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
Free scores of the SATB setting of the Ave Maria in the Choral Public Domain Library
(ChoralWiki)

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This page was last edited on 24 April 2022, at 22:03 (UTC).

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