“She who sings prays twice” – Listen to two stunningly beautiful versions of Ave Maria
Every version of the Ave Maria is haunting, and all have the power, even for many of the non-religious, to strike chords deep within. But our two selections may not have the beginnings you'd expect.
Art and faith
Protestants, Catholics, the Orthodox Churches, Evangelicals and more may differ significantly on theological issues, but few can disagree that the impulse to craft something that speaks to the mystery of God has resulted in an outpouring of artistic creation of the highest order.
From the Sistine Chapel, to the Notre-Dame de Paris, to sacred music of all sorts; art, music and religion have worked hand in glove over many centuries to produce some of the most valued artefacts of western culture.
This remains true for faiths across the world, too.
It should come as some surprise, then, that two of the most famous (and loved) versions of the Ave Maria were not intially composed with religious sentiments in mind.
A very quick overview of Ave Maria
Ave Maria is Latin for Hail Mary, a prayer that is perhaps best known as a component of a larger prayer called the Holy Rosary.
The prayer is essentially a petition that asks the Virgin Mary to intercede on the speaker’s behalf.
The opening two lines of the prayer are taken from the Gospel of Luke: the first references the Archangel Gabriel greeting Mary with, “Hail [Mary], full of grace, the Lord is with thee”.
The second greeting is offered by Elisabeth, the mother of John the Baptist: “Blessed are thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb [Jesus]”.
The second half of the prayer – the petition element – was given the go ahead by the Roman Catholic Church in 1556.
Charles Gounod and Johann Sebastian Bach
Watch – Kimi Skota sings the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria
The music for the above version belongs to two composers who lived a century apart. In 1852, the French composer, Charles Gounod, was improvising a melody over a prelude published by J.S. Bach in 1722 in Book 1 of his The Well Tempered Clavier.
This new melody played over Bach’s Prelude No. 1 in C major immediately caught the attention of Gounod’s fiancée’s father, who wrote the melody down.
The composition was initially an instrumental piece, and although there are conflicting accounts about the chronology of when lyrics first appeared, it seems to be accepted that they came from a poetic verse written by Alphonse de Lamartine.
The verse is themed around love and the fleetingness of life.
As the story goes, Gounod sent a version of the piece with Lamartine’s lyrics to a young, beautiful and married singer who was a student of his as a gift.
In the account given by the composer’s great grandson, Gounod felt an abiding tenderness for his student.
The amorous verse was, however, noticed by the young lady’s mother in law. She understood that the composer had developed an affection for her son’s wife, Rosalie Jousset.
She wrote to Gounod, suggesting that a more appropriate subject for the composition would be the Ave Maria.
The Hail Mary was written beneath Lamartine’s poem, possibly not as a chastisement per se, but as a subtle hint that his feelings could simply not be returned.
Perhaps out of embarassment, or perhaps seeing the suggestion as genuinely insightful, Gounod then wrote the Ave Maria we have today. It was officially published in 1859.
Franz Schubert
Watch – Chloë Agnew sings Franz Schubert’s Ave Maria
The second Ave Maria is based on a composition by Franz Schubert (his Opus 52). In it he sets music to an epic poem, The Lady of the Lake, written by the poet Sir Walter Scott.
The poem, for Schubert’s composition, was translated into German.
In the song, the Lady of the Lake (a character named Ellen Douglas) asks the Virgin to intercede on her behalf in a time of trouble. The song begins with the words, “Ave Maria”, but it is not the prayer appearing above.
The following excerpt from the first verse can be compared to the earlier English translation:
Ave Maria! maiden mild!
Listen to a maiden’s prayer!
Thou canst hear though from the wild;
Thou canst save amid despair.
The original lyrics are in German, and it is not an accepted Hail Mary that the character sings. The application of a slightly altered Ave Maria only occurred later.
With this said, the theme of the song – an unofficial Hail Mary of sorts – and the incredible music Schubert wrote for it, made its transition into a religious context an easy affair.
What really matters
Despite the unexpected origins of these two beautiful pieces of music, what we’re left with today can’t be diminished. Their merit is undeniable, and their power to move us is what truly matters.
