Throughout May you will hear prelude music dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Truly, one of the most beautiful and prayerful compositions ever written is the beloved "Ave Maria." Most of us are familiar with the melody by Franz Schubert (1825). Anyone who has ever attended a wedding in the Catholic Church has heard it played as the bride places a flower at the Mary altar. What most of us probably don‘t know, is that the melody was originally written to accompany lyrics to Sir Walter Scott‘s (1797-1828) poem, "The Lady of the Lake." The poem was then translated into German, and the "Ave Maria" prayer used. Its accompaniment is written in "triplets" with melody written to follow a straight "4" meter. The vocalist who sings it must have good lung capacity to sustain its long phrases and passages.
The Bach/Guonod version of “Ave Maria” began as two separate songs. In 1722 Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the music for "Prelude No. 1" in C Major, from "The Well Tempered Clavier." 137 years later, Charles Guonod, a French composer, wrote the melody we know as the "Ave Maria" over Bach‘s original composition. The two songs compliment each other perfectly and beautifully. This version of the "Ave Maria" contains the entire prayer sung through the song, unlike Schubert‘s version, where both verses must be sung in order to hear the second verse of the prayer.
