Ave Maria (Bach/Gounod)

The piece known as "Ave Maria" (Bach/Gounod) is a musical setting of the Latin prayer that first appeared in print in 1853 under the title "Méditation sur le 1er prélude de piano de S. Bach." It combines a melody written by the French Romantic composer Charles Gounod with a slightly altered version of Johann Sebastian Bach's Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 846, from Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier (1722). The original 1853 publication presented the melody for solo violin, but the version that gained widespread popularity was the 1859 arrangement for voice, set to the familiar Latin text.

Gounod came up with the melody on the spot. His future father-in-law, Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume Zimmerman, wrote down the improvisation and, in 1853, created an arrangement for violin (or cello) with piano and harmonium. That same year, a version with words from Alphonse de Lamartine's poem "Le livre de la vie" was also released.

In 1859, publisher Jacques-Léopold Heugel issued the version using the Latin text. The version of Bach's prelude that Gounod used includes a measure known as the "Schwencke measure" (m.23). This measure was supposedly added by Christian Friedrich Gottlieb Schwencke to fix what he (or someone else) mistakenly thought was a faulty harmonic progression, even though such progressions were standard in Bach's music.

Alongside Schubert's "Ave Maria," the Bach/Gounod setting has become a standard piece at funerals, weddings, and quinceañeras. It exists in many instrumental arrangements, including for violin and guitar, string quartet, solo piano, cello, and trombone. Opera singers such as Nellie Melba, Franco Corelli, and Luciano Pavarotti, as well as choirs, recorded it hundreds of times during the twentieth century. Later in his career, Gounod wrote a separate, unrelated setting of the Ave Maria for four-part SATB choir.

Composition

The composition is built on Bach's prelude, which is a study in harmony using broken chords. Gounod used the first four measures as a prelude, repeating them for the voice's first entrance. He used the version of Bach's piece that includes the inserted Schwencke measure after the original measure 22, a version common at the time. On this measure, the voice sings an expressive, repeated "Maria!" Gounod added a tempo marking (Moderato), pedal markings for the pianist, and dynamic markings.