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| From Renaissance polyphony to the Romantic Lied and Gounod’s melody over Bach, Ave Maria has acquired many musical lives, each with its own text, form, and historical memory. |
| Literal Meaning | “Hail, Mary,” the opening Latin words of the angelic salutation. |
|---|---|
| Meaning in Music | A sacred text or a title for a composition, not one particular work, genre, or musical form. |
| Text | A biblical greeting and blessing, later joined to the supplication Sancta Maria, Mater Dei. |
| Musical Forms | Motet, choral setting, Lied, work for voice and instruments, liturgical adaptation, or concert arrangement. |
| Historical Range | From medieval and Renaissance polyphony to modern devotional, concert, and popular reception. |
| Representative Works | Josquin: Ave Maria… virgo serena; Schubert: Ellens Gesang III, D 839; Gounod: Ave Maria, CG 89; Bruckner: Ave Maria, WAB 6. |
| Essential Distinction | The shared title may conceal different texts, original performing forces, and creative processes. |
What Does Ave Maria Mean in Music?
The words Ave Maria mean “Hail, Mary.” In music, however, they do not identify a single work or a single genre. They name a sacred text, a title, and a centuries-old tradition of settings extending from chant and Renaissance polyphony to the Romantic Lied, choral repertory, concert song, and modern arrangements.
The distinction matters because several of the most famous works now called Ave Maria were not originally conceived as settings of the established Latin prayer. Schubert’s song uses a German text derived from Walter Scott, while Gounod’s work began as an instrumental Méditation over a prelude by Bach. Even Josquin’s celebrated motet sets an extended Marian poem rather than the complete form of the familiar prayer.
How the Prayer Took Shape
The first part of the text draws on two passages in the Gospel of Luke. Gabriel’s greeting to Mary —“Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee”—became Ave, gratia plena, Dominus tecum in the Latin Vulgate. It was joined to Elizabeth’s blessing: Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui.
These biblical phrases circulated for centuries in worship and private devotion. The name of Jesus and the second, supplicatory portion —Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae—were added and stabilised gradually during the later Middle Ages and the early modern period. The prayer in its familiar form became established in Roman Catholic practice during the sixteenth century.
The text therefore contains two distinct movements: first greeting and praise, then supplication. This two-part design does not prescribe a single musical form, but it offers composers a natural point at which to alter texture, dynamics, harmonic tension, or declamatory pace.
From Prayer to Musical Title
During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Marian salutations appeared in chant, tropes, sequences, and polyphonic motets. The title Ave Maria might refer to the biblical words, to a modified liturgical version, or to a broader Marian poem beginning with the same phrase.
Over the following centuries, the words acquired still greater independence as a musical title. They came to identify works for solo voice, choir, piano, organ, orchestra, and many combinations of these forces. Two compositions called Ave Maria may therefore differ not only in musical language but also in the text they set, their original scoring, and the path by which they acquired the title.
Josquin: A Marian Poem Becomes a Motet
Josquin des Prez’s four-voice Ave Maria… virgo serena is among the most widely known works of Renaissance polyphony. Its precise date remains disputed, though it is often placed in the 1480s. Its first printed appearance was in Ottaviano Petrucci’s Motetti A, published in Venice in 1502.
The text opens with the angelic salutation, then continues with a rhymed Latin poem invoking Marian feasts —the Conception, Nativity, Annunciation, Purification, and Assumption—and closes with the personal plea O Mater Dei, memento mei. It is not a setting of the complete prayer as that prayer was later standardised.
Josquin follows the poem’s stanzas through continually changing textures. At the opening, the phrase moves imitatively from one voice to the next, as though the salutation were travelling through space. Later passages use paired voices, fuller four-part polyphony, and homorhythmic writing that brings particular words into sharper focus. The final prayer turns away from elaborate imitation towards a more concentrated, collective utterance.
The work is organised according to modal principles and comes to rest on F; describing it simply in terms of a modern major or minor key would therefore be misleading. With no written instrumental accompaniment, the four voices themselves create its harmony, rhythm, and architectural design.
Schubert: Ellen’s Prayer
The work known throughout the world as “Schubert’s Ave Maria” bears the original title Ellens Gesang III (Hymne an die Jungfrau), D 839. Franz Schubert composed it in 1825 as the sixth of the Sieben Gesänge aus Walter Scott’s Fräulein vom See, Op. 52, using Adam Storck’s German translation of Walter Scott’s narrative poem The Lady of the Lake.
In the poem, Ellen Douglas has taken refuge in the mountains and prays to the Virgin for protection. Each of the three stanzas begins and ends with the words Ave Maria, but the rest of the text is German and belongs to Scott’s dramatic world. Schubert set it as a strophic Lied for solo voice and piano in B-flat major, with an undulating arpeggiated accompaniment and the same basic music for all three stanzas.
Repetition does not erase the dramatic trajectory. Each stanza unfolds from the calm invocation towards stronger vocal climaxes, while chromatic shading and brief departures from the home key respond to the text’s anxiety. The return of Ave Maria becomes a refuge rather than a conventional refrain.
Because the opening and closing invocation coincided with the first words of the established prayer, Schubert’s music was later adapted to the complete Latin Ave Maria. That version spread widely through churches, ceremonies, recordings, and orchestral arrangements, allowing Ellen and the original German poem to recede from collective memory. The familiar Latin version is a later contrafactum, not the text Schubert set.
Gounod: A Melody over Bach
Charles Gounod’s Ave Maria, CG 89, followed a different creative path. It began around 1852–1853 as Méditation sur le Premier Prélude de Piano de S. Bach. Gounod placed a new, sustained melody over the Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 846, from the first book of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.
The first edition of 1853 was instrumental, for violin and piano with optional organ. The familiar vocal version using the Latin prayer took shape and was published in 1859. This work, too, was not originally created as a setting of the Ave Maria.
Bach’s broken chords supply almost the entire harmonic foundation, while Gounod’s melody moves above them in longer values and a broad, lyrical arc. The version of the prelude he used also contained an additional bar—the so-called “Schwencke measure”—that circulated in some nineteenth-century editions but does not belong to Bach’s original score.
The familiar designation “Bach–Gounod” describes the coexistence of two historical layers. It does not imply collaboration: Bach wrote the prelude more than a century before Gounod added his melody.
When Text Becomes Musical Form
In settings of the complete prayer, the transition from Benedicta tu to Sancta Maria creates a natural formal threshold. Praise may be shaped through brighter textures and upward motion, while supplication may prompt quieter dynamics, chromatic darkening, or slower declamation. These are possibilities offered by the text rather than binding musical rules.
Anton Bruckner’s seven-part a cappella Ave Maria, WAB 6, composed in 1861 in F major, offers a particularly clear example. In the opening section, female and male voices answer one another and unite on the name “Jesus.” With Sancta Maria, all the voices take part in the common supplication. The prayer’s historical two-part construction thus becomes the audible architecture of the work.
Famous Misattributions
The popularity of the title has also produced persistent confusion over authorship. The familiar choral Ave Maria attributed to Jacob Arcadelt is not an authentic sacred composition by the Renaissance composer. Pierre-Louis Dietsch presented it in 1842, adapting Arcadelt’s three-voice French chanson Nous voyons que les hommes to the Latin text and adding a new bass line.
The so-called “Ave Maria by Giulio Caccini” is later still. It was written around 1970 by the Russian guitarist and composer Vladimir Vavilov, first issued as the work of an anonymous composer, and subsequently misattributed to Caccini. Its musical language and publication history exclude an origin in the early seventeenth century.
Both cases show how easily a familiar sacred title can obscure a composition’s actual history.
Text, Original Composition, and Performance
Before performing any Ave Maria, three questions need to be settled: which text is being used, what the original vocal or instrumental conception was, and which historical version underlies the score. Josquin’s four-part polyphony, Schubert’s Lied for voice and piano, and Gounod’s melody over Bach’s prelude require different approaches to articulation, phrasing, and musical time.
Modern orchestral or ecclesiastical arrangements may be artistically persuasive without documenting the work’s original form. Likewise, modern ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation is not the only historically plausible choice for Renaissance music, whose pronunciation varied by region and period.
| Feature | Josquin des Prez | Franz Schubert | Charles Gounod |
|---|---|---|---|
| Original Title | Ave Maria… virgo serena | Ellens Gesang III (Hymne an die Jungfrau), D 839 | Méditation sur le Premier Prélude de Piano de S. Bach |
| Date | Probably the 1480s; first printed in 1502 | 1825 | 1853; vocal version in 1859 |
| Original Text | Biblical salutation followed by a longer Latin Marian poem | Adam Storck’s German translation of Walter Scott’s poem | Originally no text; the Latin Ave Maria was added later |
| Original Forces | Four-part vocal ensemble, with no written instrumental accompaniment | Solo voice and piano | Violin and piano, with optional organ |
| Musical Structure | A unified succession of imitative, antiphonal, and homorhythmic sections shaped by the poem’s stanzas | Strophic Lied in B-flat major, with the same music for three stanzas and continuous arpeggiated accompaniment | A new melody over the harmonic sequence of Bach’s Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 846 |
| Relation to the Established Prayer | Shares only the opening biblical words and does not set the complete prayer | Ave Maria frames each stanza, but the remaining text is different; the Latin version is a later contrafactum | The piece was originally instrumental; the complete Latin prayer was fitted to the melody in 1859 |
🎧 Listening to Three Different Beginnings
Hearing these three works side by side reveals that Ave Maria does not describe one sound. In Josquin, it shapes a Renaissance Marian poem; in Schubert, it marks the prayer of a literary heroine; in Gounod, it was attached to a melody first conceived as an instrumental meditation over Bach.
Josquin des Prez – Ave Maria… virgo serena
In this performance by VOCES8, listen first to the way the opening phrase passes successively from one voice to another. Then notice the changing textures: the voices sometimes form pairs and sometimes converge in fuller homorhythmic writing. At the final invocation, O Mater Dei, memento mei, the music becomes more immediate, as though collective polyphony were resolving into personal prayer.
Franz Schubert – Ellens Gesang III, D 839
Jessye Norman, accompanied by Geoffrey Parsons, restores the song’s original linguistic and performing identity. Hear how the words Ave Maria arise as an invocation within the German poem rather than as the beginning of the established Latin prayer. The piano’s continuous arpeggios create a steady refuge for the voice, while the same music acquires a different intensity in each stanza as Ellen moves from supplication to anxiety and a plea for her father’s protection.
Charles Gounod – Ave Maria, CG 89
In Luciano Pavarotti’s performance, listen to the way Gounod’s melody unfolds over the harmonic sequence and unbroken arpeggios of Bach’s prelude. At times it follows the harmonic changes closely; at others it lingers expressively above them, transforming the stable instrumental foundation into a space for vocal prayer.
The three works share a title and a Marian association, but they lead the listener into three different histories: a poem that became a motet, a Lied whose text was replaced, and an instrumental meditation transformed into prayer.
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📚 Further Reading
The many histories gathered beneath the title Ave Maria become clearer when the formation of the prayer, the transmission of the works, and their later adaptations are studied separately. The following sources illuminate those distinct paths.
- Clare Bokulich – “Remaking a Motet.” Reconsiders the transmission and modern reception of Ave Maria… virgo serena, showing how and when it came to be treated as Josquin’s defining Ave Maria.
- Joshua Rifkin – “Munich, Milan, and a Marian Motet.” A detailed investigation of the motet’s date and historical setting.
- John Milsom – “Making a Motet.” A study of the composition, texture, and technical organisation of Ave Maria… virgo serena.
- The first edition of Schubert’s Ellens Gesang III. Essential for reading the German text, the strophic design, and the original conception for voice and piano.
- The instrumental edition of Gounod’s Méditation. Reveals the work’s pre-vocal identity and the relationship between Gounod’s new melody and Bach’s prelude.
🔗 Related Terms
These terms help distinguish the different musical lives concealed beneath the shared title.
- Motet: a polyphonic vocal composition, usually setting a sacred Latin text; the genre to which Josquin’s work belongs.
- Lied: the German art song for voice and piano; the original identity of Schubert’s Ellens Gesang III.
- Contrafactum: the replacement of a vocal work’s original text with a new one while leaving the music substantially unchanged.
- Marian antiphon: an established liturgical chant to the Virgin, such as Salve Regina, Alma Redemptoris Mater, Ave Regina caelorum, or Regina caeli; a related tradition, but not the same text as the Ave Maria.
- Paraphrase and arrangement: creative reworking of pre-existing material, useful for understanding Gounod’s melody over Bach and the many later orchestrations of these works.
📖 References & Sources
This article draws on the biblical and historical formation of the prayer, early editions of the works, and modern scholarship on their transmission, dating, and reception. Scores were essential for verifying the text, form, tonal or modal organisation, and original performing forces of each composition.
Primary Sources and Scores
- Biblia Sacra Vulgata. Luke 1:28 and 1:42.
- Petrucci, Ottaviano, ed. Motetti A. Venice, 1502.
- Schubert, Franz. Sieben Gesänge aus Walter Scott’s Fräulein vom See, Op. 52: No. 6, Ellens Gesang III, D 839. Vienna: Anton Diabelli & Co., 1826.
- Gounod, Charles. Méditation sur le Premier Prélude de Piano de S. Bach. Paris: Heugel, 1853.
- Bruckner, Anton. Ave Maria, WAB 6. 1861.
Historical and Musicological Studies
- Anderson, Michael Alan. “Enhancing the Ave Maria in the Ars Antiqua.” Plainsong and Medieval Music 19, no. 1 (2010): 35–65.
- Bokulich, Clare. “Contextualizing Josquin’s Ave Maria… virgo serena.” The Journal of Musicology 34, no. 2 (2017): 182–240.
- Bokulich, Clare. “Remaking a Motet: How and When Josquin’s Ave Maria… virgo serena Became ‘The Ave Maria’.” Early Music History 39 (2020): 1–73.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§2676–2678.
- Milsom, John. “Making a Motet: Josquin’s Ave Maria… virgo serena.” In The Cambridge History of Fifteenth-Century Music, edited by Anna Maria Busse Berger and Jesse Rodin, 183–199. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
- Rifkin, Joshua. “Munich, Milan, and a Marian Motet: Dating Josquin’s Ave Maria… virgo serena.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 56, no. 2 (2003): 239–350.