Let’s start with Franz Schubert’s Ave Maria, by far the most famous version. License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported Franz Schubert’s Ave Maria That’s part of the reason they sound so different from anything modern (or even anything from the Baroque period in the 1600s).Įnglish: Ave Maria from Gregorian Vespers in honor of Saint Vincent Pallotti (Vesperae de Confessore non Pontifice) recorded by Schola Gregoriana from Pallottine Seminary in Ołtarzew, Poland, conducted by father Dariusz Smolarek Gregorian chants are a Medieval style of Western music, and are entirely a capella (voice only, with no accompaniment).īack in the day, musical “rules” like key signatures and rhythm didn’t really exist, so Gregorian chants are written in what we call modes. Let’s take a listen to a traditional Latin Gregorian chant of Ave Maria. (The music we’ll be listening to today is based on the Western version of the prayer, though other composers have used the Eastern version.) Traditional Latin Gregorian chant Praised thou among women, and praised the fruit of thy womb, because it was the Saviour of our souls that thou bearest. God-bearing Maid, rejoice, grace-filled Mary, the Lord with thee. The Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic version looks like this: The idea of this is to get a person in a deep meditative state, kind of like chanting. One use of the Hail Mary is by saying it 150 times as per the rosary – there are 150 beads, and thus 150 repetitions of the prayer. This is an extremely common prayer in Western Christian traditions, and is a big part of why it’s been set to music hundreds of times over the last thousand years. Here is the Latin and English version of the prayer:Įt benedíctus frúctus véntris túi, Iésus.Īnd blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. It evolved over the course of hundreds of years.
The Western version of Hail Mary as we know it today originates from about the year 1050, and has completely different origins than the Greek version (which we’ll also look at). It’s used in Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, and many other Christian and Lutheran branches. Other versions exist, notably by Liszt, Gounod and Bruckner – all of which we’ll take a closer look at and listen to examples of.įirst off, though, we’re going to talk about where the Ave Maria originated, and even listen to a traditional Gregorian chant version of it. Probably the most famous iteration of Ave Maria is by Schubert, though his doesn’t follow the old text except for a few words. Different composers transform the words into different sounds and tunes. It’s one of those works that was born from an old prayer, and has many different incarnations. In today’s video, we’re going to be taking a look at the popular composition Ave Maria.
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