Hail Mary Moments with Schubert's Ave Maria
The Listen Guide
Ellens Gesang III in B-flat major, D. 839, Op. 52 No. 6
I'm Schubert, and I'm glad you've come to the listen guide for my Ave Maria. You'll learn to notice how a woman's voice and a piano share the song, with the voice singing one long, calm line while the piano keeps a gentle rolling pattern beneath it. On this site my fellow composers and I also teach you to recognize our pieces when they play, so if you like, try the Trainer yourself and see how quickly you can.
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Two Performers and Not One Too Many
Here's how I'd listen to my Ave Maria: keep your ears on just two performers, a woman's voice and a piano. The piano is the ground under your feet, spinning out a steady rolling pattern so the music never feels hurried. The voice is the storyteller, and it carries one long melody that you can follow like a thread through the whole song. If you ever lose your place, go back to the piano, because it never loses its calm.A Prayer That Got Its Name Without My Help
About the title, I have a small confession: the Latin Ave Maria words were never mine. Ellen's song in Scott's poem opens with those two words and returns to them as a refrain, and that perhaps inspired someone to fit the Latin prayer to my melody later. I had set a German translation, so the name stuck simply because it's the phrase that keeps coming back. I can live with that, since a refrain that returns so gently deserves to be remembered by name.Neither a Sonata Nor a Rondo, Just a Song
Choosing the form was an adventure, and the answer turned out to be simpler than a sonata or a rondo: it's a song, with one voice and one piano telling one story. I'll take you through five stops along the way: the piano's opening, the voice's entrance, the middle where the mood deepens, the return of the refrain, and the quiet ending. The whole song is in B-flat major, which you can think of as the home it keeps coming back to. Next I'll walk through each stop one at a time, so stay with me.Section 1: The Piano Clears Its Throat
The piano begins alone, in a gentle, flowing pattern that sets the pace for everything to come. Nothing happens quickly here, and that's deliberate, because I want you to settle in before anyone sings. The mood is hushed, a bit like walking into a quiet room and lowering your voice without being told to. Pay attention to how steady it is, because every later change will feel bigger against it.Section 2: Ellen Steps Forward
Then the voice enters, and the melody arches up and settles back down in long, smooth phrases. This is Ellen, the character in the poem, singing her prayer to the Virgin Mary. The mood is humble and trusting, with no drama at all. Notice that the voice never rushes the piano, and the piano never crowds the voice.Section 3: A Little Weather Rolls In
In the middle the mood changes, and it feels as if the light in the room has shifted slightly while the piano keeps on rolling. I won't bury you in key names, but listen for the feeling of leaving the comfortable home of B-flat major and wandering a little way off. Ellen's voice grows more intense here, as if the prayer has become more personal. That tension is brief, and it's the reason the calm that follows feels so well earned.Section 4: The Refrain Comes Home
Next the opening melody returns with its familiar Ave Maria words, and you can feel the ground settle back under you. This is the moment people remember and hum afterward, and Franz Liszt liked the tune enough to arrange it for solo piano in three versions. That tells you how strong the melody is, since it works even when the voice is taken away. The mood is warmer now, as though the worry of the middle has been quietly answered.Section 5: A Quiet Door Closing
The ending doesn't announce itself, and the music simply settles down gently instead of finishing with a bang. The song has traveled far since then, and in 1940 Walt Disney's Fantasia used an arrangement by Leopold Stokowski right after Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, which is a bit like being handed a warm cup of tea after a thunderstorm. Today you hear it at weddings, funerals and Christmas services, often in simplified arrangements with words different from Scott's. Through all those lives, the rolling piano and the long, calm melody are what stay the same.Your Turn: Press Play
So now it's your turn: press play and let the song carry you for a few minutes. Keep in mind the steady piano, the voice that tells the story, and the moment the refrain comes home. You don't need to know a single thing about classical music to feel what this song is doing. I hope you enjoy the journey through my Ave Maria as much as I enjoyed writing it.---
I hope you enjoyed learning about my Ave Maria and finding out how much is going on beneath such a quiet song. We've followed it from a summer holiday in 1825 to the voice of Ellen, and I hope that next time you hear it, you'll notice a little more than before. There's still plenty left to explore, and a piece like this keeps offering new things each time you come back to it. You might wonder how others have made the melody their own, since it has travelled far from the form I first gave it. Some of those versions are quite different from the song for a woman's voice and piano that I wrote, yet the long, calm line is still there to be recognized. If you'd like to go further, please click on the links provided and wander on through my Ave Maria at your own pace. And when the last note fades, I hope you'll stay quiet for a moment, because that stillness is part of the song too.