Which Ava Maria?
Well, there are countless “Ave Marias,” because many composers have set the same prayer to different music. The text is simply “Hail Mary” in Latin: “Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominicus tecum…” Then there are other texts that just borrow the first line and are thus called by the same name. Schubert is the most famous example- his Ave Maria is based on an entirely different work. By far the most famous “Ave Marias” are those by Schubert and Bach-Gounod; usually when people talk about Ave Maria they mean one of these. Schubert’s piece is sung to a German translation of Sir Walter Scott’s “Hymn to the Virgin.” In German it’s usually called “Ellens dritter Gesang,” or “Ellen’s third song,” but in English we usually call it Ave Maria since these are the first two words of the song. Nowadays, though, people also frequently sing Schubert’s piece to the Latin text. They probably got the idea from the similarities of the words (or maybe they just got confused :), but Schubert didn’t originally
