"Ave Maria" by JS Bach-Charles Gounod, Lisa Hopkins, soprano, daughter of Barbara Keiser Hopkins

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“Ave Maria” is a much loved Catholic prayer that has been put to music by many great composers.

In 1853, 35-year-old French composer Charles Gounod improvised a melody to Johann Sebastian Bach's Prelude No. 1 in C Major from "The Well-Tempered Clavier.”

Gounod published his composition as a piece for solo violin or cello accompanied by piano and harmonium, a widely available foot-pumped organ that produced sound using metal reeds set in pipes.

In 1859, Gounod’s future father-in-law Pierre Zimmerman and music publisher Jacques Léopold Heugel arranged and printed a version of the Bach-Gounod composition for voice using the text of the Ave Maria prayer.

The prayer is derived from Elizabeth’s inspired greeting to Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus when Mary came from Nazareth to the hill country southwest of Jerusalem to visit her much older cousin Elizabeth, who was miraculously pregnant with John the Baptist.

Elizabeth said to Mary, “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” (Luke 1:42)

Here, my Tony Award-winning, Grammy-nominated daughter Lisa sings Kurt Bestor’s arrangement of Bach-Gounod’s “Ave Maria” with violinist Jenny Oaks Baker and Kurt Bestor with his orchestra.