{"id":7066,"date":"2022-12-23T08:00:24","date_gmt":"2022-12-23T07:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.henle.de\/blog\/en\/?p=7066"},"modified":"2023-01-02T10:46:11","modified_gmt":"2023-01-02T09:46:11","slug":"christmas-blog-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/2022\/12\/23\/christmas-blog-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>War, energy shortages, inflation \u2013 alas, no end to the bad news as the year is drawing to a close. At least, though, the Covid pandemic has subsided in large parts of the world, allowing normal musical life with concerts and stage-work performances to resume. Let\u2019s hope that the last restrictions will be lifted next year, downgrading the pandemic everywhere to an endemic that, willy-nilly, we shall have to live with.<\/p>\n

Apropos news, here\u2019s something important for our blog readers: As of 2023, the Henle blog will appear monthly (instead of biweekly), on every second Monday in the month. The next blog post will be online on 9 January 2023.<\/p>\n

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Charles Gounod (1818\u20131893)<\/p><\/div>\n

At Christmas time, the Christian world commemorates the birth of Christ, preceded by the Annunciation to Mary, the mother of God. The Annunciation text, the famous \u201cAve Maria\u201d, has been set to music by numerous composers. The best known, unquestionably, is Charles Gounod\u2019s setting that is, strictly speaking, a mixture of arrangement and new composition. For he took the C-major prelude from Bach\u2019s first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier<\/em> \u2013 certainly Bach\u2019s best-known work in France around 1850 \u2013 and added a new melody of an undeniably operatic character.<\/p>\n

As popular as is Gounod\u2019s \u201cAve Maria\u201d, little is known about its genesis. Contemporary witnesses would later like to recall that the melody had originated from an improvisation and that the initial composition for piano and violin had soon expanded into a choral motet. As a matter of fact, in 1853 Gounod initially published purely instrumental versions, including one for solo piano (HN 1301<\/a>), under the title M\u00e9ditation sur le 1er<\/sup> Pr\u00e9lude de J. S. Bach<\/em>. Not until six years later, probably at the urging of the singer Caroline Miolan-Carvalho, was the \u201cAve Maria\u201d text added. After its brilliant premi\u00e8re in 1859,\u00a0 Ave Maria. M\u00e9lodie religieuse adapt\u00e9e au 1er<\/sup> Pr\u00e9lude de J. S. Bach<\/em> quickly appeared in print \u2013 also, alongside the original orchestral version, in a version for voice and piano arranged by Gounod himself (HN 1012<\/a>) \u2013 and thereafter began its triumphal march lasting to this very day.<\/p>\n

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Title page of the 1859 first edition for voice and piano (Paris, Biblioth\u00e8que nationale de France)<\/p><\/div>\n

Again and again, famous singers did and still do take up the challenge of performing the melody with feeling but without sentimentality, with natural expression but without pathos \u2013 here, an example with Ren\u00e9e Fleming:<\/p>\n