Ave, Maria

Come, Blessed Saviour

About the Composer and the Music

Camille Saint-Saens was a French composer, pianist, organist, and writer who was wellknown for his keyboard interpretations and for his encouraging the use of the music Bach.  Mozart and Handel in his native land.  Unsuccessful in marriage, he began to regard the family of Gabriel Faure as his own.  While furthering this protégé’s musical career, he also served as a benevolent uncle to Faure’s wife and children.

After the death of his mother, whom he loved deeply, Saint-Saens became a lonely traveler, going to Algeria and Egypt, Spain, Italy, Greece,  Scandinavia, and eventually to Russia where he became friends with Tchaikovsky.  His most famous work, The Carnival of the Animals. (1886) was only intended as a private joke, and except for the movement entitled The Swan, he forbade it’s performance during his lifetime.  He was a master craftsman who wrote opera, songs, chamber music, piano music, choral music, and music for orchestra.  Saint-Saens once said he wrote music “as easily as an apple tree produces fruit.”

This duet, Ave, Maria, was composed about 1860 when Saint-Saens was in his mid-twenties, and was first published in Paris in 1865.  The William Shakespeare who did the English text is not the famous English bard who wrote Romeo and Juliet, but a singing teacher in America at the turn of the century, whose 1907 edition of this work served as my source.  I have made some minor changes to accommodate the way his text fits the melodic rhythms in measures 8, 11, 13, 28, 29, and 39.

For those who perform this work in Latin, the translation of the text is: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.  Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus, Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”  Though the English text has nothing to do with the Latin text, it might be more useful for some singers.  For recital use, the Latin text is suggested.

                                                                              Leonard Van Camp

                                                                Edwardsville, Illinois (1992)