Ave Maria

GOUNOD, who was engaged to Anna ZIMMERMAN, daughter of the Inspector General of Studies at the Imperial Conservatoire in Paris, often went to dinner at his fiancée's house. He regularly waited in the family salon, improvising at the piano. One day his future father-in-law, a renowned pianist, heard young Charles improvising on J.S. Bach's first prelude in C major, a melody he found ravishing. After GOUNOD had repeated it a second time, ZIMMERMAN hastened to write it down, and a few days later he played it for GOUNOD, played by a violin a fifth above. Thus was born the "Méditation sur un prélude de BACH" which later, as we shall see, became the famous Ave Maria, which GOUNOD did not write and which did so much for his popularity! Let us add that ZIMMERMAN, who had concluded the deal with a publisher, gave GOUNOD the sum of two hundred francs for the purchase of the work...

But the story is not over! It was 1852, and GOUNOD, 34 years old, seduced by the tender melancholy of some of LAMARTINE's verses and perhaps inclined to offer the first copy to a certain... Rosalie his pupil, had the idea of adapting the verses in question to the famous melody:

The book of life is the supreme book That cannot be closed or opened at will. The beloved passage can only be read once, The book of life is the ultimate book We would like to fix it to the page where we love But the fatal page turns itself And the page on which we die is already under our fingers.

The beginnings of this adaptation, in which the music expressed the words so well, were brought to Rosalie, to whom they were dedicated. However, Rosalie's mother-in-law, Aurélie, whose piety was frightened by GOUNOD's growing tenderness, might have feared that such contagious sentiment would reach her daughter, whose divine voice GOUNOD never tired of hearing. Extremely embarrassed, and not daring to allude to her fears either to GOUNOD or to her daughter-in-law, Aurélie had the ingenious idea of using GOUNOD's accentuated religiosity to get him to replace these profane words with a less compromising text. She chose the Ave Maria and tried to write the Latin words below the poet's verses. I have seen this document; it was not easy, but the result was quite satisfactory. Aurélie then showed her adaptation to GOUNOD, who was all the more enthusiastic about it because his finesse of mind did not allow him to misunderstand the secret intentions that had prompted Aurélie to make this substitution. He reworked the new version, and in this way the exquisite stanzas of LAMARTINE, so harmoniously adapted to BACH's Prelude, gave way to the Ave Maria prayer, which was no doubt very surprised to find itself coupled with this sentimental melody!

Thus, on the basis of an unimportant melodic sketch by GOUNOD, accompanied by a prelude by J-S BACH, Joseph ZIMMERMAN fixed the melody on paper, to which an obscure Mme. JOUSSET added the words of the Ave Maria! And, oh ingratitude, GOUNOD dedicated this melody, in its definitive form, not to Joseph, nor to Rosalie, nor to Aurélie, but to the great singer Mme. MIOLAN-CARVALHO!

In one of his works, Turgenev wrote: "Man is weak, woman is tenacious, chance is all-powerful".

Sirens with their bewitching voices can sometimes work miracles, even unwittingly.

In the end, the anecdote doesn't matter, because in the end it was GOUNOD who wrote the melody, and this story is a good illustration of the fact that GOUNOD knew how to express profane love and sacred love with the same pen.

Jean-Pierre GOUNOD