The piece
Schubert wrote this song in 1825 on lines from Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake, in German translation: Ellen, hiding in a cave, prays to the Virgin, hence the title Ave Maria by which the whole world knows it. It is the sixth of the seven songs of Op. 52, published in 1826. This easy version, written for Noctave after the Peters edition, keeps the voice's first verse, in its key of B-flat major, with its triplets and dotted rhythms.
The right hand sings the melody, without the voice's grace notes or its turn; the left hand plays the bass of Schubert's accompaniment, one note per beat, held when it does not change. Play very slowly, as the marking Sehr langsam asks, and let each triplet of sixteenths unfold without hurrying. The dotted rhythms in bars 7 to 10 call for counting in sixteenths: the dotted note long, the thirty-second after it very short, just before the next beat.
