Charles Gounod (1818-1893): Méditation sur le Premier Prélude de Piano de S. Bach
Solo mandolin performed by Martin Jonas.
Piano accompaniment performed by Héctor Valls, downloaded from IMSLP under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 license.
This is Gounod's famous Ave Maria, consisting of a melody that he superimposed over an only very slightly changed version of the Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 846, from Book I of J.S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier.
Gounod's original version was in C Major, for piano and violin or cello. Later, the words to "Ave Maria" were added and the piece transposed to various other keys to suit the vocalist's range.
I am playing Gounod's melody on mandolin, overdubbed onto a recording of the Bach piano accompaniment performed by Héctor Valls which I downloaded from IMSLP. Score and MP3 of the accompaniment are at:
http://imslp.org/wiki/Ave_Maria_(Gounod,_Charles)
Héctor has recorded the accompaniment in G major, F major and D major, but not in Gounod's original C major. My recording uses the G major version, which can be played entirely in first position (unlike Gounod's original). There are a considerable number of different arrangements at IMSLP. The one I found to work best with the piano backing track is the attached one edited by Pierre Gouin.
I am playing my 1915 Luigi Embergher mandolin on this recording.
Martin
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