Meditation sur le premier prelude de S. Bach

Prelude

Johann Sebastian Bach 1685–1750
Prelude
Form
Score
First page of Meditation sur le premier prelude de S. Bach

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Themes & character
Gounod's Ave Maria·A melody laid over Bach·Composed 1853·Two composers, 130 years apart

At a glance

Form
Prelude

About the piece

Charles Gounod's Meditation, composed in 1853, in which he wrote a new melody to be played over Bach's first prelude from the Well-Tempered Clavier, essentially unaltered, as its accompaniment. Words from the Ave Maria were fitted to Gounod's melody a few years later, and in that form the piece became one of the most performed sacred songs in the world. It is an unusual collaboration: two composers separated by a hundred and thirty years, one of them unaware of it.

The composer

Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
1685–1750

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety of instruments and forms, including the orchestral Brandenburg Concertos; solo instrumental works such as the Cello Suites and Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin; keyboard works such as the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier; organ works such as the Schübler Chorales and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and choral works such as the St. Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. He is known for his mastery of counterpoint, as heard in The Musical Offering and The Art of Fugue. Felix Mendelssohn precipitated the Bach Revival with a performance of the St. Matthew Passion in 1829. Ever since, Bach has been acclaimed as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.

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