A few years ago I was for­tu­nate enough to hear Schubert’s Ave Maria being rehearsed for a forth­com­ing wed­ding in the glo­ri­ous sur­round­ings of Ripon Cathe­dral. The lofti­ness of the cathedral’s Goth­ic archi­tec­ture pro­vid­ed a fit­ting acoustic res­o­nance to show­case such a lofty piece of music.

Franz Schu­bert com­posed the piece in 1825, and actu­al­ly it wasn’t tech­ni­cal­ly an Ave Maria at all (an “Ave Maria” being music writ­ten specif­i­cal­ly as a prayer to the Vir­gin Mary and for use in the litur­gy) but was called Ellens drit­ter Gesang (Ellen’s Song), and was part of his Opus 52, a series of set­tings based on Sir Wal­ter Scott’s epic poem The Lady of the Lake. It didn’t take long, how­ev­er, for the com­po­si­tion to devel­op into the “all-pur­pose” Catholic piece that’s so pop­u­lar today (although many con­ser­v­a­tive Catholics won’t play it at wed­dings or funer­als pre­cise­ly because it’s non-litur­gi­cal).

Any­way, it is pop­u­lar for good rea­son. It has a won­der­ful­ly lilt­ing refrain and offers the right singer an excel­lent vehi­cle with which to approach son­ic beau­ty. It’s been sung by every­one from Shirley Bassey to Bey­on­cé, but for real ful­fil­ment of its poten­tial, it calls out for a full, round and rich sopra­no voice. To that end, lis­ten to this ver­sion by Amer­i­can sopra­no, Bar­bara Bon­ney. Less of a house­hold name per­haps than Maria Callas, say, or Joan Suther­land, but nev­er­the­less Bar­bara Bon­ney exhibits an immac­u­late artistry on this record­ing of Ave Maria.