THE LIBRARY | SONGS

Thi song, also known as Ave Maria, is part of a group of songs inspired by the Scottish author Walter Scott. Schubert ultimately set seven songs on texts by Scott that seem to form the outlines of an unfinished song cycle. Walter Scott influenced many romantic composers and provided the source material for Donizetti’s most famous opera Lucia di Lammermoor. The texts Schubert set all come from his poem The Lady on the Lake (Rossini also used this text for the libretto of the opera La Donna del Lago.) The religious, prayer-like tone of the original song has resulted in many arrangements that use the Latin “Ave Maria” text superimposed onto the song.