Ave maria (Ellens Gesang III, D839)

As one of the most beautiful melodies by one of the greatest of all Viennese composers - an early protagonist of the waltz, incidentally - Schubert’s Ave Maria is welcome here even though it has nothing to do with the ballroom or the opera house. It is actually a setting of Ellen’s prayer to the Virgin in Canto III of Sir Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake. As Schubert himself remarked soon after he wrote the song in 1825 “it seems to touch all hearts.” It continues to do so in whatever arrangement it is heard.