Gounods Ave Maria(Latin) Hail Mary.[1] In Charles-François Gounod's popular setting of the Catholic prayer known as the Ave Maria, Gounod's vocal melody is accompanied by J. S. Bach's Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 846, from Book 1 of The Well-Tempered Clavier. Curiously, the famous melody was merely improvised by Gounod at the piano; it was his father-in-law Pierre Zimmerman and the publisher Jacques Léopold Heugel who arranged it for the Ave Maria in 1859.
