Gounod had no qualms about arranging well-known works by earlier masters after his own fashion. Thus in 1852 he added a melody with its own operatic climax to the famous arpeggios of the C-major Prelude BWV 846 from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. He first published instrumental versions of it under the title “Méditation”, then tried fitting various texts to the melody until in 1859 he arrived at the definitive vocal version using the text of the Ave Maria. Already by the 1890s it was claimed that “[we] have heard this sweet melody innumerable times from the best lady singers”, and its popularity has continued to the present day. Reason enough, then, for Henle Verlag to publish an Urtext edition of this worldwide hit, based on the sources and with appropriate critical commentary.
G. Henle Publishers stands for Urtext sheet music of the highest quality. The Urtext editions not only provide the undistorted and authoritative musical text but are also aesthetically pleasing, optimised for practical use and extremely durable. And then there is the strong, distinctive blue profile: (almost) all of the Urtext editions are bound in the characteristic blue cardboard.
Musicians trust Henle's blue Urtext editions because they:
- provide an undistorted, reliable and authoritative musical text
- offer superb, aesthetically appealing music engraving
- are optimised for practical use (page turns, fingerings)
- are of high quality and durable (cover, paper, binding)
- contain a short preface that introduces the work (particularly useful for AMEB exams) in German, English and French, as well as explanatory footnotes for particularly interesting passages in the score
- contain a description of the sources, an evaluation of the sources, readings and a documentation of the corrections made (= "Critical Report") in German and English, and often also in French
