Singing Ave Maria for an Audience of One

"May Crowning 2013" by materdeiparish is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

There’s the glottal sound on the very first note, a B-flat that comes out of nowhere. There are tricky crescendos and decrescendos. Breathing, and phrasing—in Latin.

Then there’s the fact that Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria” is one of our most popular hymns, for the Mass, and for weddings and funerals both intimate and grandly public. At life’s new beginnings and endings, that sung prayer to the Blessed Mother plays on, as it has for more than 150 years.

So it is that I approach, with trepidation, an opportunity to sing the “Ave Maria” at a wedding at my parish. Singing at Our Lady of Sorrows in West River, Maryland, is nothing new; I sing in the choir and serve as a Mass cantor. I am a firm believer in the “great importance…of singing in the celebration of the Mass,” as stated in the Roman Missal. Just ask my children, whom I entreat with that famous mis-quote often attributed to St. Augustine: “To sing is to pray twice.” Music is my second language, my voice my first—and only—musical instrument. Still, singing the “Ave Maria” feels like a foreign thing.

I parse the prayer’s Latin easily enough. But, practicing my pronunciation, I’m struck by how little attention I pay to the words in either language. “Ave Maria.” “Hail Mary.” As a woman, wife and mother, the “Hail Mary” is my go-to prayer: standard penance and distress prayer, standard bedtime prayer with my children. But with all the repetition over all the years, the words have become a river, one flowing into the next, the meaning drowned. So I slow down, resuscitate the significance: Ave Maria, gratia plena. Hail Mary, full of grace.

As with the Mass itself, which is meant to be sung to deepen spiritual devotion, so too must these words be sung. I begin my “Ave Maria” singing education in earnest by watching on YouTube the best performances I can find. Pavarotti, Bocelli, and Dion appear in orchestral halls and even sports stadiums, for hundreds and thousands of fans. I mimic the singers’ embouchure, the way their mouths form the heavenly sounds. Ave Maria, Mater Dei / Ora pro nobis peccatoribus. Hail Mary, Mother of God / Pray for us sinners.

With their operatic style, the singers are stunning, and I am entranced. But I wonder if that is like being entranced by a religious icon. I’m reminded that, as Catholics, we’re not to look at the gilded image but through it; in the same way, we should be drawn not to the singer but to the song as a spiritual tool. Ora, ora pro nobis peccatoribus / Nunc et in hora mortis. Pray, pray for us sinners / Now and at the hour of our death.

Still, I feel only my nervousness, and not my devotion, deepening at the thought of my own minor performance. I practice and practice the first few bars of sung music, while cooking dinner, while cleaning the bathroom, while putting my children to bed. Eventually, the house rings with those notes, and my children clap their hands over their ears. Enough.

They are tired of hearing it. I am tired of hearing it. So, I shut up. And I decide to truly listen, with my God-given ears—as much instruments of music as my mouth and throat. I close my eyes and listen, not just to Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” but to Liszt and Tchaikovsky, Bach and Brahms, Sibelius and Williams. The holy and the profane. Piano concertos, cello, violin, flute. My heart soars, and I thank God I’m witness to such breath and beauty, even if I can’t replicate it.

It is springtime, then Mary’s month and Mother’s Day. Wedding season approaches. I open my windows, breathe in the soft air and the scents of flowering trees. I’m on a break from the “Ave Maria.” But the violin strains of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending” mingle with the plaintive cries of the osprey that nest not far from my home. All at once, I feel an overwhelming gratitude for nature’s songs. Perhaps, in their earthly way, the flora and fauna also entreat: Ora, ora pro nobis. Pray, pray for us. Perhaps I should listen harder to all of God’s music.

Where I live, I don’t see larks, a bird known for singing as it soars. Modestly sized and colored, still the lark has inspired much imitation in poetry and in music, both romantic and spiritual. In Williams’ famous piece, the violin soloist imitates the lark in flight, lifting from a meadow, where it nests, then circling, low to the ground, round and round, before catching an updraft and soaring to the sky. All the while the lark sings its melodious song. The bird’s performance is instinctive; the violinist’s imitation is practiced. I tune my ear to all of these songs.

God is my updraft, devotion my practice. I try the hymn again, in quiet solitude for now. But before I open my mouth to sing, I pray my go-to prayer, the “Hail Mary,” in my heart. I pray to the audience of one I should have been singing to this whole time: the Blessed Mother, my standard-bearer all year long—at life’s beginnings and endings and everywhere in between.

Finally, there’s a lifting, and I sing without fear that oft-sung prayer, Ave Maria.