Ave Maria (Schubert)
song by Franz Schubert from 1825
"Ellens dritter Gesang" ("Ellens Gesang III", D. 839, Op. 52, No. 6, 1825, English: "Ellen's Third Song"), is a work composed by Franz Schubert in 1825. It is part of a setting of seven songs from Walter Scott's 1810 popular narrative poem The Lady of the Lake, in which the character Ellen Douglas sings a prayer addressed to the Virgin Mary.
Beyond the song as originally composed by Schubert, it is also performed as "Ave Maria", the Latin name of the prayer Hail Mary. "Ave Maria" is presented in musically simplified arrangements and with various lyrics that commonly differ from the original context of the poem. It was arranged in three versions for piano by Franz Liszt.
The Lady of the Lake and the "Ave Maria"
The piece was composed as a setting of a song (verse XXIX from Canto Three) from Walter Scott's popular narrative poem The Lady of the Lake, in a German translation by Adam Storck (1780–1822), and thus forms part of Schubert's Liederzyklus vom Fräulein vom See. In Scott's poem, the character Ellen Douglas, the Lady of the Lake (Loch Katrine in the Scottish Highlands), has gone with her exiled father to stay in the Goblin's cave as he has declined to join their previous host, Roderick Dhu, in rebellion against King James. Roderick Dhu, the chieftain of Clan Alpine, sets off up the mountain with his warriors, but lingers and hears the distant sound of the harpist Allan-bane, accompanying Ellen who sings a prayer addressed to the Virgin Mary, calling upon her for help.
“Ave Maria (Schubert)” enters the record as song by Franz Schubert from 1825. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Maria, Schubert and song can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Ave Maria (Schubert)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Maria, Schubert and song provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1331995. VIAF identifies the subject as 183833597. The Library of Congress control number is n84046733. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1825, 1810, 1780 and 1822.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ave Maria (Schubert)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.