Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Overused Music: Schubert's Ave Maria

Carolina Kostner
Johnny Weir
Caroline Zhang 
Elena Ilinykh & Nikita Katsalapov 
Belousova & Protopopov 
Totmianina & Marinin 
Shizuka Arakawa
Peggy Fleming 
Yuzuru Hanyu
Stephan Lambiel
Maria Butyrskaya 
Wesley Campbell 
Yu-Na Kim 
Jeffrey Buttle

I know people complain that Carmen is overused, but I think Ave Maria has become a warhorse too. It's so associated with figure skating it's even included in Mario and Sonic Go to the Olympics game.



Well, good coverage of the ice, I didn't expect to see that.


5 comments:

  1. Tempted though I was, I couldn't bring myself to watch all those video with the same tune. But I did watch Mario and Sonic. Wow, and that little video game character jumps in both directions!

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    1. I was going to do all the skaters who did "Child of Nazareth", but then I stumbled on all the ones above.

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  2. It is such beautiful music, and very much suffers from overuse. When I was gigging for funerals/weddings I was often asked to play it. I learnt to ask "which one?" as the Bach/Gounod is equally much loved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHgb727yJRY

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    1. Rudy Galindo also skated to Ave Maria, but it's neither of those! So there's another one out there.

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  3. "Ave Maria" is simply a church text (it's the"Hail Mary" prayer), and as such, has been set many times by many composers. I myself have at least 4 or 5 settings just in my solo vocal repertoire, have sung probably at least 3 or 4 choral settings, and that's just scratching the surface.

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