Pavane pour une infante défunte

Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte, composed in 1899, was commissioned by the Princesse de Polignac, its dedicatee. The young composer had been introduced to his patron’s salon by his professeur, Gabriel Fauré. Premiered by the pianist Ricardo Viñes on 5 April 1902 at a Société Nationale de Musique concert, the piece displays the characteristic features of a pavan – a slow, solemn sixteenth-century court dance in binary form with repeats. Despite its evocative title, however, the picturesque dimension of the piece remains rather slender: “In assembling the words that make up the title, I was only thinking of the sheer pleasure of alliteration,” Ravel explained. As for the character of the work, he added, “It is not a funeral lament for an infanta who has just died, but rather the evocation of a pavan that might have been danced by such a princess at the Spanish court in bygone days.” In 1910, the composer himself arranged the piece for small orchestra – a version given at the Concerts Hasselmans on 25 December 1911, conducted by Alfredo Casella (Ravel’s fellow student in Fauré’s class). By then the Pavane pour une infante défunte had already enjoyed such a huge success that Ravel became annoyed and took a dislike to it. As early as 1912, he criticised “the influence of Chabrier, which is too obvious, and the rather poor form”. Although not entirely unfounded, this self-criticism nevertheless overlooked the essential: the expressive power of the work, which it owes mainly to its splendid, tenderly embracing first theme.