Mourning a Little Princess with Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte
The Best Moments
Pavane pour une infante défunte, M. 19
I'm Maurice Ravel, and I'm glad to share the best moments of my Pavane pour une infante défunte with you. You'll hear the main melody carried by a single horn in the orchestral version I made in 1910, and you'll find out why that quiet voice is so hard to forget. Whenever you're ready, put yourself to the test , because my fellow composers and I also teach you here to recognize our pieces the moment they begin.
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A Princess Takes Her Time
I open the Pavane in G major with a tune marked Lent, which is just the French way of telling everyone to take it slowly, and I wrote it for solo piano in 1899, when I was 24. The melody drifts in so politely that it seems to be walking a very small princess across a very large palace floor, and nobody dares to hurry her.
The Tune Steps Out for a Moment
In the middle I treat the piece like a rondo, which means the main tune keeps leaving and coming back, and each time it returns a new idea has had its turn in between. These middle episodes are a little brighter and more flowing, as if the princess stopped to look out of a window, and then the old melody slips back in as though it had never been away.
A Polite Goodbye in 72 Bars
I close the piece by bringing the opening tune back one last time, and it comes back so gently that you hardly notice the music has ended before the whole thing is over in 72 bars. I was rather hard on it years later, in 1912, when I said the form was poor and that Chabrier's influence was far too obvious, yet people kept loving it, and I'm still not sure what I make of that.
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I hope you enjoyed learning about the best moments of the Pavane pour une infante défunte as much as I enjoyed telling you about them. When I look back at this little piece, I still smile at how quietly it began, written when I was young and sure of very little. It took a while to find its audience, and in the end it was the performers who carried it into the world, which is something I'm still grateful for. What I like most is that it asks nothing of you except a little patience and an open ear. There is still a lot more to discover about the Pavane pour une infante défunte. You could listen to the orchestral version I made in 1910 and notice how the horn takes up the melody, or find out how different pianists shape the same slow tune in their own way. If you're curious, please click on the links provided and keep exploring the Pavane pour une infante défunte at your own pace. Take your time with it, just as the music does.
Recording: Thérèse Dussaut (piano, 1976), CC BY-SA 2.0