Ravel Pavane pour une Infante defúnte

Pavane pour une Infante defúnte

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Some composers begin their careers with a Great Popular Success – usually a rather modest composition which becomes so-well loved (and overplayed) that their creators rue the day that they ever composed these pieces, despite the always-welcome royalties! Among a number of notorious examples would certainly be Rachmaninov’s “Prelude in C-sharp Minor, Liszt’s Liebestraum, and Chopin’s “Minute Waltz.” Such is the case with Maurice Ravel’s “Pavane for a Dead Princess” (often mis-translated as “infant, ” “Infante” actually refers to an “Infanta, ” the Spanish title for a royal princess.) Such a title is characteristic of the young composer’s romantic imagination in creating this exquisite musical miniature, which, however often it is picked out by “pretty young things with spidery fingers, ” never loses its appeal. The Pavane was one of the earliest of Ravel’s works to come to public notice, written in 1899 for solo piano and dedicated to the Princess Edmond de Polignac---an American woman (heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune) who became a central figure in early 20^th century Parisian musical life. (In 1910 Ravel prepared an orchestral setting of the work.) With its eerie calm and nostalgic, somewhat “archaic” tone, the Pavane represents a turning away from the gauzy shimmer of late-19^th century “impressionism, ” and even in this early work seems to look ahead to the neo-classic trend which music would follow by the 1920s.

NCO Concert