THE STORY BEHIND: Ravel's "Pavane pour une infante défunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess)"

On March 17 & 18, conductor Tito Muñoz and the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra will present WEST SIDE STORY with pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk.

Title: Pavane pour une infante défunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess)
Composer: Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Last time performed by the Rhode Island Philharmonic: Last performed May 18, 1968 with Jeff Cook conducting. This piece is scored for two flutes, oboe, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, harp and strings.

The Story: From his student days until the years between the World Wars, Maurice Ravel habitually attended the elegant and stylish salon of Princess Edmond de Polignac (1865-1943). She was an American, whose maiden name was Winnaretta Singer, and she became heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune. She was also a noted patron of the arts. It was this princess who commissioned Ravel to write his six-minute piano piece, Pavane for a Dead Princess. Ravel played the Pavane for the first time in 1899, and overnight it launched his reputation. The piece became extremely popular, and the composer orchestrated it in 1910.
       
The wording of Ravel’s title was regrettable, and he frequently had to explain that the piece is not a cortège for a recently deceased princess. The real sense of it is actually “a princess out of the past.”
       
Characteristic of Ravel, he grew hypercritical of the piece. In 1912, having to review a concert on which the Pavane had been programmed, he wrote:

I no longer see its good points from such a distance. But, alas, I perceive its faults very clearly: the glaring influence of Chabrier and the rather poverty-stricken form! The remarkable interpretation of this incomplete and unoriginal work contributed, I think, to its success.

We may disagree.

Program Notes by Dr. Michael Fink © 2023 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED



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