Pavane pour une infante défunte

Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte (Pavane for a dead princess) for solo piano is the earliest of his pieces to gain widespread popularity, and is, after Boléro (1928), perhaps his best-known work. Ravel was rather dismissive of the work’s success, fully aware of the debt it owes to the older composer Emmanuel Chabrier. It was composed in 1899, when the composer was in his mid-twenties, and published the following year. Despite his awareness of its limitations, Ravel orchestrated the Pavane in 1910, and for many this version is the most familiar. The title refers to a slow processional dance where the infante (infanta in Spanish) describes a princess who might have danced at a Spanish court—although the composer later claimed that the title had little to do with the music (he simply liked the consonance of the French words “infante” and “défunte”). Ravel guarded against too slow a tempo, famously commenting that it was the princess who was defunct, rather than the pavane.