Pavane (Fauré)

F# minör Pavane, Op. 50, Fransız besteci Gabriel Fauré tarafından 1887'de yazılmış kısa bir eserdir. Aslen bir piyano parçasıydı, ancak Fauré'nin orkestra ve isteğe bağlı koro versiyonunda daha iyi biliniyor. İlk kez 1888'de Paris'te seslendirildi ve bestecinin en popüler eserlerinden biri oldu.

Eserin adı, aynı adı taşıyan yavaş alaylı İspanyol saray dansından sonra geliyor. Fauré'nin parçanın orijinal versiyonu 1880'lerin sonlarında piyano ve koro için yazılmıştır."Zarif, kesin ama özellikle önemli değil.

The orchestral version was first performed at a Concert Lamoureux under the baton of Charles Lamoureux on 25 November 1888. Three days later, the choral version was premiered at a concert of the Société nationale de musique. In 1891, the Countess finally helped Fauré produce the version with both dancers and chorus, in a "choreographic spectacle" designed to grace one of her garden parties in the Bois de Boulogne.

From the outset, the Pavane has enjoyed immense popularity, whether with or without chorus. With choreography by Léonide Massine a ballet version entered the repertoire of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1917, alternatively billed as Las Meninas or Les Jardins d'Aranjuez, danced to music by not only Fauré but also Maurice Ravel and others. For Massine, Fauré's music had "haunting echoes of Spain's Golden Age" parallelling the formality and underlying sadness he found in the paintings of Velázquez. Some critics found the ballet pallid, but Diaghilev retained a fondness for the piece, and kept it in the company's repertoire until the end of his life.

Fauré's example was imitated by his juniors, who went on to write pavanes of their own: Debussy's Passepied in his Suite bergamasque and Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte, and "Pavane de la belle au bois dormant" in Ma mère l'oye.

The work is scored for modest orchestral forces consisting of strings and one pair each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns.

The Fauré scholar Jean-Michel Nectoux writes that the Pavane has become one of the composer's best-known pieces, and "there will be few to deny that it is one of the most attractive of his lesser works: the flute theme, once heard, is not easily forgotten". In a 1979 study, Robert Orledge describes the scoring of the Pavane as "delicate and airy, with some practical and inspired woodwind writing and a variety of string textures…" He adds that the strings sometimes double the viola part on either second violins or cellos, "perhaps for safety's sake". After the opening flute theme, there is a more dramatic central section, comprising a series of four-bar sequences over bass pedals which descend whole tones – a favourite device of Fauré's. There are small and barely perceptible changes to the main theme during the work and reharmonisations that Orledge calls "a miracle of Fauréan ingenuity".

Fauré intended the piece to be played more briskly than it is sometimes performed in its more familiar orchestral guise. The conductor Sir Adrian Boult heard Fauré play the piano version several times and noted that he took it at a tempo no slower than 100 crotchets a minute. Boult commented that the composer's sprightly tempo emphasised that the Pavane was not a piece of German romanticism, and that the text later added was "clearly a piece of light-hearted chaffing between the dancers".