ExclusiveGabriel Fauré: Pavane in F-sharp minor, Op. 50

【Classical music and nature 古典音樂小站】Gabriel Fauré: Pavane in F-sharp minor, Op. 50. This beautiful piece was played by Ashoka_PremiumBeat. It is a royalty free music provided through pond5.com.

The Pavane in F-sharp minor, Op. 50, is a short work by the French composer Gabriel Fauré written in 1887. It was originally a piano piece, but is better known in Fauré's version for orchestra and optional chorus. It was first performed in Paris in 1888, becoming one of the composer's most popular works.

The work is titled after the slow processional Spanish court dance of the same name. Fauré's original version of the piece was written for piano and chorus in the late 1880s. He described it as "elegant, assuredly, but not particularly important."

Fauré composed the orchestral version at Le Vésinet in the summer of 1887. He envisaged a purely orchestral composition, using modest forces, to be played at a series of light summer concerts conducted by Jules Danbé. After Fauré opted to dedicate the work to his patron, Elisabeth, comtesse Greffulhe, he felt compelled to stage a grander affair and at her recommendation he added an invisible chorus to accompany the orchestra (with additional allowance for dancers). The words were inconsequential verses, à la Verlaine, on the romantic helplessness of man, written by the Countess's cousin, Robert de Montesquiou. Fauré wrote:

"M. de Montesquiou ... has most kindly accepted the egregiously thankless and difficult task of setting to this music, which is already complete, words that will make our Pavane fit to be both danced and sung. He has given it a delightful text: sly coquetries by the female dancers, and great sighs by the male dancers that will singularly enhance the music. If the whole marvellous thing with a lovely dance in fine costumes and an invisible chorus and orchestra could be performed, what a treat it would be!"

The orchestral version was first performed at a Concert Lamoureux under the baton of Charles Lamoureux on 25 November 1888.[4] 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.[8]

From the outset, the Pavane has enjoyed immense popularity, whether with or without chorus.[9] 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.[10] 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.[11] 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.

THe video was captured by Christian Schlegel and edited by Wenjing Ma.


#classicalmusic, #Music, #古典音樂, #klassischemusik, #GJWexclusive, #Switzerland, #Schweiz, #Natur, #Nature, #KlassischeMusikundNatur, #ClassicalMusicAndNature, #古典音樂小站,