Pavan [pavane, paven, pavin]

(It. pavana, padovana; Fr. pavane; Ger. Paduana).

A court dance of the 16th and early 17th centuries. There are hundreds of examples in the contemporary sources of consort, keyboard and lute music, among them some of the most inventive and profound instrumental compositions of the late Renaissance period.

The pavan was almost certainly of Italian origin. The earliest surviving source for it, Dalza’s Intabulatura de lauto printed by Petrucci in Venice in 1508, contains five pavane alla venetiana and four pavane alla ferrarese, collectively described on the title-page as padoane diverse; both ‘pavana’ and ‘padoana’ are adjectives meaning ‘of Padua’, so the town presumably gave the dance its name. Some scholars, however, have suggested a derivation from the Spanish pavón (peacock) based on a supposed resemblance between the dignified movements of the dance and the spread of a peacock’s tail.

The pavan was similar choreographically to the 15th-century bassadanza; it was sedate in character and was often used as an introductory, processional dance. A useful source of information on the dance is Arbeau, who gave the earliest account (1588) of the basic choreography:

The pavane is easy to dance, consisting merely of two single steps [simples] and one double step [double] forward, [followed by] two single steps and one double step backward. It is played in duple time [mesure binaire]; note that the forward steps begin on the left foot and the backward steps begin on the right foot.

As suitable music for the pavan, Arbeau gave a four-part setting of the popular song Belle qui tiens ma vie (later printed in Morley’s First Booke of Consort Lessons, 1599, as La coranta) to be accompanied throughout by a repetitive minim–crotchet–crotchet drum rhythm (see illustration). He remarked that ‘if you wish, you can have it sung or played in four-part harmony without dancing it’; he suggested that it might be played on ‘viols, spinets, transverse flutes and flutes with nine holes, haut boys’, and noted that the pavan was often used as a wedding march or ‘when musicians head a procession of … some notable guild’. A more complex choreography was given by Fabritio Caroso (Il ballarino, 1581), apparently intended for professional dancers.

As Arbeau prescribed, the music of a pavan is almost invariably in duple metre (two or four beats to the bar in modern transcriptions) and usually consists of two, three or four sections of regular metrical structure, each repeated. Morley described the pavan as

a kind of staid music, ordained for grave dancing, and most commonly made of three strains, whereof every strain is played or sung twice; a strain they make to contain 8, 12, or 16 semibreves as they list, yet fewer than eight I have not seen in any pavan. In this you may not so much insist in following the point as in a fantasy, but it shall be enough to touch it once and so away to some close. Also in this you must cast your music by four, so that if you keep that rule it is no matter how many fours you put in your strain for it will fall out well enough in the end.

Not all composers followed Morley’s rule of ‘casting by four’, that is, making the length of each strain a multiple of four semibreves. In the early 17th century asymmetrical phrase structures were particularly common, as, for example, in a keyboard pavan by Gibbons (ed. in MB, xx, 1962, no.16), where the number of semibreves in the three strains, each having a varied repeat, is 14, 13; 14, 14; 19, 20.

In both printed and manuscript sources for the 16th-century dance, the pavan frequently appeared as the first dance in a group, to be followed by one or more after-dances in faster triple metre; often these after-dances, or at least the first, were based on the melodic or harmonic material of the pavan. Italian sources generally labelled such after-dances ‘saltarello’, as in Dalza’s collection, where the editor apparently thought the grouping of thematically related dances in the order pavan–saltarello–piva important enough to be mentioned in the preface (‘tutte le pavane hanno el suo saltarello e piva’). Such widely distributed lute collections as G.A. Casteliono’s Intabolatura de leuto de diversi autori (1536) and the joint Intabulatura … del Francesco da Milano et … Pietro Paolo Borrono (1546) contain longer suite-like groups (called ‘ballo’ by Casteliono) in which the opening pavan is followed by three saltarellos, the first of which is melodically similar to the pavan. The most usual pairing later in the 16th century, particularly in northern Europe, was that of pavan and galliard, but it is probably true to say that most existing pavans are not linked to any other dance. Other early sources for the pavan include Hans Judenkünig’s Ain schone kunstliche Underweisung (1523), containing one Pavana alla veneciana taken from Dalza; the Dixhuit basses dances for lute issued by the Parisian printer Attaingnant in 1530; and Luis de Milán’s vihuela tablature El maestro (1536, containing some triple-time pavans). Some tempo indications in Milán’s publication and in Alonso Mudarra’s Tres libros de musica en cifras para vihuela (1546) suggest that the pavan was a fast or moderately fast dance. There is no doubt that, like many other dances, it became slower as time went on.

Early Italian keyboard dances, all anonymous, survive in a small Venetian manuscript of about 1530 (I-Vnm ital.iv.1227, ed. K. Jeppesen, Balli antichi veneziani, Copenhagen, 1962), with a linked pavan and saltarello, and in two fascicles from the collection at Castell’Arquato (I-CARcc) dating from about 1540 (ed. H.C. Slim, CEKM, xxxvii/1, 1975). The latter include 15 pavans each followed by a ‘saltarello de la pavana’, the two dances normally consisting of two variations on the same harmonic ground (passamezzo moderno, romanesca or passamezzo antico). The keyboard writing of these pieces is uncomplicated, with a decorative single line in the right hand supported by reiterative left-hand chords. Similar textures are employed in the earliest Italian publication of keyboard dances, the Intabolatura nova di varie sorte de balli issued by Gardano (1551). The single pavan in this collection, Fusi pavana piana, has sections of four and seven breves in length, each with varied repeat, a structure that distinguishes it from the tripartite passamezzo moderno and antico settings in the same book.

Solo instruments at this period would probably not have been suitable for accompanying dancing; the dances published for them were decorated versions of ensemble pieces, comparable in nature and function to the contemporary intabulations of chansons and motets. Surviving ensemble settings come mainly from France and the Low Countries until about 1570, and are generally in a simple, homophonic style with the tune in the top part. Lute and keyboard arrangements are sometimes elaborately ‘coloured’, and display idiomatic figuration of a kind often associated with later instrumental styles. Ex.1 shows the first strain of a pavan for four-part ensemble (superius only) from Attaingnant’s Six gaillardes et six pavanes (1529–30), the first few bars of a keyboard pavan modelled on the same dance (upper staff only) from Attaingnant’s Quatorze gaillardes neuf pavennes (1531) and the first few bars of the Gaillarde sur la pavane (upper staff) which follows immediately in the latter Attaingnant print.

Of the relatively few Italian ensemble dances extant from before 1560 (listed in Cunningham), about a dozen are of the pavan type, though none has the unambiguous title ‘Pavana’. La paduana del re (in GB-Lbl Roy.App.59–62) is a true pavan with strains of 16, eight and eight breves. On the other hand, the Cortesa padoana in Francesco Bendusi’s Opera nova de balli … a quatro (1553) is an example of the triple-time Padoana. By the mid-16th century in Italy the pavan was already giving place to the passamezzo, a similar dance in which the steps were more lively (according to Arbeau), with music usually constructed over a ground bass, either the passamezzo antico or the passamezzo moderno. In northern Europe the pavan remained popular, and music for it was adapted from many sources. For example, Susato’s Het derde musyck boexken (1551) includes a four-voice pavan in three sections derived from Josquin’s chanson Mille regretz and another based on Janequin’s La bataille de Marignan.

The earliest surviving English pavans are probably the two in GB-Lbl Roy.App.58 (c1540), The Emperorse Pavyn (in triple time) and Kyng Harry the VIIIth Pavyn (ed. in MB, lxvi, 1995, nos.39, 41), both apparently three-part keyboard reductions of four-part consort pieces. The early Elizabethan manuscripts GB-Lbl Roy.App.74–6 (dances ed. in MB, xliv, 1979, nos.76–111) contain several consort pavans in a simple, homophonic style similar to that of contemporary collections on the Continent. Towards the end of the century, when the pavan as a dance was dying out, it was given a new significance as a musical form by English composers. Ex.2 shows the first strain of an anonymous pavan from the Dublin Virginal Manuscript (EIRE-Dtc, c1570) in which the texture is elaborated by true counterpoint rather than by decoration of a homophonic original. This technique was greatly extended by Byrd, whose ten keyboard pavans in My Ladye Nevell’s Booke (1591) display a degree of craftsmanship and an emotional weight unparalleled in any earlier source. Until about 1625 the pavan continued to attract English composers, and examples for lute, keyboard and ensemble abound. Arrangements from one medium to another still occurred, but generally keyboard and lute examples existed in their own right, often exploiting the technique of the instruments to a considerable degree. Pavans for solo instruments normally included written-out varied repeat sections, unlike those for ‘whole consort’ which tended to be more restrained.

Many pavans have descriptive titles, often referring to technical features of the music, such as Byrd’s Pavan: Canon 2 in 1, William Tisdale’s Pavana chromatica, and the Four-Note Pavan by Alfonso Ferrabosco (ii), the upper voice of which consists entirely of repetitions of a four-note motif at different pitches and in different rhythms. Pieces called Passamezzo Pavan and Quadran Pavan are sets of variations on the passamezzo antico and passamezzo moderno respectively, and thus lack the usual tripartite structure. Other titles are indicative of mood, usually rather sombre, as suggested by Morley’s description, such as Bull’s Melancholy Pavan, Philips’s Pavana dolorosa and Holborne’s Pavan: The Funerals. Some pavans were apparently written in memory of recently deceased people, like those by Byrd and Gibbons in Parthenia (1612–13) dedicated to the Earl of Salisbury (d May 1612), but this is not true of all named pavans.

Relatively few English pavans were printed, but among the publications that include them are John Dowland’s Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans … for the Lute, Viols, or Violins, in Five Parts (1604), Robert Dowland’s Varietie of Lute-Lessons (1610), and the keyboard book Parthenia. Some pavans arranged for mixed consort were included in Morley’s First Booke of Consort Lessons (1599). Perhaps because of the influence of such expatriate English composers as William Brade and Thomas Simpson, the pavan regained favour in 17th-century Germany as the first movement of consort suites by Peuerl, Schein, Scheidt and others. In Schein’s Banchetto musicale (1617), for example, all the suites open with movements entitled Padovana.

In France, following an isolated keyboard pavan by Jacques Cellier of Reims, dated 1594 (see Ledbetter, frontispiece), there is a handful of examples written by harpsichordists, among which Chambonnières’ Pavane L’entretien des dieux and Louis Couperin’s only pavan, in F minor, are works of intense eloquence. 17th-century English examples include ten pavans by Tomkins that bear dates between 1647 and 1654, but these belong essentially to the virginalist tradition. The pavans that open some of Locke’s suites, and the few independent examples by Purcell, are scored for two or three violins, bass viol and continuo, and retain the structure of three repeated sections. Such examples were becoming rare, however; Thomas Mace (Musick’s Monument, 1676) defined both the form and its decline: ‘Pavines, are Lessons of 2, 3 or 4 Strains, very Grave, and Sober; Full of Art, and Profundity, but seldom us’d, in These our Light Days’.

Like other dance forms of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, the pavan has occasionally been reinterpreted by more recent composers. Delibes (Airs de danse, 1882) and Warlock (Capriol Suite, 1926) both composed pavans that quote Arbeau’s music. Also based on a pre-existing work (from Parthenia) is Peter Maxwell Davies’s St Thomas Wake: Foxtrot for Orchestra on a Pavan by John Bull (1969). The same composer’s Sir Charles [Groves] his Pavan (1992) revives the idea of a pavan as a memorial piece.

Pavans by Fauré (op.50, 1887) and Ravel (Pavane pour une infante défunte, 1899; ‘Pavane de la belle au bois dormant’ from Ma mère l’oye, 1908–10) are justly celebrated, and all three exist in alternative scorings made by the composers. But the delicate gravity of Howells’s ‘De la Mare’s Pavane’ from Lambert’s Clavichord (1926–7) could not be effectively transferred to any other instrument. This piece is very much in the Elizabethan spirit, ‘cast by four’ with a modest use of varied repetition and an undercurrent of polyphony; the overall form, however, is ABA rather than ABC. 20th-century pavans designed for actual dancing include the ‘Pavane of the Sons of the Morning’ in Vaughan Williams’s Job (1930), and the Pavane in Britten’s Gloriana (1953), which is the first of a group of dances accompanied by an onstage orchestra and woven into the dramatic action.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BrownI

T. Arbeau: Orchésographie (Langres, 1588/R, 2/1589/R; Eng. trans., 1948, 2/1967)

T. Morley: A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (London, 1597/R); ed. R.A. Harman (London, 1952, 2/1963/R)

C. Sachs: Eine Weltgeschichte des Tanzes (Berlin, 1933; Eng. trans., 1937/R)

L. Messedaglia: ‘La pavana, danza non spagnuola, ma padovana’, Atti e memorie della Accademia di agricoltura, scienze e lettere di Verona, 5th ser., xxi (1942–3), 91–103

L.H. Moe: Dance Music in Printed Italian Lute Tablatures from 1507 to 1611 (diss., Harvard U., 1956)

H. Spohr: Studien zur italienischen Tanzkomposition um 1600 (diss., U. of Freiburg, 1956)

B. Delli: Pavane und Galliarde: zur Geschichte der Instrumentalmusik im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (diss., Free U. of Berlin, 1957)

I. Horsley: ‘The 16th-Century Variation: a New Historical Survey’, JAMS, xii (1959), 118–32

D. Heartz, ed.: Preludes, Chansons and Dances for Lute Published by Pierre Attaingnant, Paris (1529–1530) (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1964)

D. Heartz, ed.: Keyboard Dances from the Earlier Sixteenth Century, CEKM, viii (1965)

W.A. Edwards: The Sources of Elizabethan Consort Music (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1974)

C.M. Cunningham: ‘Ensemble Dances in Early Sixteenth-Century Italy: Relationships with villotte and Franco-Flemish danceries’, MD, xxxiv (1980), 159–203

J. Sutton: ‘Triple Pavans: Clues to some Mysteries in 16th-Century Dance’, EMc, xiv (1986), 175–81

D. Ledbetter: Harpsichord and Lute Music in 17th-Century France (London, 1987)

A. Silbiger: Keyboard Music before 1700 (New York, 1995)

ALAN BROWN