Pavane couleur du temps

The title and the inspiration of Frank Martin’s Pavane couleur du temps derive from Charles Perrault’s fairy tale Peau d’ane. In an effort to delay a marriage she is determined to resist, a beautiful young Princess follows the advice of her Fairy Godmother and makes the apparently impossible condition that she should first be given “une robe couleur du temps.” At this point in the story it is not clear whether she means the “colour of time” or the “colour of the weather” – a poetic ambiguity which, as far as the understanding of the Pavane is concerned, should perhaps best be left unresolved. Martin’s title is probably no more precisely meaningful than that of Ravel’s Pavane pour une Infante défunte which, together with the same composer’s Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant (also based on a Perrault fairy tale), might well have been somewhere at the back of the Swiss composer’s mind as he wrote the piece.

While Martin’s Pavane has no material in common with either of the Ravel pieces, it does share with them a remote and poised kind of beauty conveyed by modally inclined harmonies and an evenly measured rhythmic accompaniment in a slow-moving 4/4 time. The Martin Pavane has its own distinctive personality, however, and is different above all in that, instead of sustaining its serenely paced dance step throughout, it includes two quicker sections. In the original version for string quintet – there are also arrangements for orchestra and piano duet – the gentle main theme is introduced by first violin and repeated by viola over a pizzicato bass line on first or second cello. As the tempo changes the first cello departs in a different melodic direction, prompting the first violin to join it in eloquent counterpoint, before the tempo changes again for a still quicker section which rises to a brief fortissimo climax. The first cello is also moved to take the initiative in re-introducing the main theme, now in even more expressive colouring, on the return of the opening Adagietto.

Written in 1920, the Pavane couleur du temps was one of Martin’s first published works and is an early indication of the rare textural sensitivity of the composer who was to complete the Petite symphonie concertante (masterfully scored for harp, harpsichord, piano and double string orchestra) twenty-five years later.

Gerald Larner©