Pavan (dance)

The pavane, pavan, paven, pavin, pavian, pavine, or pavyn (It. pavana, padovana; Ger. Paduana) is a slow processional dance common in Europe during the 16th century (Renaissance).

The pavane, the earliest-known music for which was published in Venice by Ottaviano Petrucci, in Joan Ambrosio Dalza's Intabolatura de lauto libro quarto in 1508, is a sedate and dignified couple dance, similar to the 15th-century basse danse. The music which accompanied it appears originally to have been fast or moderately fast but, like many other dances, became slower over time (Brown 2001).

The word "Pavane" is most probably derived from Italian "[danza] Padovana" (En. Britannica), (Treccani 2016), meaning "[dance] typical of Padua" (similar to Bergamask, "dance from Bergamo"); "pavan" is a dialectal/old form for the modern Italian adjective "padovano" (= from Padua). This origin is consistent with the equivalent form, "Paduana".

An alternative explanation is that it derives from the Spanish pavón meaning peacock (Sachs 1937, 356).

Although the dance is often associated with Spain (Horst 1937, 7), it was "almost certainly of Italian origin" (Brown 2001).

The decorous sweep of the pavane suited the new more sober Spanish-influenced courtly manners of 16th century Italy. It appears in dance manuals in England, France, and Italy.

The pavane's popularity was from roughly 1530 to 1676 (Horst 1937, 8), though, as a dance, it was already dying out by the late 16th century (Brown 2001). As a musical form, the pavan survived long after the dance itself was abandoned, and well into the Baroque period, when it finally gave way to the allemande/courante sequence (Apel 1988, 259ff).

In Thoinot Arbeau's French dance manual, it is generally a dance for many couples in procession, with the dancers sometimes throwing in ornamentation (divisions) of the steps (Arbeau 1967, 59–66).

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