For those of us who love classical music, one of the most delightful memories is the first time we come across a piece that immediately tugs at our soul and does not let it go. For me, that piece is Ravel’s sublime Pavane for a Dead Princess, written when he was just 24 years old.

Born in Switzerland in 1897, Ravel was accepted into the prestigious Paris Conservatoire at age 14, and stayed there off and on for 16 years despite being an indifferent student who knew he had non-conventional musical gifts to show to the world. By the time he left the Conservatoire for good in 1905, he had already composed two of his best works, including the Pavane and his astonishing String Quartet of 1903, a work ravishing from start to end.

Ravel counted as his sources of inspiration, the Impressionistic music of Debussy and the poetry of Edgar Allen Poe. He once said: “My ambition is to say with notes what a poet expresses with words.” That ambition shows up well in Pavane for a Dead Princess. Ravel first wrote it for solo piano and later published an orchestral version in 1910 using two flutes, an oboe, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, harp and strings. In his own words, the piece is “an evocation of a pavane or slow dance that a little princess might have dance at the Spanish court.” As you listen to the recording below, I’m certain that you, too, will be moved by piece’s exquisite sighing melody floating over light chords like a dreamy dance scene in a bucolic countryside. This is music that becomes fixed in our ears, one of those things that remind us how exquisite the world can be sometimes.

Listen:

Joseph Maurice Ravel, Pavane for a Dead Princess (orchestral version)