pavane

noun

1. A musical style characteristic of the 16th and 17th centuries.

   “[…] if the men should not agree what to play, but one would have a grave Pavane, another a nimbler Galliard, a third some frisking toy or Iigg, and then all of them should be wilful, none yield to his fellow, but every one scrape on his own tune as loud as he could: what a hideous hateful noise may you imagine would such a mess of Musick be?”

   “And he tasted in the language of memory ambered wines, dying fallings of sweet airs, the proud pavan […]”

2. A moderately slow, courtly processional dance in duple time/meter.

   “Why then be merry; be merry, or I’le be Out of humour, and then who shall dance the Pavan With Ossorio?”

   “The pavane† was quite popular at the time when Tabouret wrote his treatise, and he ventured the opinion that it would never cease to be so. It is not many years since an attempt was made in Paris to revive the dance, but it must be confessed that the modern adaption did not seem to bear any particularly striking resemblance to the original movement.”

   “Some day, when the Wateaus of the future are painting the court ladies who again dance pavanes in sunlit glades, wearing wigs and crinoline, such data will amuse.”

   “[…] sweet to us it is to behold delightful dancing, be it the stately splendour of the Pavane which progresseth as large clouds at sun-down that pass by in splendour; or the graceful Allemande; or the Fandango, which goeth by degrees from languorous beauty to the swiftness and passion of Bacchanals dancing on the high lawns under a summer moon that hangeth in the pine trees; or the joyous maze of the Galliard; or the Gigue, dear to the Foliots.”

   “From the wings I heard and watched the pavane of tragedy move steadily toward its climax.”

verb

1. (intransitive, rare)To dance the pavane.