Fanfare pour précéder La Péri

This fanfare lasts barely two minutes, so its shape is easy to hold in your ear on a single hearing. It is written for brass alone, no strings or woodwinds, which immediately sets it apart in tone from the ballet score that follows it.

The piece opens with a bold, ceremonial call, the kind of sound associated with royal entrances or the raising of a curtain. Listen for how the brass choir trades short phrases back and forth, almost like antiphonal answers across a hall, before the material thickens into fuller chords.

There is no development in the symphonic sense, no themes returning transformed. Instead the fanfare builds through repetition and increasing weight of sound to a bright, decisive close. Because Dukas conceived it as a curtain-raiser, it has a clear beginning-middle-end logic: an announcement, a brief intensification, and a firm cadence that tells the audience the real work is about to begin. When performed on its own, as it usually is today, that ending simply serves as the concert's opening flourish rather than a doorway into the ballet.

Paul Dukas wrote this fanfare to introduce his ballet "La Péri," a work depicting a young prince's quest for a flower of immortality guarded by a péri, a fairy-like spirit from Persian mythology. Dukas added the fanfare shortly after completing the ballet score, reportedly at the request of the theater, so that latecomers would have a musical signal to take their seats before the curtain rose. Scored for brass instruments alone, it stands apart in color from the richly orchestrated ballet that follows. Over time the fanfare has taken on an independent life. Orchestras frequently program it by itself as a short, festive opener, separate from any performance of "La Péri" itself, and it now functions largely as a concert curtain-raiser in its own right.