Composed 1893; 4 minutes

In March 1893, Saint-Saëns passed a commission to his friend and former student, Gabriel Fauré: incidental music to Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme. By month’s end, the producing theater had declared bankruptcy. Fauré salvaged his graceful Sicilienne, first adapting it for cello and piano and dedicating it to English cellist W.H. Squire, then reusing it five years later as an entr’acte in music to Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande. Its gently modal melodies have made it one of Fauré’s most beloved and widely adapted works.