An aubade is a morning love song (as opposed to a serenade, which is in the evening), or a song or poem about lovers separating at dawn.[1] It has also been defined as "a song or instrumental composition concerning, accompanying, or evoking daybreak".[2]
In the strictest sense of the term, an aubade is a song from a door or window to a sleeping woman.[3] Aubades are generally conflated with what are strictly called albas, which are exemplified by a dialogue between parting lovers, a refrain with the word alba, and a watchman warning the lovers of the approaching dawn.[3]
Aubades were in the repertory of troubadours in Europe in the Middle Ages. An early English example is in Book III of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. The love poetry of the 16th century dealt mostly with unsatisfied love, so the aubade was not a major genre in Elizabethan lyric.
The aubade gained in popularity again with the advent of the metaphysical fashion; John Donne's poem "The Sunne Rising" is an example of the aubade in English. Aubades were written from time to time in the 18th and 19th century, although none of them were quite up to metaphysical standards.
There have been several notable aubades in the 20th century, such as a major poem titled "Aubade" by Philip Larkin[4]. French composers of the turn of the 20th century wrote a number of aubades. In 1883, the French composer Emmanuel Chabrier composed an "Aubade" for piano solo, inspired by a four-month visit to Spain.[5] Maurice Ravel included a Spain-inspired aubade entitled Alborada del gracioso in his 1906 piano suite Miroirs.[6] The composer Francis Poulenc later wrote (in concerto form) a piece titled Aubade; it premiered in 1929.[7]