sarabande

The sarabande is a dance in triple metre. The second and third beats of each measure are often tied, giving the dance a distinctive rhythm of quarter notes and eighth notes in alternation. The quarters are said to corresponded with dragging steps in the dance.

The sarabande, a Spanish dance, is the third of the four basic dances, and is one of the slowest of the baroque dances. It is also in triple meter and can start on any beat of the bar, although there is an emphasis on the second beat, which creates the characteristic “halting” or iambic rhythm of the sarabande.

The sarabande remained popular in France through the 17th century and survived somewhat longer as a stage dance. As a musical form it is a stylized version of the French dance; when used as part of a suite, as in Dietrich Buxtehude's four suites for lute or clavichord, it is normally the third movement.

The Sarabande evolved from a Spanish dance with Arab influences, danced by a lively double line of couples with castanets. A dance called zarabanda is first mentioned in 1539 in Central America in the poem Vida y tiempo de Maricastaña, written in Panama by Fernando de Guzmán Mejía.

Sarabande is Melody-Dominated Homophony (Two-Part)

It became a traditional movement of the suite during the baroque period, usually coming directly after the Courante. The baroque sarabande is commonly a slow triple rather than the much faster Spanish original, consistent with the courtly European interpretations of many Latin dances.

It was a popular dance in Lully's operas and at the court of Louis XIV, and retained its homophonic texture and simple rhythms as an independent instrumental work in the baroque.

By the seventeenth century, however, the dance had become popular in France, where it completely changed in style, becoming a slow, stately dance of the court in triple time, characterised by often having a strong second beats of the bar at the beginning of phrases.

The word homophonic comes from the Greek words homo (meaning same or similar) and phonic (meaning sound or voice). Homophonic music refers to music that has one sound or line of melody being played by multiple instruments at the same time. One instrument plays one note, and a second instrument plays a note in harmony.

His 39 surviving sarabandes are all virtuoso pieces in suites for a solo instrument (keyboard, cello, flute, violin or lute) except for the one in the Orchestral Suite in B minor BWV1067.

Homophony. Most popular music genres strongly favor homophonic textures, whether featuring a solo singer, rapper, guitar solo, or several vocalists singing in harmony.

Homophony is characterized by multiple voices harmonically moving together at the same pace. Polyphony is characterized by multiple voices with separate melodic lines and rhythms. Most music does not conform to a single texture; rather, it can move between them.