Sarabande | Grove Music

Sarabande Richard Hudson and Meredith Ellis Little https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.24574 Published in print: 20 January 2001 Published online: 2001 Richard Hudson One of the most popular of Baroque instrumental dances and a standard movement, along with the allemande, courante and gigue, of the suite. It originated during the 16th century as a sung dance in Latin America and Spain. It came to Italy early in the 17th century as part of the repertory of the Spanish five- course guitar. During the first half of the century various instrumental types developed in France and Italy, at first based on harmonic schemes, later on characteristics of rhythm and tempo. A fast and a slow type finally emerged, the former preferred in Italy, England and Spain, the latter in France and Germany. The French spelling ‘sarabande’ was also used in Germany and sometimes in England; there, however, ‘saraband’ was often preferred. The Italian usage is ‘sarabanda’, the Spanish ‘zarabanda’. 1. Early development to c1640. The earliest literary references to the zarabanda come from Latin America, the name first appearing in a poem by Fernando Guzmán Mexía in a manuscript from Panama dated 1539, according to B.J. Gallardo (Ensayo de una biblioteca española de libros raros y curiosos, Madrid, 1888–9, iv, 1528). A zarabanda text by Pedro de Trejo was performed in 1569 in Mexico and Diego Durán mentioned the dance in his Historia de las Indias de Nueva-España (1579). The zarabanda was banned in Spain in 1583 for its extraordinary obscenity, but literary references to it continued throughout the early 17th century in the works of such writers as Cervantes and Lope de Vega. From about 1580 to 1610 it seems to have been the most popular of the wild and energetic Spanish bailes, superseded finally by the chacona (see Chaconne), with which it is frequently mentioned. The dance was accompanied by the guitar, castanets and possibly other percussion instruments, and by a text with refrain. Most surviving examples of the early zarabanda occur in Italian tablatures for the Spanish guitar, beginning in 1606 with Girolamo Montesardo's Nuova inventione d'intavolatura. Ex.1 shows a reconstruction of the musical scheme that would usually have been repeated for each line of the text, alternating with and without an anacrusis. The top staff shows the melodic framework, which could be varied, and the lower staff (from one of Montesardo's guitar examples) represents major triads to be strummed, the stems showing the direction in which the hand is to move. The refrain text comes from an example in Luis de Briçeño's Metodo mui Page 1 of 9 Printed from Grove Music Online. Grove is a registered trademark. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy). Subscriber: SUNY Stony Brook University; date: 03 September 2019 facilissimo (Paris, 1626). The I–IV–I–V harmonic progression was a constant feature of the early zarabanda and can be found also in the later guitar books of Benedetto Sanseverino (see ex.2), G.A. Colonna (1620), Fabrizio Costanzo (1627), G.P. Foscarini (1629) and Antonio Carbonchi (1640 and 1643), as well as in the guitar works of Spanish composers as late as Lucas Ruiz de Ribayaz in 1677. Although the dance seems to have been performed without a text in Italy, the musical scheme of the zarabanda was sometimes indicated for the singing of poetry (in I-Fr 2774, 2793, 2804, 2849 and 2951). Although ostinato repetition of the single phrase of ex.1 was most usual in Italy, a two-phrase structure occasionally occurred. In Briçeño's two examples entitled La çaravanda española muy façil, the first line of the refrain has a harmonic pattern like that of ex.1, but in the second line the IV chord in the first bar is replaced by V. The same structure appears in pieces by Gaspar Sanz (1674) and Ruiz de Ribayaz (1677), but a different two-phrase plan occurs in the Aria di saravanda in varie partite for lute by Piccinini (1623). Its opening phrase is similar to that shown in ex.1, but without the hemiola rhythm; the second phrase begins on a minor submediant chord and bears little resemblance to ex.1. In Italy and Spain both the single phrases of ex.1 and longer double-phrase structures beginning like ex.1 were often called zarabanda spagnola in order to distinguish them from different types that were developing elsewhere. In France the sarabande usually had no text. Its musical structure, like that of most French Baroque dances, was freely sectional, with two (or sometimes more) repeated sections of varying length. The sarabande appeared early in the 17th century in the ballet de cour, as seen in Praetorius's Terpsichore (1612). He included examples for each of two types of sarabande, a courrant sarabande, made up of repeated sections, and a non-sectional sarabande, which sometimes begins with the pattern shown in ex.1. Ex.3 shows one of the latter, with its metre, barring and note values altered to facilitate comparison with ex.1. Page 2 of 9 Printed from Grove Music Online. Grove is a registered trademark. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy). Subscriber: SUNY Stony Brook University; date: 03 September 2019 Ex.3 Praetorius: La sarabande (1612), outer voices About 1620 a new type of sarabande called the zarabanda francese appeared in Spanish and Italian guitar books as well as in the Bentivoglio lutebook of 1615 ( US-SFsc). The name seems to refer to a non-texted dance with a sectional structure. A zarabanda francese by G.A. Colonna (1637) has a harmonic scheme identical to that of ex.3, but its second section (beginning in the fifth bar) is marked for repetition. Ex.1 The early zarabanda Briçeño's Metodo mui facilissimo includes an untexted çaravanda françesa y buena in addition to texted Spanish examples. Antonio Carbonchi, in 1643, entitled single phrases like ex.1 serabanda spagnuola and sectional pieces serabanda franzese. Unlike the original Spanish type the Italian zarabanda francese could be in either mode. Those in the major tended at first to begin with a phrase like that in ex.1; Page 3 of 9 Printed from Grove Music Online. Grove is a registered trademark. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy). Subscriber: SUNY Stony Brook University; date: 03 September 2019 those in the minor were often based on the chordal scheme later associated with the Folia (chords in brackets indicate those that were sometimes added; upper- or lower-case Roman numerals indicate major or minor triads): i–V–i–(VI)–VII–III–(VI– VII–III)–VII–i–V–(i). Three or five of the opening chords (i–V–i or i–V–i–VII–III) could appear in the first phrase, and the entire scheme could occur either once (with the first half ending on III) or twice (cadencing on V and i). After 1650, however, the zarabanda francese seldom displayed any particular harmonic scheme. Ex.4 Sarabande rhythms During the 1630s rhythm began to become a distinguishing feature of the dance. The sarabandes of François de Chancy, Jacques de Belleville, T. Chevallier and Bouvier contained in Pierre Ballard's Tablature de luth de differens autheurs (Paris, 1631) emphasize the rhythm shown in ex.4a. Mersenne (Harmonie universelle, 1636) printed two sarabandes, one by ‘Mr. Martin’ that uses the rhythm of ex.4a, and another that begins like ex.4b. The latter rhythm occurs in a sarabande for trumpet and continuo (1638) by Girolamo Fantini (ex.5 shows the opening statement, which is followed by two variations). He notated it in 3/8, presumably to indicate a faster tempo than in his saltarellos or gagliarde, which he wrote in 3/2, or some of his correntes in 3/4 or 6/4. The same rhythm appeared in later Italian guitar sarabandas (incorporating by this time single notes as well as chords), starting with those by Francesco Corbetta in 1639. G.M. Bononcini (Arie, correnti, sarabande, gighe, & allemande, 1671) used the rhythm of ex.4a in a piece for violin and continuo called Sarabanda in stil francese (ex.6a), and the rhythm of ex.4b in a Sarabanda (ex.6b). The first was notated in 3/4, the second in 6/4, suggesting that the rhythm of ex.4a, preferred in France, implied a slower tempo with three substantial beats per bar, while that of ex.4b, more common in Italy, implied a faster tempo and a compound metre with one accent for each triple group. Thus there seems to have been a preference, particularly strong among French lute and harpsichord composers, for an increasingly slow and deliberate kind of sarabande, in which (as in French versions of the allemande and the courante) the idiomatic and contrapuntal possibilities of those instruments might be most fully exploited. Page 4 of 9 Printed from Grove Music Online. Grove is a registered trademark. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy). Subscriber: SUNY Stony Brook University; date: 03 September 2019 2. The later sarabande. (i) Italy, Spain and England. Richard Hudson Italian sarabandas occurred mainly in solo music for guitar and in continuo chamber music. Most sarabandas for guitar from 1640 to 1692 used the rhythm of ex.4b, notably the earlier ones of G.P.

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