Sarabande

In music, the sarabande (Sp., zarabanda; It., sarabanda) 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 quarter notes are said to correspond with the dragging steps in the dance.

The sarabande is first mentioned in Central America: in 1539, a dance called a zarabanda is mentioned in a poem written in Panama by Fernando Guzmán Mexía. Apparently the dance became popular in the Spanish colonies before moving back across the Atlantic to Spain. While it was banned in Spain in 1583 for its obscenity, it was frequently cited in literature of the period (for instance in works by Cervantes and Lope de Vega).

In the Baroque era the suite typically included a sarabande, as the third of four movements in the standard 18th-century form: allemande, courante, sarabande, gigue.

The sarabande form was revived in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by composers such as Debussy and Satie and, in different styles, Vaughan Williams (in Job) and Benjamin Britten (in the Simple Symphony).

One of the best-known constant-harmony variation types is the anonymous La Folia whose harmonic sequence appears in pieces of various types (mainly dances) by dozens of composers from the time of Mudarra (1546) and Corelli through the present day. The Theme of the fourth-movement Sarabande of Handel's Keyboard suite in D minor (HWV 437) for harpsichord is a variation of this piece, and is featured prominently in the film Barry Lyndon.