[PNG] [[audio/mpeg]]

FIGURE XX.—THEME OF BACH SARABANDE

a phrase in which great depth of almost tragic feeling is expressed. Against this is set, for the sake of relief, the lighter and more suave melody of measures 5 and 6, treated in freely sequential fashion. The whole sarabande is built from these two brief melodic figures.

This sarabande serves as an admirable illustration of the type of beauty common in the music of Bach. Its phraseology, if we may use the term, is quite different from that in use in the music of to-day; it is full of quaint and archaic turns of musical speech—formal sequences, little motives that sound to us almost mechanical. It is like an etching of D?rer's, full of detail, each line carefully drawn, and the whole picture instinct with life. Thus its type of beauty differs so materially from that to which we are accustomed that it often fails in its appeal. Only by using our imagination are we able to project ourselves, so to speak, into another milieu, another time, another point of view. And this is the test with which any archaic work of art confronts us. Without imagination in the beholder a picture by Botticelli, for example, is a curiosity rather than a work of art. Its strange allegory, its quaint idea of landscape, its figures with their unusual posing—all these are beautiful or merely curious according as we look at them. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

The repetition at a higher pitch of the main motive in measures 3-4 is highly poignant; and throughout the expression is intensified by the use of rich and often complex harmony, as particularly in the last four measures of all.

Notwithstanding the earnest and impassioned character of this sarabande, its derivation from the dance is clearly revealed in the regularity of the balance of phrases consisting of equal measure groups, which divide up as follows: 2, 2, 4, 4 (double-bar); 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 4. The symmetry is much more precise than in an invention or a fugue.

The form is binary or two-part. Part one, measures 1-12, begins in A-minor and ends in the "relative major," the key of C. Part two, measures 13-28, begins (with the original motive) in C-major, and returns to A-minor.

The sequence of measures 23-24, with measures 21-22, is very beautiful and deserves special notice.

Following the sarabande the reader will observe a more florid version of it, bearing the caption, "Les agr?ents de la m?e Sarabande"—"Ornaments for the same Sarabande." This is an example of the practice, common in Bach's day, of weaving a net-work of grace-notes, trills, and other decorations about a melody, a practice due in part to the natural fondness of all musicians for "effect," and in part to the fact that the instruments of that day were so small and poor that a tone could only be sustained by being struck many times. This custom of ornamenting melodies with all manner of embroidery gave rise to the "theme and variations," a form which we shall study later.

All the other English Suites of Bach contain very beautiful sarabandes; those in the French Suites are less interesting, though the first contains a fine example.