The Sarabande by George Frideric Handel is a baroque piece of music. It is the third of four dances from his fourth suite in D minor, Händel-Werke-Verzeichnis (HWV) 437, which was probably composed around 1705/07 during his time in Hamburg. It was published in printed form in London in 1733 by the music publisher John Walsh. The Sarabande is composed for a solo harpsichord. The piece is very well known and is often played. There are arrangements for orchestra and various individual instruments. Stanley Kubrick used a dark orchestral version by Leonard Rosenman as a kind of funeral music for his 1975 film Barry Lyndon. The Sarabande is a popular piece among metal and rock musicians and has been arranged for electric guitar in many ways.

Musical structure and background

The piece has a simple structure, the 16-bar theme is first introduced and repeated, then varied twice with one repeat each time. It is set in the key of D minor, the bar consists of slow and solemn ³/₂. It therefore consists of three half notes. An important stylistic and rhythmic element of the sarabande is the dotting of the second note in ³/₂ time, which is created by a quarter rest.

Handel uses cadenzas in this piece that are referred to in musicology as Almira cadenzas (after the musicologist Terence Best). Almira, Queen of Castile is Handel's first opera, premiered in Hamburg in 1705, in which the courtly dance Sarabande contained therein has very similar harmonies and tone sequences to the Sarabande from HWV 437. These cadenzas also appear in other works.

With its ³/₂ time signature, the sarabande, like the other comparable pieces, belongs to the older type, written before 1712. Handel set later sarabandes in ³/₄ time; the dance movement therefore became faster. According to musicologist Siegbert Rampe, however, the piece does not sound like a dance piece, but more like an aria in the style of a sarabande. It is assumed in music research that Handel's harpsichord suites were probably never intended for publication, as his subject was opera staged from a commercial point of view. Perhaps these suites, and thus also this sarabande, were initially intended for him to practise, teach or perform privately, perhaps also in improvised variations, as a guide for friends and his three pupils, daughters of King George II. Handel's Sarabandes from the period up to 1710 may have been influenced by the keyboard suites of Johann Jakob Froberger. He knew Froberger's pieces through Johann Philipp Krieger, who was court music director in Weißenfels. Handel's father was Duke Johann Adolph I's personal physician there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Frideric_Handel