Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun a 16th century Spanish dance; the zarabanda
  • noun a stately Baroque dance in slow triple time
  • noun the music for this dance

Etymologies

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Examples

  • We are about to begin the dancing, and you must allow me to partner you for the sarabande.

    Exit the Actress Priya Parmar 2011

  • We are about to begin the dancing, and you must allow me to partner you for the sarabande.

    Exit the Actress Priya Parmar 2011

  • Returning to her strengths, Uchida offered the sarabande from Bach's French Suite in G as an encore, its simple outlines traced with hushed reverence, nothing more than a vaporous shimmer.

    Mitsuko Uchida at the Music Center at Strathmore 2010

  • With exquisite balance in the sarabande, a sustained ecstatic melancholy in the andante religioso, and light but earthy folkiness in the finale, this was a compelling account of Grieg's evocative retro masterpiece.

    Norwegian CO 2010

  • Here, a majestic sarabande was worked out, there, a solemn chaconne, elsewhere a subtle musette or a stormy bourrée.

    Archive 2009-03-01 Eric Dickens 2009

  • The third dance, the sarabande, was a slow lyrical piece, heartbreaking in its simplicity.

    Plain Language Barbara Wright 2007

  • The third dance, the sarabande, was a slow lyrical piece, heartbreaking in its simplicity.

    Plain Language Barbara Wright 2007

  • The third dance, the sarabande, was a slow lyrical piece, heartbreaking in its simplicity.

    Plain Language Barbara Wright 2007

  • The third dance, the sarabande, was a slow lyrical piece, heartbreaking in its simplicity.

    Plain Language Barbara Wright 2007

  • To begin with, he ran through the sarabande in his mind, his left hand twitching the fingering behind him, the muscles of his bowing arm tensing and relaxing rhythmically.

    Fear Itself Jonathan Nasaw 2003

Comments

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  • Usage on chaconne. Also... "In a treatise from the late sixteenth century condemning public entertainments, Juan de Mariana considered the sarabande 'so lascivious in its words, so ugly in its movements, that it is enough to inflame even very honest people.' In the 1590s in Spain, a public performance of the sarabande was punishable by two hundred lashes. By 1606, however, it had been sufficiently tempered to be included in books of guitar music, and by 1610 the sarabande was a dance craze throughout Europe."

    —Glenn Kurtz, Practicing: A Musician's Return to Music (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), 114–115

    November 3, 2008

  • And today it would be the highlight of a reality TV program. ;->

    March 19, 2009

  • We should be so lucky.

    March 19, 2009