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Thursday, April 14, 2005

Suite No. 4 in d minor, Sarabande - HANDEL

This Sarabande is a parallel, symetric period of sixteen bars in the key of d with a half cadence at the end of 8 bars and a PAC to conclude. It is followed by two ornamental variations of the same length. Each period is played twice, and it goes quite slowly. The first variation elaborates more on the melodic gestures both in the bass and upper voices. The second variation has a running bass with the exact chord structure as the beginning (only thinned in voices) on top. It is quite short and simple, and I have little else more to say about it as the cadences and general chord structure remain the same throughout. The first variation takes the three quarters running down in the bass to the other voices and adds trills (at least this performance did) whereas the block chords of the original are better preserved in the second variation.

1 comment:

Elizabeth said...

Thanks for the short but precise info. I have an adult student working on this piece. He was searching the web and found that he was missing the middle part of the piece (Variation #1 was not in his book). I was skeptical and thought there was more to this piece and didn't want him to miss out on it if there was. Thanks for letting me know we've got it all now!