Dance rhythms in J. S. Bach's keyboard works

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  • J.s.バッハの鍵盤曲における舞踏リズム : サラバンド
  • J S バッハ ノ ケンバンキョク ニ オケル ブトウ リズム サラバンド

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Abstract

The sarabande originated in Latin America and Spain in the 16th century. It was a colorful and exotic dance accompanied with singing and instruments. At the beginning of the 17th century it was introduced into Italy as a repertory of the Spanish five-course guitar. It was a singing dance of rapid tempo with an ostinato harmonic framework, and called zarabanda spagnola. Around 1620 a new type of sarabande called zarabanda francese appeared in Italy. It was a non-ostinato and non-texted dance with a sectional structure. In the 1630s the rhythm of the zarabanda francese separated into a fast type and a slow type. The French Court refined the sarabande. The extant choreographies reveal that the dance was performed calmly, seriously and orderly with balanced and sometimes tender movements. The rhythmic figure of the slow type was generally favourd, but also several other types, both slow and fast types, existed. Although earlier German sarabandes seem to be the faster types, most late 17th and 18th century sarabandes were performed slowly and gravely. Johann Sebastian Bach composed more sarabandes than any other types of dance music. For more than thirty years he tried a wide variety of sarabandes. He wrote stately sarabandes, lyrical sarabandes, rhapsodic sarabandes and sarabandes in the style of the French overture. The freedom and possibilities in composing sarabandes must have intrigued Bach to meet such challeges. The most remarkable feature of Bach's sarabandes seem to be the complexity of the rhythm and harmony. Bach elaborated extensively upon the basic sarabande rhythms. He embellished his works with both French and Italian ornamentations. In this paper, the writer tried to make a rhythmic and harmonic reduction to reveal the simple version. The method of this reduction is for distinguishing ornamental tones from non-ornamental ones, and also essential dissonances from non-essential ones. As a result of this study, it becomes clear that Bach's keyboard sarabandes represent the ultimate examples of dance stylization.

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