•Debussy •Pour le piano: Sarabande •Background •This work was composed in 1894 by the French composer Debussy. •It is the second of the three movements that form the suite Pour le piano. •In the Baroque period, the sarabande was a slow piece (originally a dance) in triple time, with an emphasis on the second beat of the bar. •The sarabande is Neoclassical: it reflects Debussy’s interest in using earlier musical forms as the basis for composing in a much more modern style. •Rhythm and Metre •The movement id in slow triple metre (3/4), which is typical of the sarabande. •The emphasis on the second beat, shown by the placing of minims in bars 2, 4 and elsewhere, is also characteristic of the sarabande. •Descending patterns of quavers are beamed across the bar lines in the middle section to emphasise phrasing. •Hemiola-like cross rhythms appear in the final bars. •Melody •Balanced phrases (e.g. bars 1-2 and 3-4) reflect the origins of the Sarabande as a dance. •Melodic ideas are often immediately repeated, sometimes with slight variations (such as in the first four bars). •The melody is formed from a combination of stepwise movement and small leaps. •The melody has a fairly restricted range until the final section. •Harmony •Chords are non-functional, i.e. used for their colour rather than for their harmonic function of defining keys. •The harmony is often complex and chromatic. Characteristic features include: -Modal cadences -Parallelism applied to a range of chords -9th and 13th chords -Half-diminished chords -Added 6th chords -Consecutive 5ths -Quartal harmony (chords based on superimposed 4ths) •Tonality •The Sarabande is in Aeolian mode, transposed to start on C#. •The use of modal and quartal harmony leads to unusual cadences, such as the last two chords of the piece. •The tonality is ambiguous, clouded by features such as the use of whole-tone scale in the bass. •Structure •The movement has a rondo (or ternary form). A-B-A1-C-A2-D-B1-CODA •Note that the opening section does not return in its original form. •And further new material appears after its final return, ending with a short coda. •Resources •Debussy uses much of the piano’s range, particularly in the lower register. •Most of the music requires the use of the sustaining pedal, particularly the spread chords (e.g. at the end where the final chord spans five octaves). •Texture •Textures include monophonic passages in bare octaves (such as bars 20-22), but are otherwise homophonic, including: -Six-part homorythmic chords at the start -Parallel 4th chords (quartal harmony) -Parallel 6th and parallel 7th chords -Melody dominated homophony. •

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