Sarabande 1

Composer Players Instrument Notation Period
Brahms, Johannes (1833-1897) solo guitar standard Romantic

There are very few guitar transcriptions of Brahms' music because he used the full range of the piano and wrote in complex harmonies that often cannot be reduced reasonably to the guitar's six strings. This short Sarabande is an exception and is comparatively easy to play on the guitar. I have been undecided about which of two versions to offer here, however. One uses 'drop D' tuning for the sole purpose of obtaining the correct chord inversion in bar 11. The second beat is a Neapolitan Sixth chord (a triad on the flatted second scale degree) in first inversion. Preserving this inversion is important, but the tuning makes other sections more difficult. I have included both versions with this file so you may play the one that you prefer. [2 pages, 74KB]

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