My expressive visual imagination on music is something I usually keep inside my head while playing or listening to music. This piece was an attempt to make that imagination real and create a visual interpretation of one of my favorite pieces for solo violin. I like to think of music in general as being motion in the dimension of time. Music is also a spatial art and that calls for Choreography.

Sarabanda being the the movement of my choice for this piece is a very mysterious dance. Originally from 16th century Spanish culture and Latin America it is a triple meter dance with emphasis on the 2nd beat. Around 1583 it was thought to be too erotic and controversial and therefore banned for some time in Spain. The Inquisition punished the singing and dancing of Sarabandas with two hundred lashes of the whip, with expulsion from the kingdom for women, and six years of servitude on galleys for men. It seems to have been somewhat like a forbidden fruit. I don’t think that in my imagery I was very focused on the erotic part but more on the forbidden fruit take on the passionate erotic nature. This dance is loaded with expression already only within the structure and the emphasis on the 2nd beat. Then J. S. Bach adds on to that and I dive into this pool of emotional material and express my visual imagination through a clump of clay.

As a performing musician I play a lot of early music and it is one of my favorite things to do. In the Baroque area music had a purpose. Music and art was to deliver a message. I find this very interesting to keep in mind while working on Fantasy on Sarabanda because it kind of reassures me that it is worthwhile to dig up a message or a story within the music. If all music from this time was a way of communication, and since music in general is a nonverbal communication like dance or pantomime, it really made sense to me to use these art forms, visual choreography and music, together while interpreting Bach´s work.

J. S. Bach is never directly in his music, always safely outside somewhere, pulling the stops. The emotions are therefore generalized and not personal. This is makes me feel like Bach´s personal detachment creates freedom and in some way a permission to find your own interpretation and take it to different hights.