06/02/2009 Quotes: CARL ENGEL

To a great many minds, the word ”Jazz” implies frivolous or obscene deportment. Let me ask what the word “sarabande” suggests to you? I have no doubt that to most of you it will mean everything that is diametrically opposed to “jazzing.” When you hear mention of a “sarabande,” you think of Bach’s, of Handel’s slow and stately airs; you think of noble and dignified strains in partitas, sonatas, and operas of the eighteenth century. Yet the sarabande, when it was first danced in Spain, about 1688, was probably far more shocking to behold than is the most shocking jazz to-day.
Atlantic Monthly, 1922