Lingering on Beat Two with Händel's Sarabande
The Backstory
Sarabande from Keyboard Suite in D minor, HWV 437
Welcome, I'm Händel, and here I tell you the backstory of my Sarabande. You'll find out how a slow dance of only about four minutes, which I wrote in my youth and followed with two variations, carries so much quiet weight. Here on this site my fellow composers and I also show you how to recognize our pieces the moment they begin, so why not test yourself in the Trainer ?
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A Young Man With Two Jobs
When I joined the orchestra of the Hamburg Oper am Gänsemarkt in 1703, I was a young man who played both the violin and the harpsichord. That meant I spent my evenings in an opera pit, surrounded by singers, stage drama and a great many people with opinions. It was a very good school for someone who wanted to learn how to make music speak. I mention it because the Sarabande may well come from this period of my life.Two Operas and a Quiet Piece
In 1705 my first two operas, Almira and Nero, were produced in Hamburg, so those years were anything but calm. Yet the piece I want to talk about is the opposite of a big stage show. It was written for one harpsichord and one player, and it asks the listener to lean in rather than sit back. I find it lovely that a busy young composer could also write something so still.Where Exactly Was I?
I'll be honest with you: nobody knows the exact date or place where I wrote the Sarabande. The best anyone can say is that it dates from about 1703 to 1706. Nobody has found a reliable record of the first time anyone played it, either, so its debut is a small mystery. I think a piece this unhurried suits a bit of mystery.The Fourth Seat at a Five-Seat Table
The Sarabande is not a piece that stands alone, even though many people meet it that way. It is the fourth movement of a suite in D minor, and the others are the Prelude, the Allemande, the Courante and the Gigue. Think of a suite as a small evening with five courses, where each one has its own pace and its own mood. The Sarabande is the slow, thoughtful course, right before the lively Gigue comes in to finish things off.Off to Italy
In 1706 I left Germany for Italy, where I worked in Florence and in Rome. People still disagree about who invited me there, and the names that come up are two members of the Medici family, Ferdinando and Gian Gastone. What I can say for sure is that the trip opened my ears to a whole new world of melody. The Sarabande may belong to the years just before that journey, when my style was still taking shape.The Tune Comes Back Dressed Differently
After the Sarabande itself, I added two variations on it. In each one the same tune returns, but with a different kind of movement around it, so you hear familiar ground from new angles. The Sarabande lasts about four minutes. That's short enough for a coffee break, though the music will probably make you forget about the coffee.The Publisher Does Some Rearranging
The suite reached print in 1733 under the title Suite de pièces, Volume 2, No. 4. By then I had been living in London for over twenty years, and that same year I started my third opera company with John Rich at Covent Garden. Funnily enough, the Prelude was not in John Walsh's first edition of the suite, and it was taken in from another keyboard suite, HWV 428. So the suite you hear today has been put together a little differently from the first printing.A Film Director Knocks, Two Centuries Later
In 1975, Leonard Rosenman made an orchestral arrangement of my Sarabande for Stanley Kubrick's film Barry Lyndon. The film premiered in London on 11 December 1975, and my music has been tied to it ever since. I want to be clear that I did not write it for the film, since it was already a harpsichord piece from around 1703 to 1706. Still, I can't complain about a tune that gets a second career more than two hundred years after it was written.Strings, Drums and a Golden Statue
The grand sound you hear in the film is not my own scoring, because the strings, timpani and continuo come from Rosenman's arrangement. They give the melody a heavier, more solemn weight than a single harpsichord can. The Sarabande is now the piece people think of first when they think of Barry Lyndon. Rosenman won an Academy Award at the 48th Academy Awards for his scoring of the film, and I'm glad my old tune was part of that.Still Turning Up Everywhere
Since then the Sarabande has kept appearing in unexpected places. A John Altman arrangement was used in a Levi's commercial called Odyssey in 2002, and the piece was heard in the series Victoria in 2017. The Sarabande and both of its variations are also used in every episode of Modern Life is Goodish. For a piece that began as a quiet movement for one harpsichord, I think that's a long and happy journey.---
Looking back, I find it moving that a piece I wrote as a young man, somewhere between 1703 and 1706, has travelled so far from the harpsichord it was written for. Nobody knows exactly when or where I put the last notes on the page, and I have made my peace with that. What matters to me is that the music still has something quiet and honest to say. Did you enjoy learning about the backstory of Sarabande? I hope it gave you a small window into those busy years in Hamburg, and into the stillness I found in the middle of them. There is still more to discover about Sarabande, from the two variations that follow it to the way people have borrowed it for the screen. If you're curious, I invite you to click on the links provided and keep exploring. And the next time you hear those slow, weighty chords, I hope you will feel as if you have met an old friend.