Lingering on Beat Two with Händel's Sarabande
The Best Moments
Sarabande from Keyboard Suite in D minor, HWV 437
I'm Händel, and what follows are the best moments of my Sarabande. You'll notice how a tune I wrote for solo harpsichord, around 1703 to 1706, became the sound of the film Barry Lyndon once strings and timpani joined it. On this site my fellow composers and I also teach you to recognize our pieces when they begin, so give the Trainer a go and see.
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A Very Slow Knock at the Door
I open the Sarabande, the fourth movement of a suite in D minor for solo harpsichord, with slow and weighty chords, like someone who has just read a long letter and is in no hurry to answer it. Nothing rushes here, and the harpsichord plucks its strings instead of striking them, so every note sounds like a quiet announcement.
The Melody Wanders Off to Look at the Bookshelf
In the middle I let the tune drift a little, the way a guest leaves the table to look at your books and then slowly comes back. The mood brightens and darkens by turns, but the steady, stately pace never changes, which is how you know I still have everything under control.
Getting Up to Leave, Then Sitting Down Again
I let the whole thing wrap up in about four minutes, which is a fair amount of time to spend being solemn, and I think it is time well spent. Then two variations follow, so the piece gets up to leave, changes its mind and sits down again to tell you the same thing in a new way.
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I hope you enjoyed learning about the best moments of the Sarabande as much as I enjoyed telling you about them. Writing a piece like this one, I never meant it to be flashy, and I think its quiet patience is exactly why people still come back to it. There is still a lot more to discover in the Sarabande. I haven't said much yet about the two variations that follow it, or about the way the film Barry Lyndon gave the music a whole new setting in 1975. The other movements of the suite, from the Prelude to the Gigue, also have their own character, and it's interesting to hear how the Sarabande sits among them. If you'd like to go further, please click on the links provided and keep exploring. Listen once more, slowly, and I think you'll notice something new each time.
Recording: Constantin Stephan (harpsichord), CC BY-SA 4.0