15. Sarabande

The idea of a grave dance always strikes me as something of an oxymoron. Still, the D-minor key signature supports this mood. Handel's Sarabande is a good song for sight reading for me because it is not particularly complicated in its technical aspects. As a result, I spent several days distinctly not memorising but merely reading through while practising. I have always been a bad sight reader and, as a result, always relied primarily on memorisation to aid playing any piece I tackle. Therefore, I've never really understood why people had trouble memorising... until now. If you can sight read a song well, then it's actually easier to just do that than try to commit it to memory. The page gets really seductive whenever there's a hitch in your ability to recall your next move, and you don't even have to try if you can just pick it right off the page! (I first noticed this while learning Berceuse. There was one particular section I could read decently, and it took forever to memorise the notes because I didn't need to try.) I'd never really had that luxury before, since I've been basically bordering on illiteracy as it regards notes and staves. But now I get it. On the fourth straight day of this, I had to put my foot down. Otherwise, I don't think I would have had the song committed to memory even now, eight days after beginning it. 

Here (above) lies a variation on the opening theme. Handel's a contemporary of Bach (they were born in the same year). So the fact that change is reflected in the bass line's becoming more ornate is no surprise. That's pretty typical of the Baroque period. In fact, the bass line is far more agitated throughout the piece, in contrast to the gradual changes in pitch performed in the treble clef. I had some reading trouble with that section straddling the second and third bars in the picture above. I guess the patterns got a little less predictable and it tripped me up.

Here's the location of another snag in my reading. I'm not at all sure what kept on happening because the pattern of the bass line is pretty similar to previous ones. But somehow I remember getting lost at somewhere around the fourth note of the first bar and also at the second note of the second bar (bass clef). It might be the fingering, actually. I think I just kept failing to use the optimal fingering for anticipating the upcoming notes, and the book's indicated fingering was always impossible for me to execute since I was probably already using that finger. I think I kept messing up some of the intervals too. Can't blame it all on J.T.'s fingering choices...

This final section kind of mirrors the second one pictured above, and of course the right hand gave me as much reading trouble as that other! To be fair, it wasn't that I found the passage difficult to play. My reading simply slowed considerably at this point, forcing the pace of my playing to slacken, and letting me realise that reading the score while playing was probably not the best method of performance for me. At least when it comes to this song and/or at my current reading level. I remain forever in awe of persons who use the score while performing a piece at tempo. Maybe on day I'll get there though.

Alan Chan's rendition