# Sabre dance - Khachaturian



## stephaniejo (May 29, 2016)

Hi

I want to analyze 'Sabre Dance' from Khachaturian. But despite of taking classes on classical music, I don't succeed . Is it me or is it just pretty hard to analyze? I doubt the genre ( romantic / 20th century), but it is part of a suite, so the genre could also be Baroque? I can't find any musical phrases, te dynamics are also very important so i would say it's romantic. It could also be neo-romanticism... 
Can anyone help me with the analysis? 

Thank you very much

Stephanie


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Well, definitely not baroque. The broad-brush characterization "20th century" applies best, I wouldn't call it (late) romantic. For the rest, please wait until someone with more theoretical music knowledge drops in.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I would describe the style of Sabre Dance as being under the umbrella of what you might call "neo-classical", but neo-classical is a very very broad description. It's specifically a very "Soviet Formalist" type of neo-classical and it has a very different sound from the type of neo-classicalism that was formed in France, or the type of neo-classicallism (some call it neo-baroque) that was being written in Germany by composers like Hindemith.

I'm kind of confused about why you can't find any musical phrases though. Can you not hear the melody?


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

The theme has a lot of chromaticism, so I've sometimes thought of it as a hold over from Rimsky-Korsakov's "orentalism." But I don't want to add confusion to the issue.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

I classify it as circus music, but I'm not a musicologist.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

senza sordino said:


> I classify it as circus music, but I'm not a musicologist.


Took me about 35 years to learn it was a piece of classical music by said composer.


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## stephaniejo (May 29, 2016)

Thank you for your answers, I find it hard to discover any musical phrases. This piece has obviously an ternary form(AB, bridge, A and then coda). Does the antecedent phrase end one metre before the glissando (trombone) starts?


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## stephaniejo (May 29, 2016)

@senza sordino ... I always think about Tom and Jerry when I hear it. I like your username a lot btw!


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## Vasks (Dec 9, 2013)

I'm not about to analyze the entire selection, but the first four bars is an intoduction. At letter A, the first phrase is four bars long plus the downbeat of the 5th bar. The rest to the repeat sign is extension. Perhaps because there is no change of harmony from the beginning to the repeat sign it's hard to analyze phrases, but not so if you just study the melody. Khachaturian melodies are easy to follow.


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