Mr Sabredance: Aram Khachaturian

Aram Khachaturian is remembered as one of the 20th century’s greatest composers, and in 2023, the world marked the 120th anniversary of his birth. Best known for the explosive popularity of “Sabre Dance” from his ballet “Gayane,” Khachaturian earned a nickname that would follow him for the rest of his life, and long after it: Mr. Saberdance. 

Khachaturian’s body of work extended far beyond his most famous piece. Over the course of his career, he composed three ballets, three symphonies, six concertos, and a wealth of music for film and theatre, alongside the score for his country’s 1944 national anthem. According to UNESCO, he remains one of the five most performed composers in history, a staggering distinction shared with only a handful of names. “Sabre Dance” alone is performed somewhere in the world roughly every ten minutes, a piece of music so relentlessly popular it has embedded itself permanently into global culture. 

Nowhere was that popularity more explosive than in the United States. In 1948, “Sabre Dance” became a genuine jukebox sensation, so ubiquitous that Newsweek proposed 1948 be remembered as “the year of Khachaturian” in America. That year, three separate recordings of the piece reached number one on Billboard’s classical music charts and landed on the annual bestseller list. A Chicago Symphony Orchestra recording of the piece became the orchestra’s first release ever to sell over a million copies, an extraordinary achievement for a piece of classical music in postwar America. 

Khachaturian’s admirers extended to the very top of world power. Joseph Stalin was said to be particularly fond of the piece, composed during the war, reportedly turning to it whenever he needed cheering up, a striking detail given the turbulent and often dangerous relationship between Soviet artists and the state during that era. 

Decades on, Khachaturian’s music shows no sign of fading. His compositions continue to be heard in concert halls and restaurants, ballets and operas, films, television and even cartoons, a rare feat of cultural staying power matched by very few composers of any era. 

But behind the global fame lay a long and eventful life, marked by triumph, hardship and resilience. Khachaturian lived through two world wars and emerged from both, building a career and a body of friendships that reached far beyond music. Over the decades, he crossed paths with some of the most iconic figures of the 20th century, including Charlie Chaplin, the Pope, and Ernest Hemingway. 

This is the story of Aram Khachaturian: a composer whose music transcended borders, ideologies and generations, and whose most famous four minutes of music continue to captivate the world, more than a century after his birth.