Sergei Rachmaninoff
“I am a Russian composer. The land of my birth shaped my temperament and my outlook on the world.”
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
Those close to him ⏳🌊
- TeacherNikolai Zverev
He took the failing schoolboy into his home and, with strict discipline, laid the foundations of a pianist.
- InfluencePyotr Tchaikovsky
A childhood idol and the elder colleague who championed the Bolshoi staging of 'Aleko'; at his death, 'Trio élégiaque' No. 2 was dedicated to him.
- FamilyNatalia Satina
The cousin with whom he shared his childhood, and later his wife; even after emigration she guarded his schedule and his manuscripts.
- FriendshipFeodor Chaliapin
A bass he met at the Mamontov opera company, who in his darkest period took him to Italy and lifted his spirits.
- InfluenceGustav Mahler
Conducting the Piano Concerto No. 3 in New York in 1910, he won the composer's deep respect with his exhaustive rehearsals.
- FriendshipVladimir Horowitz
A younger pianist who made the Piano Concerto No. 3 his own; in the composer's last years the two were close and played together.
I. Child of the estate · 1873–1885 (age 0–12)
(Birth) He was born in April 1873 (March 20, Old Style) on the Semyonovo estate in Novgorod province, in the Russian Empire (today Russia). His father, Vasily, a landowner and former army officer, loved to play the piano; his mother, Lyubov, a general's daughter, had brought several estates as her dowry. His siblings included an elder brother, Vladimir, elder sisters Yelena and Sofia, and a younger brother, Arkady. (Decline) His father spent freely and lost the estates one by one. When even the last of them, Oneg, was sold, the family moved around 1882 to rented rooms in Saint Petersburg, and before long the parents separated. The boy, who had taken his first piano lessons from his mother, entered the preparatory division of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory at the age of nine. (Loss) In 1883 his sister Sofia died of diphtheria, and in 1885 his sister Yelena, on the verge of a debut at the Bolshoi Theatre, died of illness at eighteen. It was Yelena who had first let her brother hear Tchaikovsky's songs. (Bells) His consolation was his maternal grandmother, Sofia Butakova. She would take her grandson to the churches of Novgorod, and the boy carried the sound of their bells and of Orthodox chant in his ears for the rest of his life. The tolling of bells that echoes ceaselessly through his later music reaches back to these years. (Failing) While the household foundered, the boy skipped classes to go skating and even altered his report cards. When he failed every one of his general-subject exams in 1885, his mother sought the advice of her nephew, the pianist Alexander Siloti, a pupil of Liszt. Siloti's answer was Nikolai Zverev, a strict teacher in Moscow.
II. Zverev's house · 1885–1893 (age 12–20)
(Discipline) Zverev took a few gifted boys into his home, feeding and teaching them free of charge. Their days began at the piano before dawn, but on weekends he took them to the theater and to concerts to broaden their horizons. Figures from Moscow's musical world came and went in the house, Tchaikovsky among them, and the boy followed him like an idol. (Break) In 1888 he advanced to the conservatory's senior division, studying counterpoint with Taneyev and harmony with Arensky. The deeper he sank into composition, the more he needed a room of his own; in 1889 he asked for one, quarreled bitterly with Zverev, and left the house. He was taken in by the family of his aunt Varvara Satina. Ivanovka, the estate in Tambov province where he spent summers with his cousins, would become his workshop, and his cousin Natalia would one day become his wife. (Gold medal) In 1891 he finished the piano course a year early, and the following year he wrote the one-act opera 'Aleko' in seventeen days, earning the Great Gold Medal on graduating in composition. The 'Prelude in C-sharp minor', written that same year, soon spread across the world and became his calling card. Yet the publisher paid him little for it, and because Russia stood outside the international copyright convention, he received not a kopeck from foreign editions. (Farewell) When 'Aleko' reached the Bolshoi stage in the spring of 1893, Tchaikovsky applauded heartily from the audience. When Tchaikovsky died that November, the twenty-year-old composer wrote 'Trio élégiaque' No. 2 (Op.9), following exactly the form of the piano trio Tchaikovsky himself had written in memory of Nikolai Rubinstein.
It made the name of a nineteen-year-old fresh from the conservatory known around the world, yet, lacking copyright protection, it earned him almost nothing.
- At the opening, three notes in the piano's lowest register (A–G♯–C♯) come crashing down at the loudest dynamic (fff). The whole piece grows from these three notes, so it is worth remembering those first three blows.
- The middle section shifts to 'agitato (agitated)', where rapid triplets (one beat split into three) whirl. Listen for the contrast with the heavy chords on either side.
- When the first theme returns, the chords pile up so thickly that the score expands to four staves (a four-stave system), sounding like great tolling bells. The composer, however, gave the piece no programmatic title.
- The close fades away very softly. Pianists differ widely in the weight of the first blow and the stillness of the ending, which makes comparative listening a pleasure.
III. The long silence · 1894–1901 (age 21–28)
(Failure) In March 1897 his Symphony No. 1 was premiered in Saint Petersburg. The conductor, Alexander Glazunov, had not rehearsed enough, and his wife Natalia later recalled that Glazunov had been drunk. The performance was a shambles. The composer César Cui savaged the work as the sort of piece a prize student at a conservatory in hell might write. He is said to have slipped out of the hall during the performance and sat on the stairs. (Stagnation) For nearly three years afterward he could barely compose. He made his living as assistant conductor of Savva Mamontov's private opera company. There he met the young bass Feodor Chaliapin, and together they delved into Mussorgsky's opera scores; the two became lifelong friends. In January 1900 he and Chaliapin visited Tolstoy, but the old writer, he recalled, heard his song and remarked, in effect, who needs music like this? (Treatment) At the urging of the Satin family, he spent several months from early 1900 seeing the physician Nikolai Dahl. Dahl is said to have repeated, through hypnosis and conversation, the suggestion that he would write a concerto and that the work would flow with ease. That summer, at Chaliapin's invitation, he stayed in Italy and regained his strength, and the concerto's second and third movements were finished first. (Comeback) In November 1901 in Moscow the complete Piano Concerto No. 2 was premiered, with the composer as soloist and Siloti conducting. The work was dedicated to Dahl. Emerging after four years of silence, it was his own voice rising above the wound of failure, and its bell-like opening chords recall the church bells he had heard as a child.
The work that broke nearly four years of silence after the failure of the Symphony No. 1, dedicated to Nikolai Dahl, the physician who set him back on his feet.
- The piano alone sounds a soft chord eight times, building steadily louder. Between the chords a low F intrudes each time, like bells approaching from afar.
- It is the strings that then sing the theme, while the piano supports them with broken chords (arpeggios) that roll the harmony out note by note. Here the soloist briefly yields the leading role.
- In the second movement, over the piano's gentle arpeggios, the flute and then the clarinet sing a long melody. The 1975 pop song 'All by Myself' borrowed this tune.
- The lyrical second theme of the third movement is sung first by oboe and violas, then taken up by the piano. The climax comes at the end, when this theme rings out again in full orchestra.
IV. Summers at Ivanovka · 1902–1917 (age 29–44)
(Marriage) In the spring of 1902 he married his cousin Natalia Satina. A marriage between cousins required the tsar's permission, and the modest ceremony took place in a Moscow army barracks church. Natalia, who had studied piano at the conservatory, became the companion who managed his schedule and his manuscripts. Their elder daughter, Irina, was born in 1903, and their second, Tatiana, in 1907. (Conducting) From 1904 he spent two seasons as a conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre, staging Rimsky-Korsakov's 'Pan Voyevoda' and his own operas. When the unrest of the 1905 Revolution reached the theater itself, he stepped down, and in 1906 he moved with his family to Dresden, Germany, to devote himself to composition. There he wrote the Symphony No. 2 and the symphonic poem 'Isle of the Dead', inspired by a black-and-white reproduction of Böcklin's painting. (America) In 1909 he wrote the Piano Concerto No. 3 for his first American tour, limbering up his hands on a silent practice keyboard during the Atlantic crossing. The following January in New York, Gustav Mahler conducted. Mahler kept rehearsing past the scheduled time until the accompaniment satisfied him, and the composer spoke of this for years with admiration. (Chant) Every summer at Ivanovka he looked after the farm himself and drove his own car. In 1915, in the midst of the First World War, he wrote the unaccompanied choral work 'All-Night Vigil', based on old Orthodox chant. That same year his conservatory classmate Scriabin and his teacher Taneyev died in quick succession. He gave a memorial tour of Scriabin's works; it was the first tour on which he, who until then had played mostly his own music, filled the program with another composer's work.
Written at Ivanovka for his first American tour, it was also performed in New York under Mahler's baton.
- At the opening, over a low orchestral accompaniment, the piano sings a simple melody with both hands doubling the same notes an octave (eight notes) apart. The composer said the melody was not borrowed from folk song or chant but simply wrote itself.
- The first-movement cadenza (the passage where the soloist alone displays their skill) exists in two versions. Whether a pianist chooses the 'ossia (alternative)' version, which storms through thick chords, or the lighter original is a point of comparison. The composer himself recorded the lighter one.
- Dense with notes and full of wide stretches for the hands, it is counted among the most difficult concertos. When Horowitz made the piece his own, the composer said he had swallowed it whole.
- Midway through the third movement, the theme of the first movement reappears. Follow how that simple opening melody returns transformed at the end, and the whole work is heard as a single arc.
Written in the midst of war, it returns to the Orthodox chants he had heard with his grandmother as a child, and he asked that one of its pieces be sung at his own funeral.
- An unaccompanied chorus, sung by voices alone without instruments. Ten of its fifteen pieces are based on old Orthodox melodies such as znamenny chant.
- In No. 5, 'Nunc dimittis,' the chorus sways in repetition above a tenor solo, until at the end the basses step down like a staircase, note by note (descending), to a very low B♭. Finding singers who can reach this note is considered the crux of any performance.
- No. 2, 'Bless the Lord, O my soul,' is based on a Greek chant, and an alto solo floats above the chorus's gentle hum.
- The chant melody of No. 9, 'Blessed art thou, O Lord,' reappears 25 years later in his last work, 'Symphonic Dances.' Remember this piece and you will recognize that moment.
V. The émigré pianist · 1917–1931 (age 44–58)
(Escape) After the 1917 Revolution, Ivanovka was confiscated by the peasants. That December, an invitation to give a concert in Stockholm became his way out, and he left Russia with his wife and two daughters by way of Finland. Their luggage was no more than a few small bags and a handful of scores, and he never set foot on his native soil again. (Livelihood) He was forty-five when he reached New York in November 1918. The piano was how he would feed his family. Having played mostly his own works, he learned a new repertoire, appeared on stage dozens of times a season, and, allied with Steinway and Victor Records, established himself as the foremost pianist of his day. As his income grew, he quietly helped struggling émigrés without revealing his name. (Transcriptions) For encores he liked to play arrangements he had crafted himself. Bach's Partita No. 3 for solo violin, Schubert's song 'Wohin?', the Scherzo from Mendelssohn's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', Mussorgsky's 'Hopak', Rimsky-Korsakov's 'Flight of the Bumblebee' and the Minuet from Bizet's 'L'Arlésienne' all became piano pieces in his hands. There is also his arrangement of his friend Kreisler's 'Liebesleid'. (Family) His eldest daughter Irina married Prince Volkonsky in 1924 but lost her husband the following year and was left with an infant daughter. In 1925 he founded a publishing house in Paris, naming it 'TAIR' from the first letters of his two daughters' names, and published scores by émigré composers such as his friend Medtner. (Stagnation) Yet his own composing nearly stopped. He confessed that in losing his homeland he had also lost the desire to write. His Piano Concerto No. 4, dedicated to Medtner in 1926, met a cold reception, and the 'Variations on a Theme of Corelli' followed in 1931.
VI. Senar and the last dance · 1931–1943 (age 58–70)
(Rupture) In 1931, after he put his name to an open letter criticizing the Soviet regime, his music was for a time officially shunned in the Soviet Union. The distance from his homeland grew wider still. (Senar) Around the same time he built a villa at Hertenstein on the shore of Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. He called it 'Senar,' from the first letters of Sergei and Natalia with the R of Rachmaninoff added. Here, where he tended roses and drove a motorboat, he wrote the 'Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini' in the summer of 1934 and the Symphony No. 3 in 1936. Paganini's Caprice No. 24 was a theme Liszt and Brahms had also varied, and he wove the Dies irae chant into it. (Farewell) When war came to Europe in 1939, he left Senar and returned to America. The following summer, on Long Island, he completed his last work, 'Symphonic Dances.' Hidden in it are the theme of his failed Symphony No. 1 and a chant from the 'All-Night Vigil,' and at the end of the score he wrote, “I thank thee, Lord.” Around this time he grew close to Horowitz, the young pianist he had met in New York in 1928, and the two often played together on two pianos at each other's homes. (The end) In 1942 he moved to Beverly Hills, California, and in February 1943 he became an American citizen. That same month he collapsed after a concert in Knoxville, his last; melanoma had already spread. He died on March 28, four days before his seventieth birthday. He had wished to be buried at Senar, but because of the war he was laid to rest at Kensico Cemetery outside New York. Natalia died in 1951, and his daughters Tatiana and Irina in 1961 and 1969.
Written in a Swiss summer at Senar, it later led him to propose to the choreographer Fokine a ballet scenario on the legend of Paganini, who sold his soul to the devil.
- Variation 1 comes before the theme. Only after the orchestra taps out the bare skeleton of the theme do the violins give us Paganini's theme in full.
- In Variation 7, the piano slowly plays the medieval chant 'Dies irae (Day of Wrath),' a symbol of death, while the orchestra lets the Paganini theme flow beneath it. Listen for the moment the two melodies overlap.
- The most famous, Variation 18, takes the theme turned upside down (inversion), slows and stretches it, and sings it in D♭ major. He is said to have joked that this variation was for his manager.
- At the end, after a colossal climax, the piano lightly taps two notes and it is over. Many say it sounds like a playful wink.
A last work written in the year he could return neither to his homeland nor to Senar, it quietly summons back his failed first symphony and the chants of his youth.
- In the middle of movement 1, an alto saxophone takes a lonely solo. It is a rare instrument in his orchestral writing, which makes its timbre stand out all the more.
- Near the end of movement 1, the strings gently recast the opening theme of Symphony No. 1 in a major key. At the 1941 premiere the score of that symphony had been lost, so almost no one noticed.
- Movement 2 is a dark waltz opened by brass fitted with mutes (stoppers that soften the sound). He first meant to give the three movements the titles 'Noon,' 'Twilight' and 'Midnight.'
- In movement 3, the 'Dies irae' and the chant from No. 9 of the 'All-Night Vigil' face off, and the chant prevails. The score bears the word 'Alliluya,' and conductors differ on whether to let the final tam-tam (a large gong) ring on or to cut it short.
Lesser-known stories
The Prelude in C♯ minor that made him famous worldwide in fact wore him out. Many accounts record that when audiences shouted for it at every encore, he grew sick of it and called it simply 'It.' Add the fact that, with no copyright protection, it earned him nothing, and the piece was both his glory and his burden. The story of Nikolai Dahl's hypnotherapy rests mostly on Riesemann's 'Rachmaninoff's Recollections,' published in 1934. Yet he complained that the book was full of things he had never said. So in their 1956 biography, Bertensson and Leyda had to check its contents point by point against his letters and the memories of his sister-in-law Sophia Satina. Symphony No. 1 was never performed again after its failed premiere, and he left the score behind in Russia. After his death, the orchestral parts were found in the library of the Leningrad Conservatory, and a full score reconstructed from them was performed in Moscow in 1945. The quotation hidden in 'Symphonic Dances' could only be heard, in effect, after this restoration. Though he had criticized the Soviet regime, when the German-Soviet war broke out in 1941 he sent his concert proceeds to Russian war relief, donating directly to the Soviet side with a note saying this was one Russian's contribution to the struggle of the Russian people. It is a chapter less often mentioned, overshadowed by his image as an anti-communist émigré.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Prelude
(The word) Jeonjugok (前奏曲) means a piece played (奏) before (前). The Western name, prelude, likewise comes from the Latin praeludere, to play beforehand. (In music) Originally it was a short piece played before a larger work or a service to set the mood. Bach followed his preludes with fugues, and from Chopin on, the prelude became an independent miniature with nothing coming after it. Rachmaninoff, like Chopin, wrote 24 preludes, moving through every key one by one. The warm-up before the main exercise in gym class resembles the prelude's original purpose, but after Chopin the warm-up alone became a whole game. (Elsewhere) In everyday speech it means a sign of some great event to come, as in 'the prelude to tragedy.'
Concerto
(The word) Hyeopjugok (協奏曲) means a piece played (奏) together (協). The Latin root of the Western name concerto, concertare, also means to contend, so the character of this music, in which soloist and orchestra trade phrases as if in contest, is already present in its name. (In music) A piece in which a single solo instrument, such as piano or violin, plays together with an orchestra. It usually has three movements: fast–slow–fast. Picture a class recital where one student steps forward to sing a solo while the whole class backs them up in chorus, until at certain moments the whole class becomes the star.
Cadenza
(The word) The Italian cadenza comes from the Latin cadere, 'to fall,' and referred to the close (cadence) where a piece settles toward its end. It took this name because it was originally the spot just before that close where the soloist added ornaments. (In music) The passage in a concerto where the orchestra stops and the soloist alone displays dazzling technique. It was once improvised, but by Rachmaninoff's time composers wrote it out in the score themselves. It is like the moment at basketball halftime when everyone clears the floor and a single player comes out to show off dunks.
Variations
(The word) Byeonjugok (變奏曲) means a piece played (奏) with changes (變). (In music) A piece that first presents a short theme, then plays it again several times, changing its tempo·rhythm·harmony·mood. The skeleton of the theme remains, so the listener recognizes the same melody even as its appearance changes. It is like ramen: cook it one day with cheese and another with kimchi, and it is still ramen. Rachmaninoff's 'Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini' spins twenty-four variations from a single theme. (Elsewhere) In biology, the same English word variation refers to differences among individuals within a species.
Symphonic poem
(The word) Gyohyangsi (交響詩) joins gyohyang ('sounding together'), a piece in which the orchestra sounds as one, with si (詩), poem: an orchestral work that holds a story or a scene the way a poem does. (In music) A one-movement orchestral work based on an outside story, such as a painting·poem·novel·legend. Liszt coined the name and was the first to use it. Rachmaninoff's 'The Isle of the Dead' paints in sound the scene in Böcklin's painting where a rowboat carrying a coffin approaches a rocky island. Just as you might write a story about a picture you saw in art class, he looked at a painting and made up a story in sound.
Unaccompanied chorus
(The word) It is often called a cappella, Italian for 'in the manner of the chapel (cappella).' The name comes from the old chapels where people sang with voices alone, without instruments. (In music) A chorus sung by human voices alone, without accompaniment from instruments such as piano or orchestra. The Russian Orthodox Church uses no instruments in its services, so Rachmaninoff's 'All-Night Vigil' creates, with voices alone, even an organ-like deep resonance and bell-like effects. If you have ever sung in harmony with friends without accompaniment in music class, you will have felt that you must listen to one another more closely to stay in tune; that is exactly the principle.
Dies irae
(The word) The Latin Dies irae means 'day of wrath,' the day of judgment at the end of the world. (In music) The opening of a medieval Gregorian chant sung at the Catholic funeral Mass (Requiem). Its few short descending notes became so famous that composers wishing to evoke death loved to quote them, as in Berlioz's 'Symphonie fantastique' and Liszt's 'Totentanz.' Rachmaninoff worked the melody into many of his works, almost obsessively. Just as in a film the same short cue plays whenever the villain appears, so that it alone tells you who is coming, these few notes are a signal that brings 'death' to mind the moment you hear them.
Broken chord (arpeggio)
(Meaning) The word arpeggio comes from the Italian for harp (arpa). It means a way of playing in which the strings are plucked one after another, as on a harp. (In music) A way of playing in which the notes that make up a chord are not pressed down all at once but unfolded one at a time, so that they flow. Even the same chord takes on a rippling, wave-like motion. In Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, the piano upholds the orchestra's melody with these broken chords. Instead of strumming all six strings of a guitar at once, pluck them one by one from the lowest string up, and you have a broken chord.