Nineteenth-Century Music? The Case of Rachmaninov

Nineteenth-Century Music? The Case of RachmaninovAuthor(s): Charles FiskReviewed work(s):Source: 19th-Century Music, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Spring 2008), pp. 245-265Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/ncm.2008.31.3.245 .Accessed: 05/07/2012 07:27

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245

CHARLESFISKThe Case ofRachmaninov

19th-Century Music, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 245–65. ISSN: 0148-2076, electronic ISSN 1533-8606. © 2008 by the Regents of theUniversity of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce articlecontent through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions Web site, at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/ncm.2008.31.3.245.

I wish to thank Janet Schmalfeldt and two anonymousreaders for their helpful suggestions about this article.

CHARLES FISK

IHaving crowned the climax of the opening

section in the first of the Symphonic Dances(ex. 1), the descending C-minor triadic figuresnow fade away—but not completely. Theirsparks kindle a new, slowly rippling figure,rallentando, also triadic and at first unaccom-panied. Each of its ripples brings an upwardchromatic shift to one of the triad’s constitu-ent pitches, until another voice begins to echoand then blend in with the same figure, first ata third, then at a fifth below. From this back-ground, which palpably retains a memory ofthe earlier music by transforming it into anaccompanimental figure, a new melody emergesin C� minor, lento and molto espressivo (m.99). Like the brisk, vigorous melody of the pre-vious section (see ex. 4b, mm. 16–21), this con-trasting melody begins with a triadic motive,at first rising instead of falling as did the firstmotive, but now introducing an undulating,

gradually sinking melodic line in which thedescending triadic figure twice recurs quietlybut prominently. This new theme comprisesthree long phrases of seven, six, and nine mea-sures in an aa’b configuration that resembles insome ways a modified bar, and in others anexpanded sentence form. The second of thesephrases begins at m. 106 by echoing the triadic^1–^3–^5 opening of the first phrase with a triad inthe next higher position, ^3–^5–^8. The third, longerphrase (mm. 112–29, not shown) begins stillhigher, by rising from that upper tonic pitch tothe scale’s third degree. Through this triadi-cally rising succession of phrase beginnings thatinvert the succession of falling triads in thefirst section’s melodic climax, Rachmaninovprovides the scaffolding for an extraordinarilysustained melodic line. Both the harmonicidiom and the rhythmic disposition of this newtheme play a role in spinning it out, allowing itto hover with the almost Debussyean indefi-niteness of a mood that never suggests crystal-lization into a discretely specific thought or acompletely lyrical utterance. While primarilydiatonic, the harmony of this theme is moremodal than tonal and hence more reflective

Nineteenth-Century Music?The Case of Rachmaninov

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Example 1: Rachmaninov, Symphonic Dances, op. 45, movt. I, mm. 79–109.

247

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than dynamic in feeling. The subtle irregular-ity of its accentual pattern, obscuring its metri-cal organization, only enhances this aura ofquiet reflection. Not only in the way it derivesitself from the earlier music and emerges againstthe background of that music’s flickering em-bers, but also in its own quiet stillness andopen-endedness, this music conveys an unmis-takable nostalgia, as if it were being overheardor remembered rather than sung for the firsttime. The persistence of the ostinato, the resi-due of the preceding music, bathes this themein a half-light, casting it into a dream world.

IIUnusually scored at first for alto saxophone,

the new theme now comes a second time, richlyscored for strings. Although it is far less chro-matic than much of his other music, manywould characterize this theme in its fuller or-chestration as prototypical Rachmaninov. Com-posed in 1940, when the composer was alreadysixty-seven, it can be taken as a final exemplifi-cation of his opulent, traditionalist, and un-abashedly emotional musical language. Oftendisdained by serious musicians on account ofits conservatism, and even with special vehe-

Example 1 (continued)

248

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mence because of both its remarkable fluencyand its popularity, this purportedly old-fash-ioned and, by Rachmaninov’s own admission,anti-modernist music came to be regarded as anexemplar of unsophisticated, even philistinemusical taste. In America and Western Europe,a commonly held critical view of Rachmaninovstill persists today: that he was fundamentallya blinkered nineteenth-century composer, aholdover from the past, who was able to achievespectacular success far and wide with audi-ences who shared his reluctance to advancemusically into the twentieth century. For cul-tural historian Orlando Figes, Rachmaninov’smusic was not merely old-fashioned but“trapped [my emphasis] in the late Romanticmode of the nineteenth century.”1 For musichistorian Francis Maes, this music “gave ex-pression to the sentiments and musical valuesof the lower strata of the [Russian] aristocracy:the world of salon romances and the romanticcharacter piece.”2 Even Richard Taruskin, al-though recognizing Rachmaninov as a “tower-ing figure,” characterizes his music quite sim-ply as “maintaining the familiar and presti-gious style of the nineteenth-century ‘classics’into the twentieth century.”3 Despite his ac-knowledgment of Rachmaninov’s “command-ing” stature, Taruskin’s assessment of thecomposer’s musical style still offers no groundsfor contention with Virgil Thomson’s asser-tion, in his foreword to Victor Seroff’s 1950biography of Rachmaninov, that “the only kindof success he never achieved was that of intel-lectual distinction.”4 Thomson did not mean inany way to disparage Rachmaninov’s masteryof compositional craft, which indeed he praised.His implication was rather that Rachmaninovin his obliviousness to contemporary trendscontributed nothing of lasting significance tothe development of music as an art form.

IIIEven more symptomatic, perhaps, of Rach-

maninov’s alleged anachronism is the well-known and widely beloved eighteenth Varia-tion from the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini(ex. 2). This theme, its detractors might claim,is pure Hollywood; no wonder that Rachmani-nov eventually moved there (but then again, sodid Schoenberg and Stravinsky). Not even ven-turing into the modal harmony and metricalirregularity of the central episode in the first ofthe Symphonic Dances, the eighteenth Varia-tion instead adheres almost entirely to func-tional root progressions, avoiding any strikingdissonance until its penultimate measure. Somemight claim that this famous theme, like theone from the Symphonic Dances, could havebeen composed fifty or more years earlier. This,moreover, is the Variation that leaves the mostvivid impression on most listeners and is hencethe most definitive, for many, of the characterof the Rhapsody as a whole.

And indeed this Variation can be said toconstitute the expressive core of the Rhapsody,not only in its effect on the experience of thepiece when realized in performance, but evenin Rachmaninov’s conception of the piece longbefore he actually began to compose it. It iswell known that Rachmaninov derived the lyri-cal melody for this Variation by inverting thetheme by Paganini on which the Rhapsody isbased. For this somewhat paradoxical reason, itbecomes the one musical example that accom-panies Taruskin’s discussion of the composerin his Oxford History of Western Music:5 thecompositional technique by which it is gener-ated—what Rachmaninov himself, in an un-published letter disparaging musical modern-ism, might have called a “calculation”6—is gen-erally considered more characteristic of Schoen-berg. But the extent of the derivation is not sowidely acknowledged: the inversion closely fol-lows the original, with only subtle diversions,until the end. Moreover, through study ofRachmaninov’s sketches, David Butler Cannatahas determined that the composer already had

5Taruskin, Oxford History of Western Music, IV, 554.6Sergei Bertensson and Jay Leyda, Sergei Rachmaninoff: ALifetime in Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,2001), pp. 351–52.

1Orlando Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History ofRussia (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), p. 542.2Francis Maes, A History of Russian Music: FromKamarinskaya to Babi Yar, trans. Arnold J. Pomerans andErica Pomerans (Berkeley: University of California Press,2002), p. 204.3Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), IV, 497, 553.4Viktor I. Seroff, Rachmaninoff (London: Cassell, 1951),p. x.

249


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scription of the notebook in question, showshow Rachmaninov first sketched out the inver-sion, with literal accuracy and without lyricalallure, in A, the parallel major of Paganini’soriginal theme. But on the next staff Rachmani-nov already took the liberty of transposing hisnewly discovered melody into its eventual key,D � major, the enharmonic equivalent of A

discovered and worked out the inversion in themid-1920s, nearly ten years before undertakingthe actual composition of the Rhapsody in1934.7 Example 3, taken from Cannata’s tran-

7David Butler Cannata, Rachmaninoff and the Symphony(Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2000), pp. 56–59.

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9One of the earlier Variations, no. 12, Tempo di menuetto,also produces a dream- or oasislike effect in relation to theVariations that surround it. As its tempo marking sug-gests, this Variation is more lyrical and traditional in itsmusical language than its neighbors.

8See Taruskin, Oxford History of Western Music, II, 267for a first definition of this term, a term he invokes repeat-edly in the ensuing text.

major’s third degree, and began to make it moresongful. Thus Rachmaninov already had D �major in mind as a secondary tonality—whatTaruskin would call a “far out point”8—longbefore he began work on the Rhapsody. More-over, the literalism of the inversion led natu-rally to an expansion of this lyrical melody, adoubling of its length, because the inversion,instead of ending on the tonic like its thematicsource, can more easily be made to end on thedominant; thus the new melody is no longer aclosed progression as in the surrounding Varia-tions, but an antecedent phrase calling for acontinuation. Rachmaninov took advantage ofthis characteristic by giving the antecedentphrase with its half cadence to the solo piano,only bringing in the orchestra for the conse-quent. The Variation thus gains a spaciousnessthat allows it even to linger on in a reflectivecodetta.

This most lyrical, most impassioned of thePaganini Variations thus fades away like adream. And its beginning, too, in the way itemerges from the preceding Variation, is dream-like. That Variation, in B � minor, consists en-tirely of upwardly arpeggiated chords articu-lated as slowly rolling triplet figures, rising andfalling, often chromatically, from one chord tothe next as if to evoke a slowly swirling mist,

or perhaps even the near-stillness of sleep. Atthe Variation’s end, the harmony floats up toD � major as the triplets metamorphose into theaccompanimental figure for the famous melody.In this way, as with the lyrical theme in thefirst of the Symphonic Dances, a trace of theimmediately preceding music is retained pal-pably as the background against which thenewly arrived theme must inevitably be felt,making it seem at least in part illusory, againlike a memory or a dream, rather than fullyactualized.9

As I have already demonstrated, the centralepisode of the first of the Symphonic Dances isalso intimately connected, both motivically andthrough immediate linkage, with the musicthat surrounds it. Again like the famousPaganini Variation, the new theme comes in asimilarly remote key, C � minor in a C-majorcontext. In both cases, the remoteness of thekey only underscores an affective—and evenstylistic—disjunction, because the surroundingmusic is distinctly more “modern.” Althoughin both pieces the music remains anchored totonal cadences, and the sonorities to triadicfoundations, the treatment of dissonance andthe harmonic progressions that it engenders

251


are extremely free, often virtually unanalyzableby traditional harmonic methods, and thus ini-tially comprehensible only as explorations ofchromatic voice leading.

One need only examine the opening progres-sions of both works to substantiate this claim(ex. 4a–b). Although these passages lead to au-thentic cadences, the pre-dominant progressionsin both are understood more readily as prod-ucts of chromatic voice leading than as func-tional progressions. In the Rhapsody, a ^5–^6figure, twice repeated in successively higheroctaves, is accompanied in the bass by astepwise ascent that first produces parallel sev-enths, then parallel fifths, and finally paralleltenths supporting root-position dominant-sev-enth chords. These chromatically ascendingdominant sevenths engender three more in theensuing measures (mm. 6–8), culminating inthe dominant seventh of the home key, A mi-nor, and leading to the first Variation, a fore-shadowing of the theme’s bass reminiscent ofBeethoven’s “Eroica” Variations. In the first ofthe Symphonic Dances, after the quiet openingmeasures have four times anticipated the tri-adic head motive of the theme-to-be on differ-ent pitches (G �, D, A �, and A) against a chro-matically descending background, a fortissimo

chain of major thirds descends chromatically,interspersing major triads with minor throughan entire octave (ex. 4b, mm. 10–13). The firsthalf of the passage moves from �II/V to V7/V,and the second half is a sequence leading from�II to V7 of C minor, the home key. Two explo-sive one-measure gestures intervene betweenthis dominant seventh and its resolution, thefirst articulating the vi of C major, the secondthe VI of C minor. The entire passage comesacross as a fireworks display of chromaticallylinked coloristic triadic sonorities.

Although chromatic progressions prevail inmuch late tonal music, very little of that ear-lier music is so fully saturated with dissonantor nonfunctional sonorities as in these ex-amples, or in the music that ensues from them.In their contexts, both the eighteenth PaganiniVariation and the central episode in the first ofthe Symphonic Dances emerge as dreams ornostalgically lyrical oases, closely linked withtheir surroundings motivically and gesturallybut set in palpable opposition to them not onlyin their affective character but even in theirmusical language. It is as if Rachmaninov isrevisiting in them not only a lost time andplace, or a lost love, but—more concretely—alost musical style: the style of his early pub-

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(Innsbruck-Bozen: Studienverlag, 2000), p. 57. Reproduced by permission.

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a. Rachmaninov, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, op. 43 (reduction for two pianos by composer), mm. 1–12.

lished songs and of the enormously popularSecond Piano Concerto and Second Symphony.10

In spite of these lyrical episodes, then, theSymphonic Dances and the Rhapsody on a

Example 4

10These speculations stand despite Rachmaninov’s ownwords about the Rhapsody. In 1937, three years after com-pleting it, the composer wrote to the illustrious choreogra-pher Mikhail Fokine to suggest that the Rhapsody mightserve for a ballet project that the two had discussed twoyears earlier. Rachmaninov proposes a scenario for theballet’s realization: “Why not resurrect the legend aboutPaganini, who, for perfection in his art and also for awoman, sold his soul to the Devil? All the variations onthe Dies Irae represent the Devil and those in the middlefrom variation XI to XVIII are the love episodes. Paganinihimself appears in the Theme and, defeated, appears forthe last time, but conquered, in variation XXIII—the first12 bars [these are the measures in A�]—after which, untilthe end of the composition [the music] represent[s] thetriumph of his conquerors. The first appearance of theDevil will be in variation VII [the first emergence of DiesIrae]. Variations VIII to X are the progress of the Devilwhile XI is a transition to the domain of love. VariationXII, the minuet, portrays the first appearance of the woman,XIII is the first conversation between Paganini and the

woman, who is also present in the variations up to XVIII.Variation XIX is the triumph of Paganini’s art and hisdiabolic pizzicato.” (Quoted in Max Harrison, Rachmani-noff: Life, Works, Recordings [London: Continuum, 2005],p. 317.) Although Rachmaninov’s scenario suits the musicreasonably well, one portion of it seems strikingly inapt:the characterization of Variation 13 as “the first conversa-tion between Paganini and the woman.” With its percus-sive and increasingly dissonant chords in the piano, whatkind of conversation might this ominously stentorianreassertion of Paganini’s theme conceivably represent?Wouldn’t seduction, rather than sadistic coercion, bePaganini’s ploy? It is also difficult to sense the assertedpresence of the woman, or of the presumably seductivevirtuoso, in the deep, slowly eddying chromaticism of Varia-tion 17 from which the famous song of Variation 18emerges. In assessing Rachmaninov’s scenario, it is impor-tant to remember that he devised it several years aftercompleting the Rhapsody, and that he devised it for thespecific purpose of realizing it as a ballet, in which everymusical gesture would become bodily movement. If

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Paganini first sees the object of his desire in Variation 12,then it is only practical and balletically feasible to readVariation 13 as an interaction arising from that first en-counter, and one that can lead plausibly to the love sceneto follow. But Rachmaninov surely had no post-minuet

conversation in mind as he composed Variation 13, sincehe allowed it to tread so heavily and ominously on theheels of such delicate dancing shoes.

Theme of Paganini give ample evidence of amarked stylistic evolution in Rachmaninov’smusic, an evolution often overlooked in criti-

cal assessments of his compositional achieve-ment. Even a cursory examination of his best-known pieces for solo piano, the Preludes andÉtudes-tableaux, shows this evolution quite

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clearly. The Preludes, op. 23, composed in 1903,two years after he reached his maturity withthe Second Piano Concerto, resemble it in theiropulent tonal idiom; richly textured and full ofexpressive chromaticism, these Preludes arefully comprehensible in terms of functionaltonal harmony. The second set, op. 32, com-posed shortly after the Third Piano Concerto in1910, contains passages more saturated withchromaticism: note especially no. 1 in C major,no. 2 ambiguously in B � minor, no. 6 in F minor(a kind of musical equivalent to Auguste Rodin’s“Gates of Hell”), no. 7 in F major, and no. 13 inD � major. In addition, this second set of Pre-ludes exhibits more motivic compression and amore active engagement of textural elementsin the compositional process (e.g., the ostinatiin no. 5 in G major, and no. 12 in G� minor).These later Preludes, while often still project-ing a sense of ternary form, are nonethelessalmost completely through-composed, convey-ing a feeling of narrativity or temporal irrevers-ibility beyond that of their earlier counterparts.11

The extent and freedom of chromaticism istaken still further in the Études-tableaux of1911 and 1916, especially in the Prokofiev-likeA-Minor Étude, op. 39, no. 6, but also in the E �Minor, op. 33, no. 6, and in the first and lastÉtudes of op. 39, in C minor and D major.

IVAlthough giving evidence of these evolving

stylistic characteristics, a piece like the G�-Minor Prelude from op. 32—one of the more“old-fashioned” of the set—might still be heardby some as essentially nineteenth-century mu-sic: melodious, minor, its harmony richly chro-matic but never functionally ambiguous, itstextures lush and pianistic (ex. 5). But is thispiece from 1910 as fully in a nineteenth-cen-tury idiom as one might take it to be? Closescrutiny of this music confirms how beauti-fully it exemplifies nineteenth-century compo-sitional ideals of harmonic and motivic devel-opment within a Romantically poignant, chro-matic idiom; but even here, Rachmaninov ar-

guably takes certain musical parameters—tex-tural variation especially, and perhaps even thetreatment of dissonance—beyond late-nine-teenth-century norms.

The Prelude begins with a driving, open tonic-and-fifth ostinato, a galloping figure that swellsand diminishes before the melody, whose iam-bic rhythm it pre-echoes, enters beneath it tofall, and then immediately fall again, from ^5 to^1, the second time already reaching a full ca-dence (ex. 5a, m. 6). The main theme thusbegins with a closural gesture, conveying a senseof pastness that suggests the beginning of anarrative. But instead of furthering a sense ofthat narrative right away, the phrase lingersafter its apparent cadence, as if already rumi-nating on the story it is about to tell, or as ifthe third-person narrator were also the first-person subject of a lyrical utterance, telling apersonal story but resisting the inevitable out-come portended by the Prelude’s cadential open-ing gesture. Especially poignant in the exten-sion of the phrase is the low E (^6) with which itbegins, prolonged as a dissonance against theostinato for nearly four beats before it resolvesas the dominant of the Neapolitan, leading tothe phrase’s second full—but somewhat attenu-ated—cadence. In the ensuing phrase, a yearn-ing but fleeting allusion to the relative major(m. 12—not shown) displaces the second of theopening ^5–^1 melodic descents and leads to anew continuation arising from the descending^3–^1–^5 cadential figure first heard at the end ofthe opening phrase (cf. mm. 8 and 13). Thistime, another E, still dissonant against the con-tinuing D� of the ostinato, supports a completeE-minor triad, introducing a sonority that willplay a crucial role later in the Prelude. Fromthis E the melody rises through E� and F� to thetonic and then beyond to the dominant degree(ex. 5b, m. 16), a goal already intimated by theD� in a B-major triad heard in m. 12.

These two opening phrases already suggest astruggle between a musical protagonist and itsenvironment or its fate. Rachmaninov sets inmotion a conflict between two temporal modes:the languishing lyrical mode, suggested by thefalling melodic lines, and the directional, quasi-narrative mode, suggested by the drivingostinato. The temporal conflict reveals itself inthe constant fluctuations of tempo during the

11On the linking of musical narrativity to temporal irre-versibility, see especially Karol Berger, A Theory of Art(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 196–202.

255

CHARLESFISKThe Case ofRachmaninov� � � � � � 128 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �

� � � � � 128 � � � � � ��

�

� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ��

� � � � � � ��

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� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ��

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� � ��

� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ��

� � � � � � � � ��

3

5

7

Allegro

�

rit. Meno mosso

accel. a tempo rit.

Meno mosso accel.

dim.

ten.

�

"""

""""""""

II6�

V64 VI(7)

753

II6� V7 i

dim.

i

a. mm. 1–8.

Example 5: Rachmaninov, Prelude in G� Minor, op. 32, no. 5.

opening section. For the rest of the Prelude, thetonic-minor key becomes inescapable, not al-lowing any brighter alternative to glimmer formore than a brief moment.

The two-phrased opening section culminateson the dominant (m. 16), which is then pro-longed throughout the middle section, estab-lishing a contrast with the falling tonic ca-dences of the opening. Like an inexorable force,the energy of the ostinato dominates this cen-tral episode and impels the melodic motion,which hesitates for breath for only two briefmoments (mm. 20 and 24). The texture thick-ens and the voice leading intensifies chromati-

cally, but the harmony remains fixated on thedominant, allowing for only the merest sugges-tion of any other harmonic position, as if tosuggest a protagonist striving but unable tobreak free of external forces and find inner peace.Hence, by harmonic criteria, there are nophrases but only phases. In the first of these(ex. 5b, mm. 16ff.), it is as if the melodic pro-tagonist attempts to take over the ostinato andharness it to the individual will, driving it fourtimes into the same arching melodic call of aminor third, D�–F�–D�, over a chromaticallydescending inner-voice motion in parallelsixths. Another B-major triad supports the first

256

19TH

CENTURYMUSIC

� � � � � � ��

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� ��

�

� ��

16

18

20

� �a tempo

�(III)V

rit.

dim.

a tempo

V III

b. mm. 16–21.


� � � � � � � � ��

�

� � � � � � � �

� � � � � � � �

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��

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26

28

30

quasi-vi present until m. 30

hemiola

c. mm. 26–31.

257


� � � � � � � ��

� � � � � � � � � � ��

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42 """rit."""

V7vi

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38

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6 5 6

V6II V

65� II�

III

d. mm. 36–39.

e. mm. 42–44.


of these calls and lends its poignancy to thefollowing ones, which attempt to attenuate theinsistent drive of the ostinato. The chordsgenerated by the falling sixths have a distinc-tive poignancy altogether characteristic ofRachmaninov, quite like those that concludethe early C�-Minor Prelude or open the C-Mi-nor Piano Concerto of 1901.

After the fourth call, the ostinato recedestemporarily into an accompanimental role, al-lowing the melodic voice to flow forth morefreely, now in the upper register. In the sweepof the ensuing phase (starting at mm. 20ff. inex. 5b) chromatically rising bass lines overlapwith and buoy up a sequence of diatonicallyfalling melodic gestures. From the fading ofthese gestures, a new and longer phase emerges(mm. 24ff.). Here the contrary motion of theouter voices reverses direction, upper and lower

voices now pitted against each other as equalsin a series of voice exchanges, and the passagerises sequentially as the ostinato, in a new guise,recovers its force. In the approach to the cli-max, Rachmaninov builds dissonant tensionby reintroducing the sound of the E-minor triadagainst the D� dominant pedal (ex. 5c, m. 26),allowing this sonority to intensify for nearlyfive full measures, at which point the level ofdissonance grows still greater in the climacticmeasure (m. 30). The chord in the second beatcontains B, C�, D�, E, F�, and G, to which thefollowing beat adds a low A, thus simulta-neously sounding a complete acoustic scale.From this sonority the dominant background-harmony reemerges into the foreground(m. 31), becoming more tense and insistent asthe passage culminates in a veritable explo-sion. A still insistent, chromatically descend-

258

19TH

CENTURYMUSIC

ing hemiola figure reinforces the momentouseffect of this culmination.

The outcome is a forcible reestablishment ofthe tonic harmony, marked by a fortissimo re-turn of the ostinato at its original level (m. 34).Apart from that return, with its implication ofa ternary formal plan, the quasi-narrative ur-gency of this music allows for no strictly literalrepetition. The opening of the theme reemergesan octave lower than before, doubled by a stilldeeper octave (ex. 5d, m. 36), but is then imme-diately mirrored by the correspondingly higheroctave transposition of its second subphrase(m. 38), as if the resignation that this themeboth betokens and resists has now overtakenthe entire registral space. Returning to the lowerregister, a new answering phrase recalls anddevelops the melodic ascent first heard at theend of the opening section (cf. mm. 14–15, notshown, with mm. 39–40). Still meno mossoand entirely given over to the sighing, iambicmotive with which the theme began, themelody now rises up gradually and imploringly,first via an ascending 6–5 series, then viaarpeggiation of the tonic triad, through thatregistral space, culminating in a bleak E-minorharmony (ex. 5e, m. 43), in which the lyricalprotagonist meets its destiny, its voice finallyfused with the fateful narrative implications ofthe ostinato. The G� of this chord immediatelytransforms itself into an F�, the leading tone ofthe structural dominant. The resulting har-monic progression from vi to V composes outthe opening ^6–^5 melodic motive of the Prelude,after which a final quiet return of the ostinatosweeps the music into the distance, only con-firming a sense of its remoteness in time, itslyrical voice lost.

Whether or not one agrees with my particu-lar characterization of this Prelude’s course,one cannot deny, I think, the presence of ahighly nuanced musical drama unfolding fromits first note to its last, a drama to which noaspect of the music—melody, harmony, tex-ture, register, dynamics, or tempo—is inciden-tal. The music is unusually well composed, anot especially original observation since evenhis harshest critics are willing to concede thatRachmaninov really knew what he was doing.And what he was up to was not merely thepainting of a mood picture, but the unfurling of

a tightly controlled line of dramatic develop-ment. The Prelude is unique, of course, andimbued with Rachmaninov’s individuality; butis there anything new about it, anything thatreflects its actual date of composition? As rela-tively novel features I might propose the degreeof independence of the ostinato (which func-tions as a virtual agent with shifting roles ratherthan as a mere background figure), the con-stantly evolving play of pianistic textures, theunusual richness of foreground harmonic andcontrapuntal activity, and the extended prolon-gation of striking dissonances against an audi-bly stationary harmonic background. In theserespects Rachmaninov’s music certainly haddeveloped since the time of his first Prelude,and even since the time of his Second PianoConcerto and the first collection of Preludes.And as his music continued to develop after1910, the evolutionary changes it underwentbecame more obvious. Many of these changes,evident in the passages from the Rhapsody ona Theme of Paganini and the SymphonicDances, had already occurred by the timeRachmaninov left Russia in 1917. The openingstanzas of Son, a song composed at about thattime and discussed in the next section of thisarticle, will provide further evidence for thisclaim.

In identifying this evolution, I do not meanto devalue Rachmaninov’s earlier music anymore than I would devalue the early music ofother composers. Rachmaninov was too accom-plished a musician not to draw on a broadeningrange of stylistic possibilities as he grew older;some of them inevitably stem from the musi-cal exploration and experimentation of his con-temporaries. But it does Rachmaninov a disser-vice to claim that his musical evolution broughthim closer to a modernist aesthetic. He neverabandoned functional tonality, for example, asa fundamental structure; he simply managed tobring an ever-wider range of foreground andmiddleground harmonic progressions and tonaleffects under its control. It was in his ability todraw so many new and original tonal configu-rations and textures into a traditional tonalframework, to a degree that surpassed the moretraditionally minded of his contemporaries, thatRachmaninov’s special talents came to theirfullest fruition.

259


VI would like to underscore the extent of this

evolution by comparing Rachmaninov’s use ofa highly characteristic device, extended chro-matic motion, in a well-known song of 1893 tohis use of the same device in a song composedin 1916, the year before he left Russia forever.The early song is “Ne poi, krasavitsa,” a set-ting of a classic poem by Pushkin (ex. 6) inwhich the speaker implores a woman who singsin his presence to stop, insisting that the memo-ries her singing evokes—memories of a maidenhe was forced to leave behind—are too painfulto bear. In one of his essays in Defining RussiaMusically, Taruskin disparages this song as anexaggerated musical expression of nega, theerotic lure of the East.12 I have to confess that Ihave always liked this song and consider it aremarkable enough achievement for a nineteen-year-old composer. In any case, the theme ofloss and homesickness predominates in the textover that of nega; and for the expression of thatpredominant theme, Rachmaninov’s long, la-menting chromatic inner-voice descent in par-allel thirds is completely appropriate andunexaggerated, even as it metamorphoses intothe singer’s inarticulate wail at the song’s cli-max. Rachmaninov admitted that brightermoods did not come easily to him, and the nearubiquity in his music of such chromatic voiceleading helps to substantiate that claim. Evenso, the range of moods to which this chromati-cism became apposite for him, and the har-monic experimentation that it permitted, ex-panded enormously in the course of his compo-sitional career. Eventually such chromaticismcould embrace both the savagery of the alreadymentioned Étude-tableau, op. 39, no. 6, in abarely recognizable A minor, and the quiet won-der at the opening of the song Son, op. 38, no. 5(ex. 7).13 In this song, as in the Étude, the rootprogression underlying the first two verses isalmost impossible to discern; but the gradualchromatic descent that subtly connects each

12Richard Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically: Historicaland Hermeneutical Essays (Princeton: Princeton Univer-sity Press, 1997), pp. 158–66.13The primary meaning of this Russian word, usually ren-dered as “Dreams” in English translations of the poem’stitle, is “sleep.”

gesture to the next confers on the openingphrases a delicate, again Debussyean sort ofcoherence.

It is worth pausing over Son since the set-ting of the second and final pair of its stanzascontrasts markedly with that of the first pair ina way that reflects Rachmaninov’s stylistic evo-lution and anticipates the stylistic disjunctionsI have identified in the Paganini Rhapsody andthe Symphonic Dances. Whereas the setting ofthe first half of the poem is spare and harmoni-cally elusive, that of the second becomes ex-traordinarily full and tonally grounded. Con-sideration of the poem itself (by Fyodor Sologub)illuminates some of the different meaningsthese styles might have held for Rachmaninov:

Son (Sleep)V míre net nichevóVojdelénniye snáCharí est u nevóU nevó tishiná

U nevó na ustákhNi pechál i ne smékhU v bezdónnich ochákhMnoga táinikh utékh

U nevó shirakíShirakí dva kriláI legkí, tak legkíKak polnóchnaya mglá

Ne panyát kak necyótI kudá i na chyómOn krilóm ne vzmakhnyótI ne dvínet plechóm

(In the world is nothingMore desired [than] sleepEnchantments has itIt has peace

It has on [its] lipsNeither sorrow nor laughterAnd in [its] fathomless eyesMany secret pleasures

It has wideWide two wingsAnd light, so lightAs midnight mist

[One] cannot understand how [it] carriesAnd where and on whatIt [with its] wing does not flapAnd does not move [its] shoulder)

(my translation)

260

19TH

CENTURYMUSIC

The first two stanzas evoke the magical still-ness of sleep, personifying it as a desired butsilent companion with sublimely discreet lipsand fathomless, benevolently seductive eyes.In the ensuing two stanzas, which open fromthe stillness of sleep into the world of dreams,we learn that sleep also has wings, and conse-quently the capacity for movement; but, para-doxically, this winged companion can carry usfar and wide without ever opening those wingsor even lifting its shoulders. Music, of course,has neither wings nor shoulders, yet Rachmani-nov avowed in an interview that he could neveraccept the dependence of certain moderniststyles on calculation, and that the purpose of

music was to “exult,” to transport us: in otherwords to lend us its wings.14

In Rachmaninov’s setting, after the evoca-tion of stillness in the first half through slowchromatic descents (from D� to B� in the melody,and all the way from G� to B� in an inner voice:the pitches are circled in ex. 7), the pianisticfiguration proliferates. When the voice reentersin canon with a line in the piano’s tenor regis-ter (mm. 22–23), the two voices in imitationpresumably represent sleep’s two wide wings.The music returns here to a luxuriant idiom

14Bertensson and Leyda, Sergei Rachmaninoff, pp. 351–52.

� + � � �� + � � � � � � � � � � � � ��

+ ��

Canto

Piano

��

� � � � ��

�

� ��

� � � �� , �� , � � �� , � �� - � �Ne poi kra -sá - vit - sa pri mne Ti pe - sen grú - zi - i pe -Oh, ne - ver sing to me a - gain The songs of Ge - or - gia, fair

� � ��

�

�. �

� �

4

8

Allegretto

� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �

� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �

rit.

ten. dim.

� � � � �

"""""""""""

"""""""""""

""""""""""""

"""""""""""Example 6: Rachmaninov, “Ne poi, krasavitsa,” op. 4, no. 4, mm. 1–11.

261


� � � � � � 34 � � � � � �� ! !V mí re net ni - che - vó Voj - de -Say, oh whi - ther art bound, Rare en -

� � � � � � 34 ��

� � � � � 34 � � � � � � � ��

�

(Canto)

(Piano)�

�

� � � � � � � � �� ! !lén - ni - ye sná, Cha - rí est u ne -

chant - ment of dreams, Wrapp’d with si - lence a -

� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �� ! ! ! ! !

� � � � � � � � � � ��

�

� �

��

� � � � � � � � �� ! ! ! ! !vó, U ne - vó ti shi - ná, U ne - vó na us - tákh Ni pe -

round, Robed in man - tle of gleams? On their features may rise Ne - ver

� � � � � � ��

�

� � �

��

��

� ��

� � � � � � �� !chál e ne smékh, U v bez - dón - nich o -

laugh - ter or pain, Yet those glan - ces shall

� � � � � � �� ! !!

� � � � � � ��

�

��

�

5

8

11

Lento

�

dim.

��

� �!

� �

Example 7: Rachmaninov, Son, op. 38, no. 5, mm. 1–27.

262

19TH

CENTURYMUSIC � � � � � � � � � ��

ch´ åkh Mno - ga tái - nikh u -prize Wells of com - fort se -

� � � � � � � � �� !!

� � � � � � � ��

� �

� � � �

14

� � � � � � � ��tékh.rene.

� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �

� � � � � � � ��

17 �

� � ��poco cresc.

� � � � � � � �

� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �! / /� � ��

� � � � ��

� �

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20

! !� !� """""

dim.

"""

� � � � � � � � �� U ne - vó shi - ra - kí, Shi - ra

Shi - ning wings do they bear, Far out -

� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �- � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �/� � � � � �� , � � � � � ��

�

�

� � � � � �

22

""""

rit. cantabile Meno mosso

legato

marcato la melodia

"""""""""

� �

� rit. et dim.


263


� � � � � � �� kí dva kri - lá, I leg - kí, tak leg -

spread - ing, so light, As they float thro’ the

� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �� , � � ��

� � � � � � � � � � � ��

� � � � � � � � � �

� � � � � � � � �� kí, Kak pol - nóch - na - yaair In the sha - dow - y

� � � � � � �� ! � � � � �

� � ��

� � � � � � � �

� � � � � � � � �� mglá. Ne pan yát nec - yót -night Tho’ their pi - nions

� � � � � � ��

� � � � �

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24

26

27

�

! !&

"""""""

cresc.

be

more characteristic of the younger Rachmani-nov, its more functionally dynamic harmonyalso responding to the implication of directedmotion in that poetic image. The first two vo-cal gestures begin to soar, and the third ascendsall the way through a major tenth from G� to B�before falling back to the tonic pitch, D� (m.27). But the cadence beneath the voice is decep-tive, its harmonic goal wrenched away. A full

cadence on the tonic ensues discreetly at theend of the next and final stanza, its quiet glowperpetuated in an elaborate coda. But the mostaffecting moment of the song, for me, is thatdeceptive cadence, reflecting not only the illu-soriness of sleep’s wings and of the journeys onwhich they take us, but also the transience ofmusical styles and the ethereal magic of musi-cal resolution.


264

19TH

CENTURYMUSIC

The music and text of this song provide atemplate for interpreting Rachmaninov’s sub-sequent returns to an earlier, more purely tonalstyle in his later instrumental works. In thesong, the more opulent, more directed harmonyof the last two stanzas transports the subject ofthe text from one meaning of the Russian word“son” to the other, from the disembodied still-ness of sleep into the world of dreams, a worldof magically transformed memories. In theRhapsody, the way the famous D �-major themeemerges from the slowly eddying shrouds ofthe darkly chromatic Variation preceding it alsosuggests a transport, in this case from a death-like sleep into an animated dreaming, or froman indefinite brooding rumination into a cher-ished memory. By contrast, the recoveredmemory in the first of the Symphonic Dances,with its modal harmonies, its floating, proselikerhythms and its reliance on short repeated mo-tives is more Russian in character. As the driv-ing, relentlessly chromatic mirskaya muzika(worldly music) of the first section subsides,the subject journeys back into the nostalgicserdechnuyiu musiku (music of the heart) ofthe middle section. The more old-fashionedmusic, the music redolent of an earlier style, isthus diffracted and contextualized through themore contemporary sounding music that sur-rounds it.

VIIt would be misleading, however, to claim

that as Rachmaninov grew older his music sim-ply became polarized into the two styles I havecontrasted as modern and traditional. Evenwithin this dichotomy, I have already suggestedthat the more modern style, which retains afunctional harmonic framework, can hardly becalled modernist. Now I might add that thetraditional passages I have described, for alltheir lushness and predominantly diatonic har-mony, are nonetheless discernibly distinct incharacter from Rachmaninov’s earlier music.They are more purely diatonic harmonicallyand disjunct melodically in both cases in partbecause of the ways they are derived from, andat the same time set in opposition to, the mu-sic surrounding them. The music’s traditionaland modernist elements are stylized in waysthat might be viewed as paralleling the styliza-

tions of classical and modernist elements inthe roughly contemporaneous Art Deco move-ment.15

At the same time, much of Rachmaninov’smusic, even in his last compositions, is at nei-ther of these extremes, but instead negotiates amore gradual and continuous trajectory betweenthem. This is the case both in Rachmaninov’slate music, as in the second and third of theSymphonic Dances, and in much of the earliermusic as well. An especially striking exampleis The Isle of the Dead, composed in 1909, inwhich strands of vaguely suggested melodygradually emerge from a haunting and all-per-vasive ostinato in quintuple meter. The aura ofindistinctness in this music once again hasmuch in common with the music of Debussy,even though the obsessively melancholic effectis altogether un-Debussyean. Some passages inThe Bells, the choral-orchestral cantata of1913, even sound like Debussy, but they areseamlessly integrated into musical surround-ings that only Rachmaninov could have envis-aged.

In a letter of 1932, Rachmaninov expressedan unapologetically Romantic conception of hisart: “What is music!? How can one define it?Music is a calm moonlit night, a rustling ofsummer foliage. Music is the distant peal ofbells at eventide! Music is born only in theheart and it appeals only to the heart; it isLove! The sister of Music is Poesy, and itsmother is Sorrow!”16 His comments in a 1941interview for the periodical The Etude, althoughmore down-to-earth, are consistent with thosejust quoted:

I have no sympathy with the composer who pro-duces works according to preconceived formulas orpreconceived theories. Or with the composer whowrites in a certain style because it is the fashion todo so. Great music has never been produced in thatway—and I dare say it never will. Music should, inthe final analysis, be the expression of a composer’scomplex personality. . . . A composer’s music should

15I owe this comparison to a comment made by ThomasGrey in the discussion following a talk on Rachmaninovthat I gave at Stanford University in November 2004.16Bertensson and Leyda, Sergei Rachmaninoff, p. 291.Rachmaninov wrote this passage in response to Walter E.Koons’s request for a definition of music.

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express the country of his birth, his love affairs, hisreligion, the books which have influenced him, thepictures he loves. It should be the product of thesum total of a composer’s experience. . . .

In my own compositions, no conscious effort hasbeen made to be original, or Romantic, or National-istic, or anything else. I write down on paper themusic I hear within me, as naturally as possible. . . .What I try to do . . . is to make it say as simply anddirectly what is in my heart when I am composing.17

As articulations of an aesthetic philosophy,these words can easily be taken as intellectu-ally unsophisticated, even naive. Consideringthem seriously can make one wonder howRachmaninov came to produce music of suchgreat complexity, covering as wide a stylisticrange as, in fact, it did. But perhaps the mostrevealing word in the lines above comes in hisreference to “a composer’s complex personal-ity.” Although Rachmaninov longed for theRussia where he had come of age, retreatingwhenever possible into an ostensibly simpleand traditional domestic environment, his pro-fessional, musical, and therefore emotional, lifewas complicated and demanding in “modern”ways that made it difficult for him to find thetime and energy to compose, or even to rest forany significant period. In his later years, com-position became a kind of refuge from his ex-tremely demanding schedule of travel and con-certizing; composing became an opportunity togather himself, to recall and reimagine who hewas and whence he had come. In the passagesfrom the Symphonic Dances and Rhapsodywith which I began, the conflict that Rach-maninov must have felt between his outer andinner lives, between worldly care and innernecessity, finds especially poignant expression.Drawing from the extremes of his stylistic

range, reverting temporarily to an earlier com-positional manner and juxtaposing it with thekind of musical language he developed later inhis career, Rachmaninov captures in his musicthe poignancy of his longing for a never-to-be-recovered world and mode of expression, andthus the existential complexity of his own cul-tural and historical position: that of an endan-gered species in a new world, a composer whoresponded to every new discovery by adaptingit to the musical language he had learned in hishomeland at the end of the nineteenth century;but one whose music not only was written butcould only have been written in thetwentieth.

Abstract.In two of Rachmaninov’s last works, the Rhapsodyon a Theme of Paganini of 1934 and the first of theSymphonic Dances of 1940, a stylistic contrastbetween an opulently scored lyrical theme and themore angular, dissonant music that surrounds thattheme throws into relief the extent that Rach-maninov’s musical language had changed and devel-oped since his first great successes thirty years ear-lier with the Second Piano Concerto and the SecondSymphony. The words that motivate a similar sty-listic contrast in the song Son (Sleep), composed in1917, near the end of his most compositionally pro-ductive years, suggest an interpretive reading of sucha stylistic contrast: the earlier, lusher style is associ-ated here with dreams, and hence with memories;while the later, sparer, more tonally ambiguous styleaccompanies an evocation of something more im-personal, in the case of the song the stillness of adreamless sleep. Some of the developing aspects ofRachmaninov’s style revealed in these later examplesare already evident even in the more traditional-sounding pieces of the last decade (1907–17) of hisRussian period, which is shown in an analysis of thepiano Prelude in G� Minor of 1910. Even this seem-ingly traditional Prelude, but more and more in hislater music, Rachmaninov emerges as an indisput-ably twentieth-century composer.Key words: Rachmaninov, Symphonic Dances, Rhap-sody on a Theme of Paganini, Son, Prelude in G�Minor.

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17Ibid., pp. 368–69. The interview was conducted by DavidEwen.

Documents

Nineteenth-Century Music? The Case of Rachmaninov