VIDEO: Rachmaninoff, Prelude in B Minor, op. 32/10

[lateromantic]

I first learned this prelude in the late 1990s when I was working on my PhD dissertation in music theory on Rachmaninoff's harmonic methods.  The dissertation included an extensive analysis of the piece.  Last summer I decided to work it up again, leading to this recording.  Rachmaninoff was inspired by Arnold Böcklin's painting "Die Heimkehr," and I have worked images of the painting into the video.

I hope you enjoy it, and I welcome your comments!

[ted]

What an enjoyable video ! I think your romantic playing is growing in mature sentiment; mind you, it was always pretty good. I had not realised the extent of your musical background. Can you tell us, at least naive and untutored listeners like me, did Rachmaninoff consciously employ these "methods" during his acts of creation, and how exactly did his creative process take place ? Did improvisation play a part in it ? I can see how people can construct all sorts of descriptive theories about music but they are frequently not constructive theories in the sense that the composer actually used them as such.

As to the yearning for some "other place", which does seem to be a subjective characteristic of late romantic music, and which we were discussing in previous posts, perhaps it does not matter whether the impulse is grounded in reality or some imagined state. In his book about Delius, Fenby wrote a whole chapter amounting to an assertion that the latter assumption would have improved Delius's music. I am of the conviction that the abstract power of music is invariant over both philosophical states. In the case of your playing, the associations my brain imposes, while important to me, have no universal validity, and other listeners have complete freedom to construct their own visions.

Always a treat to hear your playing.

[lateromantic]

What an enjoyable video ! I think your romantic playing is growing in mature sentiment; mind you, it was always pretty good.

Thank you for listening, Ted, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!

I had not realised the extent of your musical background. Can you tell us, at least naive and untutored listeners like me, did Rachmaninoff consciously employ these "methods" during his acts of creation, and how exactly did his creative process take place ? Did improvisation play a part in it ? I can see how people can construct all sorts of descriptive theories about music but they are frequently not constructive theories in the sense that the composer actually used them as such.

That's an interesting question, and one that I pondered just recently as I wrote up a couple of posts that I will be making to Facebook in the near future.  (If you're on Facebook, you should watch for them on my page RobertCunninghamsMusic.)  I think Rachmaninoff was basically an intuitive composer, and we know from his letters and remarks to other musicians that he drew a lot of his inspiration from extramusical sources, such as stories and in this case a particular painting.  I think that his principal focus when he composed was probably on the emotional content he drew from those sources rather than on music theory.  HOWEVER... I also think that his intuition was strongly influenced by his thorough conservatory training in theory.  Also, in the case of this prelude (as I will be pointing out in one of those posts), the piece reflects clearly the ideas of harmonic dualism that were prominent in music theory around that time (it was composed in 1910), and we do have good reason to believe that he was familiar with those theoretical ideas.

As to the yearning for some "other place", which does seem to be a subjective characteristic of late romantic music, and which we were discussing in previous posts, perhaps it does not matter whether the impulse is grounded in reality or some imagined state.

Actually, my thinking is that the impulse is grounded in our imagination of how life could potentially be, given the nature of reality, including human nature.  So in that sense it's a combination of "reality" and "some imagined state."