Acknowledgments
There are many, many people to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for their role in the making of this thesis—far too many to thank here in full. However this project would never have seen completion without the particularly vital contributions of a select few, and I wish to acknowledge and thank them for their part in this.
First, to Mark Porlides, who at the time of writing is a graduate student of the History Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and who in the spring of 2018 he was a teaching assistant for a course on military history which I took to satisfy a general education requirement. Mark’s enthusiastic interest in his in-progress doctoral dissertation (concerning the crews of Ancient Greek warships) and his willingness to answer whatever questions I had about his research and the writing process were what first got me excited about the prospect of conducting research on, and writing about, a subject of my own choosing, and planted the seeds that eventually grew into this work.
advisor for this thesis. He was an invaluable mentor throughout the writing process, and his shrewd assessments of everything from my prose to my research methods to my topic were invaluable to me and my work. While working with Dr. Carter on this thesis, I have learned knowledge and skills that will benefit me in my academic future for years to come, and I am greatly indebted to him for that.
Fourth, to the Sarah Steele Danhoff Undergraduate Research Fund, which is administered by Honors Carolina, and the Mildred Brown Mayo Undergraduate Research Fund, both of which supported my research at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Without the generosity of both funds, that research would not have been possible, and this thesis could not have been written.
Fifth, to my thesis committee, which comprised Dr. Annegret Fauser along with Drs. Shvabrin and Carter. The genuine interest, curiosity, and intellectual excitement shown by all three professors in the defense process was inspiring, and their suggestions not only greatly improved my work but further fed my own excitement with the experience. I am grateful to them for their encouragement and support.
Finally, to my family and friends, who throughout this nearly yearlong project have given me every kind of support, from listening to me excitedly ramble about whatever newest idea had emerged from my work to helping me stay on schedule while still fulfilling all of the other obligations of life. I could not have done this without them.
To all the aforementioned, my heartfelt thanks. The work presented here has my name on it, but it is only due to their multifaceted support that it came about. I hope it is a work of which they, too, can be proud.
Chapter 1: Sergeĭ V. Rakhmaninov in Exile...7
Chapter 2: The Symphonic Dances (Op. 45) Examined...25
Conclusion...44
Introduction
When I began to work on this project, I wanted to explore a big question: how did the experiences of Russian composers living in exile in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution affect their musical careers, their artistic style, and Russian music at large? Also of interest were any unifying themes that might link the effects of various composers’ exile experiences on their music; what might be said about the music of the Russian-exile experience in general?
These questions turned out to be far too big to address adequately in the scope of an honors thesis. Substantial books could (and should) be written about the Russian-exile experience and its relation to music in the twentieth century, but this was not possible given my limited time and resources. The process of narrowing my focus to a manageable point was an extended one. First I thought of doing a series of generational case studies, choosing three composers who left Russia at around the same time, but who were at very different stages of their lives and careers. At one extreme was Aleksandr T. Grechaninov (born 1864, died 1956), who left Russia for Paris in 1922 when he was nearly sixty, then moved to the United States in 1939 as a seventy-five-year-old man; he went on to live in New York for nearly twenty years until his death in 1956, becoming an American citizen and remaining active in the Russian émigré community there.1 His longevity meant that even though he lived for over three decades
as an exile, he was essentially an old man whose career and musical style were already becoming a thing of the past even before he was uprooted, and by the time he arrived in France he was seen by many—and likely thought of himself—as no longer having musical relevance. His reputation as a composer of sacred music for the Russian Orthodox Church, a genre in which he was an
influential innovator, further emphasized this fading significance, despite the wealth of secular works he also wrote. Grechaninov is remembered first for his liturgical works (and second, for his many compositions for children), and the time of the Revolution was at the forefront of what seemed to many to be the brink of an exciting new era of Russian Orthodox music, incorporating instruments and harmonic innovations in a genre that had been stiflingly conservative for generations. Unfortunately the censoring and near-total destruction of the Russian Orthodox Church ended that era before it ever began, and Grechaninov never found the success in exile that he had in the Russian Empire, due in no small part to the loss of this muse.2
On the other extreme, I chose Vladimir A. Dukelskiĭ (born 1903, died 1969), also known by his American alias Vernon Duke. The Dukelskiĭ family fled Russia in 1920 as part of a mass exodus that crossed the Black Sea to Constantinople; then in 1922 they went to New York. Dukelskiĭ was only nineteen years old when he arrived in America; he had studied music in Russia but had yet to make a name for himself in the musical world, and thus his entire musical career took place in exile.3 To navigate this environment he cultivated twin identities: one was
that of Vladimir Dukelskiĭ, who wrote classical music influenced primarily by composers who later became associated with Soviet music, such as his teachers, Reĭngolʹd M. Gliėr and Marian P. Dombrovskiĭ, and his longtime friend, Sergeĭ S. Prokofʹev; the other was that of Vernon Duke (a name he created on the advice of his friend Jacob Gershwine, better known by his own Americanized name, George Gershwin), who wrote jazz-influenced music for musical revues, Broadway musicals, and film scores. Perhaps more clearly than any other Russian expatriate, Dukelskiĭ’s dual identity shows how the perception of what Western audiences (especially American ones) wanted from exiled artists influenced them to portray themselves and their
2 Barsova et al., “Grechaninov,” Grove.
identities differently from how they might otherwise have done. The extent to which that perception may reflect the actual relationship between audiences and exiled composers is difficult to evaluate, but there can be no doubt that the exiles themselves certainly understood their identities to carry connotations for their audiences. Dukelskiĭ accordingly shaped his identity differently for different audiences, sometimes juxtaposing them in unexpected ways. In one intriguing instance, a program for the first of a series of “High-Low Concerts” lists “Vernon Duke” as the founder of the series, and bears the signature of the great American composer Aaron Copland. Yet later in the same program, “Vladimir Dukelsky” is listed both as a featured composer and as a piano accompanist. The concert’s “High-Low” juxtaposition marries Dukelskiĭ’s two areas of musical interest, featuring various new classical works alongside a set by Duke Ellington and his band, yet even in this marriage Dukelskiĭ frames himself in two distinct roles: Duke, the American, a champion of new music both classical and popular, and Dukelskiĭ, the Russian, a concert pianist and a composer of serious classical works.4 Despite his
best efforts to play both parts—trying to please everyone?—Dukelskiĭ only found limited success during his lifetime, and since his death he has largely been neglected or forgotten.
To bridge the generational gap between Dukelskiĭ and Grechaninov, I chose one of the most well-known Russian exiles, Sergeĭ V. Rakhmaninov (born 1873, died 1943), whose musical career in Imperial Russia spanned over twenty years before the Revolution sent him and his family fleeing to the United States in 1918, when he was in his mid-forties. In the States, Rakhmaninov was forced to create a new (and as I will discuss, significantly different) career, which spanned another twenty-five years. If Grechaninov was too old to build something new as an exile, Rakhmaninov was too young to afford the luxury of retirement; if Dukelskiĭ was young
4 “High-Low Concerts: First Concert; Viennese Roof, Hotel St. Regis,” Program, Library of Congress, Vernon Duke
enough that he embarked on his musical career entirely while in exile, Rakhmaninov was old enough that exile wrought significant change on a career already underway.
Having identified these three fascinating case studies, my research began in earnest. As time wore on, it became apparent that the subject for this thesis was still too broad and too demanding, and that the work would be better served by a still further narrowing of focus. I first thought to select a major work from each of the three composers as a way of focusing each case study, and for Rakhmaninov I chose his final work, the Symphonic Dances, op. 45. While analyzing the piece and researching its composer, other questions began to emerge from the still-overarching theme of exile as I began to consider Rakhmaninov’s place in the larger historical narrative of twentieth-century music. It seemed that Rakhmaninov was left out, not fitting into the binary historiographical conception of that period in music, with the “modernism” of composers like Igorʹ Stravinskiĭ, Ferruccio Busoni, Charles Ives, and Arnold Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School on the one side, and the “nationalism” of composers like Jean Sibelius, Béla Bartók, Witold Lutosławski, Alberto Ginastera, and Aaron Copland on the other.5 Both
sides were searching for the “new” in music, seeking to develop the art form to suit the unprecedentedly fast-changing times. The “modernists” sought to break away from the traditions of the past, particularly the concepts of objective aesthetic norms and conventions, in order to discover innovations, performance practices, and forms of expression that could adequately respond to a world wracked by uncertainty, the most influential example of which was the destruction of the Great War. The nationalists, on the other hand, sought to tap into the pure and unadulterated veins of musical language found in the folk musics of their various nations, using those expressive resources not only as a source of thematic material, as had been the norm in the previous century, but also as a source for stylistic inspiration and structural coherence, in the
process creating a musical voice for the nations from whose folk traditions these composers drew.
While many influential figures in twentieth-century music fit into this binary—indeed, for much of the period composers conceived of themselves and their identities within that narrative, actively casting themselves in one light or the other—it was sadly the case that those who did not fit ended up excluded from the narrative by peers, critics, and historians. As I explored Rakhmaninov’s exile experience, it became clear that he was a victim of this phenomenon, being neither a “modernist” nor a “nationalist” at heart. Furthermore, his exile experience—and the Russian-exile experience at large—played an important role in his exclusion; the realities of navigating the foreign environment of exile led him to frame his identity in specific ways. He was an exile from Imperial Russia, having watched his homeland change beyond recognition and become hostile towards him; but he was also an émigré in the United States, which he chose deliberately to be his new home. This context gives rise to the questions I have endeavored to answer in this thesis. Why did he choose the United States? How did that choice impact his music? How did he frame his identity as an exile and an émigré? How did his being exile and émigré in turn affect his identity? Finally, how did his identity impact his place in the narrative of twentieth-century music?
Rakhmaninov’s music, elements of modernism, nationalism, and nostalgia are combined in a sophisticated expression of exile identity that bridges the traditionally binary narrative framework of twentieth-century music, showing that framework to be flawed, or at the very least incomplete.
Chapter 1: Sergeĭ V. Rakhmaninov in Exile
I will begin with the focus of my examination of exile, identity, and historical narratives: Sergeĭ V. Rakhmaninov, in whose life the three merge spectacularly. We may divide his life into three creative periods, separated by transformative traumas. First is the “youth period,” beginning in 1885 while he was a student, during which his talent began to grow and flourish, as did his reputation, and ending in 1897 with the disastrous premiere of his First Symphony, which was so lambasted by the public and the critics that Rakhmaninov fell into a depression and wrote no significant works for three years thereafter. Next, we have the “Russian period,” beginning around the turn of the century when the composer had recovered from his psychological downturn, during which he established himself as one of the foremost musical talents in the Russian Empire, and ending with the Bolshevik Revolution and Rakhmaninov’s subsequent exile to America. Finally, and of chief interest to us, there is the “American period,” beginning with his emigration to the States in late 1918, during which he navigated major changes and built a musical life for himself in a foreign land where he would live until his death in 1943.6
His musical career is likewise tripartite: he was a gifted composer, a superb concert pianist, and an accomplished conductor. In his own eyes, the foremost aspect of his career was composition, but fate conspired to rob him of much opportunity in that field through various traumatic events, not the least of which was the loss of his homeland. He was best known in the United States as a truly masterful performer of both his own works and others’, and it was in that capacity that he supported himself and his family in exile. His conducting career was at its height during his “Russian period,” which saw him direct several opera seasons at the Bolshoi Theater
as well as dozens of symphonic concerts, establishing himself as the best conductor in Russia and on par with world-renowned names such as Arthur Nikisch, Édouard Colonne, and Gustav Mahler.7 In all three capacities Rakhmaninov excelled, but in his typically modest fashion, he
himself would later question his multifaceted career:
Today, when the greater part of my life is over, I am constantly troubled by the misgiving that, in venturing into too many fields, I may have failed to make the best use of my life. In the old Russian phrase, I have “hunted three hares.” Can I be sure that I have caught one of them?8
The benefits of hindsight allow us to see that Rakhmaninov surely caught all three, but one cannot ignore the fact that in hunting one, he was often forced to delay or modify his pursuit of another.
In this chapter, I will briefly discuss Rakhmaninov’s life before his exile to the United States, then his life after his emigration in slightly more detail. I will be centering on his compositional career, as he himself would have, as the focus of his musical activities, and of particular interest are the changes wrought on those activities by emigration. By looking into those changes, the inquiry into identity and historical narratives will become framed by how Rakhmaninov navigated the two concepts during his life, and how those concepts affected the reception of his music after his death.
7 Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 517.
Biography in Brief: Pre-Exile
Sergeĭ Vasilʹevich Rakhmaninov was born on April 1st, 1873 (or March 20th by the Julian
Calendar used in the Russian Empire). His family was part of the aristocracy of the region surrounding the ancient Russian city now known as Great Novgorod, then called simply Novgorod.9 His musical studies began early in his childhood, prompted by the four-year-old
playing from memory the accompaniment to a Schubert song.10 His prodigious memory, which
enabled him to perform complex works after only a few hearings, served him well throughout his life, particularly when he was suddenly forced to develop a full piano repertoire as a middle-aged man.11 Soon afterwards, Anastasii͡a D. Ornatskai͡a, a young graduate of the St. Petersburg
Conservatory, became his private piano tutor. Her tutelage prepared the young Sergeĭ for entry into her alma mater, where he began to study when his family moved to St. Petersburg in 1882.12
However, Rakhmaninov’s poor performance in his non-musical subjects resulted in a transferal to Moscow in the autumn of 1885, where he studied privately under the widely renowned but notoriously strict pedagogue, Nikolaĭ S. Zverev, under whom he began truly to develop his musical abilities.13 These were perhaps some of the most formative years of Rakhmaninov’s
youth, spent practicing the piano daily, attending dozens of concerts, ballets, and operas in Moscow, and most notably, during his tutor’s Sunday soirées, meeting many of the Russian musical elite: Anton G. Rubinshteĭn, Sergeĭ I. Taneev, Anton C. Arenskiĭ, and his idol, Pёtr I. Chaĭkovskiĭ. After a few years with Zverev, Rakhmaninov began to study with tutors at the Moscow Conservatory—piano with his cousin, Aleksandr I. Ziloti, harmony with Arenskiĭ, and
9 Norris, “Rachmaninoff,” Grove.
10Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 362;
11 Schonberg, The Lives of the Great Composers, 522.
12 Reisemann, Rachmaninoff’s Recollections, 27; Norris, “Rachmaninoff,” Grove.
counterpoint with Taneev—and his desire to compose ultimately led to his leaving the Zverev household to stay with the Satins, his aunt and uncle.14 This was to be a fortuitous yet
momentous occasion in Rakhmaninov’s life; it was there he would meet Natali͡a A. Satina, who became his wife in 1902, and her sister Sofʹi͡a, with whom he would correspond by letter for the rest of his life and whose work in preserving the composer’s legacy was invaluable.15 While
living with the Satin family he completed his studies at the Conservatory, graduating with highest marks and being awarded the institution’s Great Gold Medal in 1892.16
The first five years after Rakhmaninov’s graduation saw little activity of note but for his work on his First Symphony, Op. 13, which he completed in late 1895 although it was not premiered until March 1897.17 The conductor, Aleksandr K. Glazunov, by all accounts set the
premiere up for failure from the minute the orchestra began to rehearse, learning the piece badly and interpreting it even more poorly. However, the Symphony was a leap forward in Rakhmaninov’s compositional technique: it was written on a larger scale, both literally and conceptually, than anything he had yet produced. Indeed, years later the composer stated that he “was convinced … that here I had discovered and opened up entirely new paths in music.”18
Russia’s elite (and perhaps most vicious) critic at the time, T͡Sezarʹ A. Ki͡ui, seemed to agree with Rakhmaninov, but had a very different opinion of those paths:
If there were a conservatoire in Hell, if one of its talented students were instructed to write a programme symphony on “The Seven Plagues of Egypt,” and if he were to
14 Norris, “Rachmaninoff,” Grove.
15Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 40, 24, xv.
16 Reisemann, Recollections, 72–81.
17 Norris, “Rachmaninoff,” Grove.
compose a symphony like Mr. Rachmaninoff’s, then he would have fulfilled his task brilliantly and delighted the inmates of Hell.19
This view was not uncommon among the Russian musical elite, for whom “to be a seeker of new paths, or innovator, was … a disgrace.”20 To be sure, the appalling inadequacy of the premiere
performance only worsened the dissatisfaction with the piece expressed by Ki͡ui and other critics, but their chief complaints concerned not the performance but the piece itself. Ki͡ui’s long career as a critic had earned him a reputation for being the epitome of musical conservativism, but even other, less conservative critics were unenthusiastic over Rakhmaninov’s “new paths.” The flowing and lyrical melodies for which he would become famous in the future had not yet emerged in full, but another trait, characteristic of his compositional style yet often overlooked when he is historically contextualized, was in full effect: a sort of “intra-tonal” chromaticism that, to the modern and less easily-offended ear, colors the piece as a distinctly Rakhmaninovian work.21 The piece’s now-appreciated merits only heighten the tragedy of its failed premiere;
Rakhmaninov later wrote that the “indescribable torture” of the performance left him a completely changed man, and the psychological turmoil that followed kept him from writing any music for nearly three years.
When he did return to composition, his “youth period” was left behind, and his “Russian period” commenced. In part due to his lack of compositional activity, his conducting career had begun in earnest with a brief stint at the Private Opera of Savva I. Mamontov, a famed
19Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 97.
20 Yasser, “Progressive Tendencies,” 17.
21 Ibid., 21. Yasser’s discussion of this trait is illuminating in what it reveals about Rakhmaninov’s relationship with
entrepreneur and philanthropist and extensive patron of the arts.22 Rakhmaninov would in later
years conduct full seasons at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, building on the experience he gained at the Private Opera; the other significant outcome of his time there was his introduction to the Great Russian bass Fëdor I. Shali͡apin, who became one of his closest friends and most important artistic influences.23
Rakhmaninov’s next foray into the realm of large-scale orchestral composition was more kindly received by the public. His First Piano Concerto (1891) had been a remarkable feat of maturity for a composer of only seventeen, yet he rarely played it in later years, even after heavily revising it during the Russian Civil War, transforming it from a “student piece” into a more coherent work.24 His Second Concerto, Op. 18, which premiered in 1901, was much more
popular—premiered with the composer at the piano and his cousin Aleksandr I. Ziloti on the podium, it was instantly embraced by the public and went on to be performed abroad, helping to bolster Rakhmaninov’s still-fledgling international reputation significantly.25 It later became a
staple of his concert repertoire, and likely owed its enduring popularity to the composer’s skill at the keyboard more than to the appeal of the piece itself, well-written as it may be.
During the first decade of the century Rakhmaninov wrote various small-scale works: a cello sonata, a cantata, two sets of songs, and a set of ten Preludes for solo piano.26 In 1904 he
conducted his first season at the Bolshoi Theater, returning the following year for a second; there he energized a somewhat stale program with strict discipline, practical changes, and brilliant interpretations.27 During his summers off, he completed work on two operas, Skupoĭ ryt͡sarʹ (The
22 Blumberg, “Savva Mamontov: Russian Entrepreneur and Philanthropist.”
23 Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 118.
24Ibid., 285–6.
25 Ibid., 125–6.
26 Norris, “Rachmaninoff,” Grove.
Miserly Knight) and Francesca da Rimini, Opp. 24 and 25 respectively, which were premiered during his tenure there.28 The performances were unfortunately overshadowed by the political
upheaval gripping Russia at the time, and for whatever reason, the two operas never entered common repertoire. They would be the only other contributions Rakhmaninov made to the genre besides Aleko; although he had plans for at least two more operas, they never materialized.29 He
did not return to the Bolshoi for the 1906 season, preferring instead to leave the political unrest behind and move to Dresden, where he found time and inspiration to write three major large-scale works. His Second Symphony, Op. 27, was completed in 1907 and premiered the following year; mercifully it was not subjected to the same treatment as the First, but after a successful premiere it was performed rarely, and even then, due to its significant length, only with cuts that the composer compared to “cutting a piece out of my heart.”30 This feeling is understandable—
perhaps the most impressive development in Rakhmaninov’s compositional style between the First Symphony and the Second is in the latter’s expansive and complex yet organic and meticulous structure, a feature ruined by excessive pruning.31 More obviously, the Second
Symphony also demonstrates an advance in Rakhmaninov’s power of lyrical expression, a chief Rakhmaninovian characteristic that was somewhat lacking in unlucky Opus 13.32
His next work was his Piano Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 28, published in 1907, a mammoth piece in terms of both scale and technique. Today it is rarely performed, due in part to its difficulty and length; even for performers who are up to the challenges it presents, it is a
28 Ibid., 168.
29Norris, “Rachmaninoff,” Grove.
30 Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 187.
31 Ibid., 186.
difficult work to program in a recital, something the composer apparently also found, incorporating it into his repertoire for only a few years before setting it aside forever.33
The final work published from his time in Dresden is one of his most popular works from the “Russian period,” or indeed his entire career: his symphonic poem, Ostrov mёrtvykh (The Isle of the Dead), Op. 29, which was premiered in April 1909.34 The years in Dresden had been
fruitful overall, but The Isle of the Dead in particular was hugely successful both as a new artistic achievement and a piece beloved by the public. The work has roots in a painting by Swiss artist Arnold Böcklin, but Rakhmaninov leaves the literal contents of the painting behind in order to explore his own thoughts on death and the afterlife—a theme that occupied his mind throughout much of his artistic life—and in its narrative the piece takes us through a cyclical narrative that follows the end of life. Like countless composers before him, he embodies this theme in The Isle of the Dead with the use of the Dies irae plainchant, a well-known part of the Requiem Mass (a reference he was to make again in future works).35 The Dies irae is first only subtly audible, but
at the piece’s height it competes with what the composer called the “life” theme in a powerfully metaphysical climax. It is in The Isle of the Dead that Rakhmaninov demonstrates most vividly his innate talent for evocation and effect, a trait that is shared by many of his more effective solo piano works.36 Of interest to us is the correlation between the success the piece found and the
freedom which the format of “symphonic poem” allowed the composer—while it surely shows Rakhmaninov’s skill for structure, its biggest strengths appear to be heightened by the lack of constraint which that format created. The Isle of the Dead still circulates in the concert repertoire today, a testament to the piece’s enduring popularity.
33Ibid., 194.
34 Norris, “Rachmaninoff,” Grove.
35 Boyd and Caldwell, “Dies irae,” Grove Music Online; Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 204–5.
After returning to Russia in April 1909, Rakhmaninov lived primarily at the family’s estate at Ivanovka, near Tambov, a place beloved by the composer and which had served as stimulus for much of his composition since his first visit there in the summer of 1890.37 There he
completed his Third Piano Concerto, Op. 30, which he first performed in New York City as part of a concert tour he had agreed to do there.38 While it did not gain the same recognition as the
Second Concerto during Rakhmaninov’s lifetime, it was still one of the cornerstones of the composer’s own concerts, particularly after his emigration, and nowadays it is regarded as highly as its predecessor, if not more so. The work builds on the Second Concerto’s successful formula of combining his trademark lyricism with superbly idiomatic piano virtuosity, and owes its modern place in the mainstream repertoire to Vladimir C. Gorovit͡s, whose skill brought the piece to a life beyond virtuosic impressiveness after Rakhmaninov’s death.39
In the summer of 1910 Rakhmaninov made use of his time at Ivanovka to compose a setting of the Liturgi͡a svi͡atogo Ioanna Zlatousta (The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom), an important rite in the Russian Orthodox Church.40 While it was deemed by ecclesiastical
authorities to be wholly unsuitable for use in the church, it is universally acknowledged to be a work of great beauty and musical integrity, marking a significant advance over previous settings and eclipsing those which came after.41 While the Liturgy was his largest undertaking of that
summer, he also found time to compose his second set of Preludes for solo piano. The following summer was less productive, due largely to the new commitments and obligations Rakhmaninov had taken on in managing the Ivanovka estate; however he did complete and publish his first set
37 Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 42.
38Ibid., 210; Norris, “Rachmaninoff,” Grove.
39 Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 216–7.
40 Ibid., 218.
of Études-tableaux (Study-Pictures), a term of his own invention, as well as continuing work on his sixth set of songs, which he completed the following summer.42
In December 1912 Rakhmaninov, exhausted from preparing and conducting a series of concerts for the Moscow Philharmonic Society, took his family to Switzerland where he rested for a month. From there the Rakhmaninovs went to Rome to stay for two months, where the composer completed perhaps his most successful “symphonic work” of the “Russian period,”
Kolokola (The Bells), Op. 35, which was premiered in Russia in 1913 to great acclaim.43 The
work found favor and recognition in Europe and America as well, its popularity only interrupted by the Great War (which created difficulties with obtaining scores outside of Russia). The work remained popular with the public in a way many of Rakhmaninov’s other works did not, such that it was one of the pieces on the program of his final concerts as a conductor years later in the United States.44 It is worth noting that although The Bells was called a choral symphony, and
even Rakhmaninov’s “Third Symphony” by the New York Times, Rakhmaninov himself did not really think of the piece as such.45 The most direct evidence is his actual Third Symphony,
written over two decades later; nowhere does Rakhmaninov indicate he thought of it as a “Fourth Symphony,” and it was never described thus. The programmatic aspect of The Bells, which portrays Edgar Allan Poe’s poem of the same name, also separates it stylistically from Rakhmaninov’s other symphonies. Again, the composer conveys a cyclical narrative that follows the path of life, with different bells representing each stage: the silver bells of youth, the golden marriage bells, the bronze alarm bells (here, warning of death), and the iron funeral bells.46 More
subtly, but perhaps most tellingly, the internal architecture of the piece is not that of a true
42 Ibid., 230; Norris, “Rachmaninoff,” Grove.
43Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 242; Norris, “Rachmaninoff,” Grove.
44 Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 247-8.
45 Aldrich, “Music: The Philadelphia Orchestra, Miss Winifred Byrd’s Recital.”
symphony; the movements are in strikingly disparate and unrelated keys, and the severe slow movement that ends the work is very different from the typical symphonic finale.47 Rakhmaninov
seems to have avoided subjecting the work to the stringencies of a strict classical form, and he cannot but have noticed the enthusiasm with which The Bells was met compared to his other, more traditionally structured works. Whether or not there is a causal link between the piece’s popularity and its structural freedom, the correlation must have left an impression.
The other major work to come out of Rakhmaninov’s time in Rome was his Second Piano Sonata, Op. 36, although he had only finished the sketches when his daughters’ illness forced the family to leave Italy in the spring of 1913, and would have to complete it at Ivanovka in the summer.48 In the autumn of that year he toured extensively, and he dedicated most of 1914
to pursuits other than composition, although he worked on a few projects that ended up coming to nothing.49 It was not until the first few months of 1915 that he wrote what became his next
published work, Vsenoshchnoe bdi͡enīe (The All-Night Vigil), Op. 37, in which he built on his success with the Liturgy to create one of the foremost works of the Russian Orthodox Church.50
It was premiered in March, finding immediate favor with critics and audiences alike, and it was only due to circumstance that the work did not become widely known in the composer’s lifetime —the ongoing war dampened its introduction to the public, and the attitude of the new state which emerged a few years later towards religion at large was a further blow to its success.51
1916 saw no major works—another set of songs and a second set of Études-tableaux
were all that Rakhmaninov could write at Ivanovka that summer, given the increasingly turbulent
47 Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 243. While it is true that this type of final movement has a precedence in the Russian
symphonic tradition with Chaĭkovskiĭ’s Sixth Symphony(Pathétique), it is worth noting that it is still unusual within the genre, particularly for Rakhmaninov compared to the finales he wrote for his other “true” symphonies.
48Ibid., 248.
49 Ibid., 251.
50 Ibid., 253.
political conditions in the Russian Empire—and by early 1917, the composer was already planning his exodus from the country.52 The last major activity he was to undertake in the
country was the revision of his First Piano Concerto; he extensively updated the orchestration, adapted the piano solo part better to suit his evolving harmonic language while leaving the structure and melody of his youthful muse largely untouched.53 The premiere of the reborn piece
would not take place, however, until 1919, when the composer would play it on one of his first post-emigration concerts in the United States. As the country of his birth collapsed, so too his “Russian period” came to an end.
Biography in Brief: Exile
Rakhmaninov’s experience of emigration was typical in many ways. He did not overtly telegraph his plans to leave, but the events of the Revolution left him no doubt that his family could not stay. Like many of his fellow aristocrats, his desire to leave Russia was frustrated by the Great War, and it was not until he was invited to perform a short tour in Scandinavia in November 1917 that he was able to realize it.54 While the tour offered very little financial compensation, the
legitimacy it lent to his request to leave the country was enough for him to accept the opportunity readily. The terms of his Bolshevik-issued visa were fairly strict, and did not permit the composer and his family to bring a great deal of luggage or money with them, a significant matter as it ensured that he would not be able support himself or his family in the immediate future with composition commissions alone. While in Sweden, Rakhmaninov received three separate offers to come to the United States—both as a conductor and a recitalist—and although
52 Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 262, 271, 276.
53 Ibid., 278.
he refused them all it showed him that the country held promise as a source of financial stability.55 The chief obstacle in his family’s relocation there was removed when fellow émigrés,
notably the former banker Aleksandr Kamenka, loaned or gifted funds for Rakhmaninov’s travel costs, and soon thereafter the family was en route to New York City, where the composer was welcomed by American admirers and his fellow exiles alike.56
Having arrived in the United States and cemented the reputation he had begun to establish in 1909, Rakhmaninov’s emigration was complete. So too were the changes in his life as a musician that his exile in part had wrought, the most significant of which was a reduction in new compositional activity. During the nearly eighteen years of his “Russian period,” Rakhmaninov completed and published twenty-nine works, including half a dozen large-scale pieces.57 By contrast, during his “American period” lasting twenty-five years, he wrote only six.
The most prominent factor contributing to this was his career as a touring concert pianist, one into which he felt in some ways forced by circumstance.58 Upon arriving in the United States,
Rakhmaninov devoted a great deal of time to expanding his piano repertoire, and his eventual celebrity here was rooted in his role as a sought-after and admired concert pianist; it was only during the restful summer months that he was able to complete his final compositions.
The first of the six “American period” works was written a full eight years after Rakhmaninov’s arrival in the United States. He had enjoyed great commercial success in his career as a concert pianist over seven seasons, but he wanted time to rest and compose; to this end, he spent much of 1926, first in New York and then in Dresden, completing his Fourth Piano Concerto, Op. 40.59 Evidence suggests that he had been planning the piece for nearly thirteen
55 Norris, “Rachmaninoff,” Grove.
56Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 292.
57 Norris, “Rachmaninoff,” Grove.
58 Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 291.
years, which in one way explains its significant length compared to his earlier three.60 After the
composer’s performance in March 1927 (at which he also conducted his Three Russian Songs, Op. 41), the Fourth Concerto was trashed by critics and shrugged at by audiences, disliked by the former for being an example of Rakhmaninov’s inability to change his compositional style and by the latter for how much they perceived he had indeed changed it.61 This is an attitude that he
would continue to encounter in the United States, particularly from critics.
The grueling tour circuit kept Rakhmaninov from composing for another four years. Finally in the summer of 1931, while staying at a villa in France, he wrote the only work for solo piano of the “American period,” a set of variations on a theme which he incorrectly attributed to Arcangelo Corelli (Op. 42).62 The composer’s unhappy state at the time leaves its mark on the
work, which is devoid of the powerfully sentimental emotion so common in his music; this disenchantment only heightens the odd pairing of Baroque melody and ornamentation with Romantic harmony and style.63 Rakhmaninov himself felt little sympathy for the work, and only
played it in concert for a few years before abandoning it.64
Several circumstances aligned to return the spark to Rakhmaninov’s composing. While in France in 1930, he had purchased a plot of land in Switzerland on the shores of Lake Lucerne, deciding to build there a villa which he named Senar, from SErgeĭ and NAtali͡a Rakhmaninov. While he did not attempt to replicate Ivanovka exactly, his goal was clearly to evoke the nature-surrounded quietude which had so stimulated composition at the old estate.65 After the villa’s
60 Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 297, 299.
61 Ibid., 299–300, 308.
62Ibid., 315.
63 Ibid., 316–17.
64 Ibid., 320.
65Norris, “Rachmaninoff,” Grove. This further belies the conception of Rakhmaninov as a pure and entrenched
completion in 1934, Rakhmaninov was excited to make use of his new haven (where he had mused in typically morbid fashion to Sofʹi͡a that he hoped he might one day be buried), particularly the new private studio and its complimentary grand piano, courtesy of Steinway.66
He was further gratified by word that some of his more recent works had recently been performed in the Soviet Union to great acclaim; in August he wrote Sofʹi͡a to announce the fruit of his much improved morale:
The work is quite a large one and I finished it only yesterday, late in the evening. But this morning my first task has been to write to you. The piece I have completed is written for piano and orchestra and is about 20–25 minutes long. But it is not a “concerto,” and its
name is “Symphonic Variations on a Theme of Paganini.”67
The piece only later gained the name by which we know it today, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43, by which it is known today as one of Rakhmaninov’s most beloved pieces. The theme on which it is based is from the virtuoso violinist’s Caprice No. 24, a piece famous not only in its own right as a fiendishly difficult work but also for its use by dozens of composers in works spanning era and genre. The most prominent adaptations of the caprice are the theme-and-variations settings of Franz Liszt (1840), Johannes Brahms (1866), Witold Lutosławski (1941), and of course Rakhmaninov’s own. While his setting was by his own admission not a concerto, it is far from a typically virtuosic yet superficial theme and variations. The variations themselves, twenty-four in total, manifest themselves in three movement-like groups: a faster opening movement, a slower middle one, and a grandly building finale. The overarching structure of the piece is powerful in its coherence and ingenuity, and the demands the piece places on the pianist seem to have stretched even the considerable abilities of Rakhmaninov
66 Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 28, 325.
himself.68 Again as with The Isle of the Dead and The Bells, the composer seems to have
benefitted from shedding the constraints of traditional form in favor of an idea that excited him more as an artist. Certainly the adoring public found the result pleasing.
The success of the Rhapsody was exciting to Rakhmaninov, as was his new artistic refuge at Senar. His good mood carried him through the next two summers, and in 1936 he wrote to Sofʹi͡a again informing her of the completion of another work—his Third Symphony, Op. 44, a work that does not mask the nearly three decades separating it from the composer’s Second and includes various changes that further evidence Rakhmaninov’s continuing evolution as a composer.69 The most obvious of these departures from tradition is the symphony’s having only
three movements, similar to the middle two concertos, but no less developed is its even more efficient, coherent, and organic structure: no heart-rending cuts like those that so bedeviled the Second Symphony were applied to the Third. Most significantly, Rakhmaninov’s harmonic language in this symphony is more incisive and mercurial than in his previous works, to such an extent that Nikolaĭ K. Metner (a longtime friend from Rakhmaninov’s conservatoire days whose aesthetics usually closely matched his own) professed his dislike for the piece’s “modernism.”70
The audience seemed to feel likewise: they perhaps expected something more akin to the heights of Romanticism found in the Rhapsody, but they received a sophisticated work that took the composer’s artistry to new harmonic places to which they had not wanted to go. The critics on the other hand echoed their earlier complaints of Rakhmaninov’s sterile nostalgia, accusing him of being stuck in a bygone era. Despite the vitriol, he remained positive in his view of the work:
68 Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 331.
69 Ibid., 333.
70 Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 334. Not unlike Rakhmaninov himself, although to a greater extent, Metner professed an
Personally, I’m firmly convinced that it is a good work. But ... sometimes composers are mistaken too! Be that as it may, I am holding to my opinion so far.71
Conclusion
Over the course of his life Rakhmaninov’s compositional efforts were often frustrated by interruptions ranging from lasting traumas to logistical impracticalities. The psychological damage of the catastrophe of the First Symphony: the upheaval of emigration and exile; the constantly draining rigors of concert touring; the anti-nostalgic barbs of the critics—all these at various points in his life prevented him from the aspect of his musical career he found most invigorating. His identity as a musician was centered in composition, and at his best he expressed that identity in a manner that was distinct in its blend of “traditional” Romantic harmonic language and expression with “modern” experiments with chromaticism, form, and structure. It seems that the inability of the critical establishment to look past their desire to define Rakhmaninov—as a nationalist informed by exile, as a Romantic informed by nostalgia, as a traditionalist informed by anti-modernism—constantly colored their appraisal of his work, and this in turn impacted Rakhmaninov’s expression in his subsequent compositions. In the next chapter, I will be examining his final composition in more detail, in order to explore this relationship further and to discuss what it means for our understanding of Rakhmaninov’s place in the broader narrative of music history.
Chapter 2: The Symphonic Dances (Op. 45) Examined
Rakhmaninov’s final piece functions here as a lens through which to view his musical career in the United States. This offers a vital perspective on how his exile affected him as a composer and, more importantly, how he responded to those effects through his expression of identity, all of which tie in to the way he is incorporated into (or left out of) the historical narrative of music. The Symphonic Dances are often described as a summation of Rakhmaninov’s compositional career, but why exactly is that?72 If that idea of creative nostalgia is warranted, what might it say
about Rakhmaninov’s response to exile? How does his identity as an exile, in turn, affect the piece itself and its reception? In particular, how does his identity, as it differs from that formed by other exiles, shape the piece? In order to shed light on these questions, this chapter will examine the Dances, first in its historical context, then within the score itself.
History and Context
In 1939 the Rakhmaninovs spent what was to be the composer’s last summer at Senar. That summer held ominous portent for Europe and the world, but was also a trying year for Rakhmaninov himself: he was worried about his daughter, living near Paris with her French husband, who was enlisted in the French Army; he was tired of touring with all its rigors, demanding as they were on a man of sixty-six years; and he was particularly dejected by his lack of compositional inspiration, having written no new music since his Third Symphony in 1936.73
In an August letter to Sofʹi͡a he mused that he might never compose again, and admitted that
72 Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 25.
acknowledging that he had aged had not come easily to him.74 Later that month, the beginning of
the concert season drew the family back to the United States, with their fortuitous departure coming mere days before the war officially broke out; Rakhmaninov never returned to the Continent.75
Back in the States, despite not composing, Rakhmaninov busily devoted his creative energies to other projects. The Philadelphia Orchestra gave a “Rachmaninoff Cycle” of works from the composer’s entire career in three concerts, the last of which featured Rakhmaninov as the conductor. He also recorded several albums with the orchestra, as well as one of his own works for solo piano, revising some of the earliest pieces he played during those recording sessions.76 When the concert season drew to a close in May 1940, Rakhmaninov and his family
could not return as they had in previous summers to Europe, where the Wehrmacht was just beginning to march west. They instead retired in July (after Rakhmaninov underwent a minor operation) to the Honeyman Estate near Huntington, Long Island, where several of the composer’s émigré intellectual friends also lived: Mikhail M. and Vera P. Fokin, Vladimir C. and Wanda G. T. Gorovit͡s, Evgeniĭ I. Somov, and Aleksandr V. Greĭner.77 It was there, in the
seclusion and quiet that Rakhmaninov always needed to compose, that the Symphonic Dances
began to take shape.
And take shape they did, quickly. Where the Third Symphony had taken him two full summers to complete, the Dances were completed at least by 17 August, since on the 21st Rakhmaninov wrote to Eugene Ormandy of the Philadelphia Orchestra to tell him of its completion:78
74 Rakhmaninov, to Sof’i͡a A. Satina, 3 August 1939, Letter, Library of Congress, Sergei Rachmaninoff Collection.
75Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 346. 76 Ibid.
77 Ibid., 347; Steinberg, “Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances,” Program notes, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.
Last week I finished a new symphonic piece, which I naturally want to give first to you and your orchestra. It is called “Fantastic Dances.” I shall now begin the orchestration. Unfortunately my concert tour begins October 14th. I shall have to do a great deal of practice and I don’t know whether I’ll be able to finish the orchestration by November. I would be very glad if, upon your return, you would drop over to our place. I would like to play the piece for you.79
It was not until he wrote Ormandy again on the 28 August that Rakhmaninov referred to the dances as “symphonic.” He later joked in an interview that they “should have been called just ‘Dances’ … but I was afraid people would think I had written dance music for jazz orchestra. They would think Rachmaninoff now is spoiled in the head.”80 Even if he had begun on the
Dances before settling in at Honeyman (doubtful, given his lifelong need for complete privacy in order to compose), he could not have begun the work of writing them before the concert season’s end in May, leaving eleven weeks before their completion in August. More likely, he could not have started any serious work on writing the piece before arriving at the estate around the beginning of July, and would have had to do the bulk of the composing in less than six weeks.81
The inspiration that gave rise to the piece is further evidenced by what we can ascertain about his psychological and emotional state. Even when still in Russia, Rakhmaninov wrote best when in good spirits, and it was particularly true during the “American period.” The Fourth Concerto was cobbled together from material written over the course of thirteen years, and its structure suffered as a result, by the composer’s own admission.82 The Variations on a Theme of
79 Rakhmaninov, To Mr. Eugene Ormandy, 21 August 1940, Letter, from Library of Congress, Sergei Rachmaninoff
Collection.
80 Rakhmaninov, To Mr. Eugene Ormandy, 28 August 1940, Letter, from Library of Congress, Sergei Rachmaninoff
Collection; Elliot, “Rachmaninoff Puts Last Touch to New Opus,” New York World-Telegram.
81 Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 347.
Corelli were written in the midst of a period of unhappiness that culminated with a ban on Rakhmaninov’s music in his homeland, resulting in artistic lethargy and a piece with which neither the composer nor the public were enamored. The Rhapsody, however, was written in the freshly-constructed studio at Senar, reminiscent of the idyllic environment at Ivanovka that had so inspired Rakhmaninov’s muse back in Russia. Following the success of that piece, the Third Symphony was written in the same environs, and even though it was embraced with considerably less warmth than the Rhapsody, Rakhmaninov’s own feelings about the work seem to have been buoyed by the good spirits that accompanied its composition. It is worth noting that while the fame and fortune he had found in the United States (and the West at large) as a concert pianist was of great financial benefit to his family, he often expressed, both overtly and subtly, his dissatisfaction at that career’s drawbacks, particularly at the toll it took on his health and the fatigue it induced, both of which prevented him from composing.83 Only in his summer escapes
to Europe did he seem most happy, and thus only there did he compose.
At least, this was true until the Symphonic Dances. The only piece the composer ever wrote in the United States came about in pleasant enough yet unfamiliar surroundings, amidst the plunge of Europe into another world war. During that summer the composer was recovering from health problems, particularly the minor operation in May, and was constantly worried about his daughter’s situation in wartime France.84 Even looking beyond these inauspicious
circumstances, his anxieties—about the Third Symphony’s tepid response, about his absent muse, about old age and death—all would lead us to expect another depressive period, fallow and frustrated. Yet in spite of this the Dances were completed in short score more quickly than any of the other large-scale works written during his exile. He finished the orchestration of the
83Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 345. This is but one of many examples of Rakhmaninov’s gentle but unambiguous
complaints.
first two movements between his August letters to Ormandy and the beginning of touring season in October, and Rakhmaninov was evidently excited enough about the work’s prospects that he orchestrated the third movement on the road, despite the strain that we know touring put on him. After the third movement was complete, he corrected proofs from his hotel rooms, delivering the complete score and parts by the 29th of that month, in plenty of time for the Philadelphia
Orchestra to begin rehearsals for a New Year premiere.85 Whatever “spark” Rakhmaninov feared
he had lost seems to have emphatically returned for his unlikely “swan song,” and it is this remarkable context that makes this piece so advantageous for analysis in the context of this thesis.
The premiere of the Symphonic Dances took place on 3 January 1941. Two additional performances followed on the 4th and 6th. The piece met with enthusiastic reception in Philadelphia, and an only slightly less fervent response in New York a few weeks later. The morning after the Carnegie Hall performance found Francis Perkins writing in the New York Herald Tribune that Rakhmaninov had received a “prolonged” standing ovation, and that the composer “seemed to think well of the performance.”86 The piece went on to be played by
several of the country’s major orchestras before the composer’s death in 1943: the Chicago Symphony, in October 1941; the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, in January 1942; the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, in November of the same year; and the New York Philharmonic, a few weeks later in December.87 Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra toured
the piece as well, most notably playing it during a large festival in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in May
85 McCombs, “Notes on the Program,” Program notes, Philadelphia Orchestra, from Library of Congress, Sergei
Rachmaninoff Collection; Steinberg, “Symphonic Dances.”
86 McCombs, “Notes on the Program;” Perkins, “Rachmaninoff Dances Heard in Local Debut.”
87 Huscher, “Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances,” Program notes, Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Bentley, “Premiere
1942.88 According to Sofʹi͡a, it was Rakhmaninov’s favorite composition, and he remained proud
of it until his death just over two years after its premiere.89
Movement I: Non allegro
The first of the Dances begins with a serious and resolute march-like theme planted in C minor. The ternary-form movement moves from there to a slower section in which the composer shows his great talent for long and flowing melismatic melody before returning to the more upbeat “A” section, ending with an extended coda.
The Dances are representative of the peak of Rakhmaninov’s mature compositional style, and this march firmly sets up that representation, showing the height of his skill as a composer. The theme of the march-like section is built from a deceptively simple building block, a descending arpeggio introduced first by solo woodwind instruments (Ex. 3-1).
88 Callaghan, “Beethoven’s Ninth Brings May Festival to End.”
The arpeggio is later turned upside down to open the middle section’s elegant melody (Ex. 3-2). It continues to pop up throughout the movement’s texture, from melodic lines to accompanying figures and even harmonic progressions. The intricacy Rakhmaninov achieves with this modest motive is a remarkable demonstration of his mastery of the craft, and the complexity and depth he attains with such elementary materials fully equals, if not surpasses, the level achieved by his
symphonies.
Notably, though, Rakhmaninov does not concern himself with the constraints of sonata form, as is tradition in a symphony—one of the reasons, perhaps, that he decided to write three dances in place of the “fourth symphony” some claim the piece represents.90 This is not because
he was incapable of doing so—with three symphonies to his name, there seems to be no reason he could not have shaped the musical ideas present in the dances into a symphonic form. Yet he chose not to do so. Perhaps this is due to the reception received by his earlier symphonic works, both from the critics and the public. The case of the First Symphony needs no further explication; the Second Symphony was initially more successful, but soured after the indignities of neglect and trimming; the Third Symphony, most fresh on his mind, had been critically panned and publically disregarded. In contrast to those three works, his other large-scale works for orchestra—The Isle of the Dead and The Bells—were some of his most enduringly popular
works, as well as being artistic achievements in their own right. In both of those works, Rakhmaninov was free from constraint, creating structures and expressions as he saw fit, and both pieces surely benefitted from that freedom. So, too, did the Symphonic Dances.
Rakhmaninov approached the piece in a fervor—recall the speed with which it was translated from thought to score—and rather than concerning himself with particulars of form, he wrote the music in what form he saw fit, in this case a simple ternary form for each movement that evokes a cyclical narrative (another theme common to Rakhmaninov’s music, particularly
The Isle of the Dead, The Bells, and the Rhapsody). This seems to contradict a criticism often leveled against him: that he was an anachronism, having nothing to say that had not been said before, no longer relevant in the time of Stravinskiĭ and Schoenberg. But even the little details push against efforts to relegate the composer to a backwards-looking nostalgia: consider the middle section of the march, in which Rakhmaninov takes the sweeping melody, so characteristic of his masterful lyricism, and gives it to the saxophone, of all instruments. He consulted Robert Russell Bennett (of Broadway orchestration fame) for assistance in writing idiomatically for an instrument which he had never used before, and which, as far as can be told, he had only rarely seen or heard—hardly the mark of someone incapable of keeping with the times.91
At the same time as the Dances show Rakhmaninov as a modernist of a sort, they too show his distinct Russianness, pure and unadulterated. The lyrical middle section of the first dance typifies this: the melody, so Rakhmaninovesque in character, is Russian to the core. Apart from the arpeggio that references the movement’s main theme, it is flowing and stepwise and largely free of large intervals, in accordance with the rules of Russian Orthodox polyphony.92
91 Keller, “Symphonic Dances, op. 45,” Program notes, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
The brooding melancholy that infuses the movement, particularly in the transition from the middle section back to the march, may be seen as “Russian” in character, too, though as many commentators have said, it is also a classic Rakhmaninovian trait as well. As Rakhmaninov was arguably the chief representative of Russian music in the American public eye, the conflation of the two is perhaps unsurprising. With war on everyone’s mind, the sandwiching of the beautifully melancholic section between gravely militaristic ones takes on a poignant undertone, but Rakhmaninov does not end on a grave or melancholy note.
As the restatement of the A section comes to a close, Rakhmaninov surprises us in the extended coda with a reference that is at once conspicuous and unobtrusive. After the disastrous premiere of his First Symphony in 1897, Rakhmaninov had sealed the score and kept it locked away until he fled the country in 1918, at which time he left it along with many other manuscripts in the care of Sofʹi͡a, who carefully kept them until her own emigration three years later. At that point she entrusted the contents of Rakhmaninov’s desk to a faithful housekeeper, upon whose death in 1925 the manuscripts became state property and the autograph of the First Symphony disappeared from history.93 In 1940, as far as Rakhmaninov knew, the piece would
never be heard again. Knowing this, observe the motto of the symphony in Example 3-3.
93 Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 103. As fortune would have it, the First Symphony was not lost. In 1945 a set of parts
Now compare it with the melody introduced in the coda of the first symphonic dance (Ex. 3-4). Clearly, Rakhmaninov is quoting his own work—the shift from minor to major is the only difference between the two melodies as they are first stated. Far more interesting is that the quotation is essentially only for himself—no one in his American audience had ever heard the First Symphony, and even when the Dances were heard by some who may have been at that fateful premiere, it is likely that only someone with an exceptional memory—like Rakhmaninov
Movement II: Andante con moto (tempo di valse)
The second Dance is marked as a waltz, but this is no Straussian light music. The waltz meter itself is absent; rather than being in 3/4, it constantly slips between 3/8, 6/8, and 9/8. The waltz is evoked by the oompah-pah accompaniment typical to the genre, but Rakhmaninov seems to be purposefully turning the waltz on its head. As with the first, the second movement is written in ternary form: brooding waltz-yet-not-a-waltz sections bookend a lyrical romance in the middle. The first characteristic of note comes at m. 19, when a solo violin enters with a very distinctive repeated figure, shown in Example 3-5. This is an example of an influence of Rakhmaninov’s
that has yet to make an obvious appearance in the Dances, and one that was in general less common in his music. Like many Russians before the Revolution, he grew up with the sounds of two very different yet quintessentially “Russian” musics in his ear: that of Russian Orthodoxy (about the bells and chants of which more anon) and that of the Ruska Roma.94 Rakhmaninov’s
earliest success, his one-act graduation opera Aleko, had its libretto drawn from Pushkin’s narrative poem T͡Sygany, a tale of jealousy and murder that takes place in a Romani camp.95 In
composing the opera Rakhmaninov at various times borrows melodies from Romani songs, with
94 More commonly, the members of the various Romani peoples are known in English as “gypsies,” but I will avoid
using this term since it is considered an ethnic slur.
which he was familiar thanks to that community’s presence in Moscow.96 He also at times uses
distinct harmonic language, as many Russian composers did, that draws on the traditions of Romani folk music, and by extension the folk music of the Russian peasantry at large. Several of Rakhmaninov’s early works directly include elements of Romani influences: in his First Piano Concerto, the blistering dance motion of the finale clearly evokes the excitement and exultation of Romani dance; his Opus 12, Caprice bohémien, is a fantasy on a Romani theme; the first symphony includes several melodies of a Romani bent.97 In later works Romani influence is seen
in more refined expression, rather than deliberate reference—the pathos of Romani folk song became subsumed by the composer’s general reputation for melancholy; he employed the particular melodic arc of Romani songs, culminating molto espressivo in a “sob,” in his most tragic and emotive melodies; in the finales of many of his large-scale works, he would create momentum and drama through the energy of Romani dance. The violin solo here in the second dance is one of these more subtle expressions, a simple folk-like figure that helps to frame the off-kilter waltz. The Romani connection is further emphasized in a highly dramatic and expressive quasi-cadenza marking a transition between segments, shown below in Example 3-6.
The “sobbing” motion of the violin’s descending line, combined with the soloistic and improvisatory feel, lends the melody an air that is distinctly Romani in character. This is the
96 Martyn, Rachmaninoff, 30, 60.
most direct example of the influence, although the entirety of the Symphonic Dances is dotted with more subtle instances of such refined expressions mentioned above. The movements’ very nature as dances invites Rakhmaninov to employ them to create energy and drama. However, the violin solo as a whole is not simply a nostalgic Romani-flavored insertion, though; the triplets in its first half build on figures played by the flutes and clarinets in earlier bars to foreshadow the decorative figures that accompany the first section’s conclusive swell (and the restatement in the third section), while the ascent and descent in the second half of the solo contain the same intervals that form the distinctive shape of section’s main theme—one introduced when the violin hands off the baton to the English horn in m. 31.
The Romani connection to Rakhmaninov’s musical past, however, is perhaps overshadowed by the ways that the second movement is representative of his musical present. Recall my discussion of Rakhmaninov’s progressive work in harmony and chromaticism in the previous chapter; nowhere in the Symphonic Dances is that progressiveness more evident than in the contortions of the non-waltz, which shows off the composer’s “intra-tonal chromaticism” at its height. This chromaticism is in some respects a natural continuation of the composer’s earlier development of his unique voice, but even more fascinating is the way in which the second movement hints at a Rakhmaninov who is less cut off from his musical surroundings than his reputation would suggest.
In 1935, in the midst of working on his monumental opera Lulu, the influential Viennese serialist Alban Berg wrote a Violin Concerto that turned out to be the last work he completed before his untimely death in December of that year.98 The concerto was brought to the United
States by the violinist who had commissioned it, Louis Krasner, who performed it in November 1938 with none other than Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra—Rakhmaninov’s
