Program notes to a colossal Sonata.
I. RACHMANINOFF
In 1906, the 33-year-old Sergei Rachmaninoff abandoned his only stable sources of income - conductor at the Bolshoi Opera Theatre and professor at two small music colleges - to bring his family to Dresden, Germany, where he would attempt to compose full time. This daring move was probably rationalized by the scale of the 1905 Russian Revolution, which brought in a political environment hostile to landed gentry like Rachmaninoff. Leaving a country that was changing irrevocably is dramatic but understandable. But tying his fortune to composition was an uncertain gamble and impulsive risk.
Rachmaninoff as teenager.
It’s only fair to say Rachmaninoff’s career as a composer, up to that point, was checkered. On one hand, his one-act opera Aleko, composed while he was still a student at Moscow Conservatory, earned a string of performances at the Bolshoi and the praise of Tchaikovsky and Chaliapin. On the other hand, his infamous Prelude in c# minor was foolishly sold for 50 rubles, and made him no profit for the rest of his life. Yes, he had achieved the spectacular success of his Second Piano Concerto, but only after the complete failure of his First Symphony sent him into a three-year depressive drought.
The ability to create a sensation was tempered by a less than disciplined business sense, it would seem, and so the choice Rachmaninoff made, to leave behind stable income for composing, would necessarily be pivotal. It was surely more than the Revolution that led to that decision - an inner sense of confidence and inspiration must have been there as well, demanding a fuller concentration and longer hours. The ideas were overflowing and in Dresden Rachmaninoff wrote two of his most beloved orchestral works, the Second Symphony and the tone-poem The Isle of the Dead.
But perhaps even more importantly, in 1909, while still in Dresden, Rachmaninoff received an offer to tour the United States as pianist, conductor, and of course composer. For this tour, he started composing two piano works, side-by-side: the Third Piano Concerto, and the First Piano Sonata, op.28.
Overall, Rachmaninoff gave almost thirty performances in the 1909-10 season in the US. He performed the Sonata in all of his solo concerts, which happened in cities such as New York and Chicago, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, as well as smaller venues like Smith College in Northampton, MA. He performed the Third Concerto many times but twice with the New York Philharmonic, the second time conducted by Gustav Mahler. The tour was a huge success that cemented his reputation first and foremost as a pianist, which is how he was able to permanently relocate to the States in 1918.
II. THE SONATA
The Sonata genre, like the Symphony, presents a dreadful test to its aspiring creators. Because the repertoire of orchestras and pianists is made up primarily of those Classical masterpieces that were practically carved in marble by 1910, the pressure is intense for a new Sonata or Symphony to deliver - to not only have musical impact, but to push further than anything that came before it and to have something new to say. At the same time, the temptation of the challenge is an enticing one for ambitious composers. It could lead to huge failures, like Rachmaninoff’s own First Symphony, or to immense success.
Rachmaninoff in 1909.
Clearly the pressure got to Rachmaninoff concerning his First Piano Sonata. While working on it in Dresden, he went all the way back to Russia to play it for a critical group, made up of theorists, composers and pianists. Nikolai Medtner and others advised him to make certain cuts, and he excised at least 110 bars out of this 1,000 bar composition. Unlike the later Second Sonata, which exists in three authentic versions (Horowitz’s version was approved by Rachmaninoff), the material cut out of this piece has been lost to history, and the final product, opus 28, is the last word. There is no other version.
With the cut of those 110 bars, the length of the Sonata went from a staggering 50 minutes to a merely daunting 40 minutes. It is surely the length that prevents this work from being known in our hyper-unfocused times. A close look at the music will reveal a vast landscape of organized form, a vital proliferation of melody, a pianism demanding Herculean labor but promising godly rewards, and a first-class musical ear, attuned to the most delicate arabesque as well as to the most explosive climax.
Rachmaninoff often composed with a declared or hidden literary agenda (like Chopin) and the Sonata is typical in that sense. In a letter to a friend, he described a plan based on three characters from Goethe’s Faust: the first movement suggesting the alchemist Dr Faust and his uncertain state of mind, searching deeper and deeper for universal knowledge to the brink of ruination of his eternal soul; the second movement the illicit romance of Gretchen, engineered by the Devil; and the third movement Mephistopheles, the Devil himself, in control of a wild gallop to a witch’s Sabbath.
This program was never publicized, notated in the score, or promoted in any way. It gives a certain framework to understanding this huge piece, offering a chance of imagery for the non-stop melodic and virtuosic invention. But in my opinion, the development of the music eventually left the initial inspiration behind, and took on a life of its own.
It might be more profitable to think of this Sonata in the tradition of the great Russian novel. Rachmaninoff knew Tolstoy, incidentally, and played for him (receiving harsh critiques). In novels like War and Peace, Anna Karenina, or Dostoesvsky’s Brothers Karamzov, dozens of characters populate the landscape, years go by in the plot, but everything is governed by a larger idea; every character has their place in a structural fate. The development of these characters and their relations, and the events leading up to their ultimate fates, necessitated a length equal to the intensity of expression invested in them.
So it is, I would argue, with the First Sonata. The themes proliferate like characters in a Russian novel; their changes happen alongside epic musical events, creating a sense of conflict and fate; and structurally their placement is pre-determined: even in a discrete three movement layout, the culmination of all of the themes happens in the third movement’s apotheosis.
That apotheosis is the emergence of the actual theme that has been determining events - the symbolic hand of Mephistopheles - from which I suspect all the previous themes can be related - a theme Rachmaninoff did not write himself but was haunted by his entire life - the Dies Irae.
III. DIES IRAE
An entire archaeological survey could be conducted on the layers of historical debris covering the Dies Irae. What are the important points? First and foremost, it began as a poem, not music, a liturgical poem intended to function as a “sequence” - an intonation before the Gospel in a Mass. More specifically, it is an apocalyptic poem, probably inspired by Zephaniah 1:15-16. There are nineteen verses, but the first lines are the most relevant:
Dies irae, dies illa
Solvet saeclum in favilla.
(Day of wrath, that day of judgment,
Will dissolve the world in ashes.)
In the murky history of Roman Catholic chant, with its countless anonymous monks writing and compiling poetry and music, the poem was composed probably in the 1200’s and the chant tone shortly thereafter. It is not “Gregorian” technically since that refers to chants of the 900’s, but it is in that tradition, notated in simple neumes on a four-line staff:
The chant in its original notation.
This arresting musical motif, intoned in the Dorian mode, is captivating for many reasons. First, in its granite-like solidity, with almost no melismas or fanciful ornamentation typical to Gregorian chant (probably due to its later composition, it reflected a more “modern” mindset). Secondly, a foreboding combination of modal half-steps and whole-steps give it an appeal to our own modern ears, as we hear predominantly minor thirds and whole steps in our pop music, with almost no leading tones. Thirdly, its tight construction within the interval of a fifth, as opposed to the wide ranges offered by melismas. Although admittedly this is the smallest excerpt of a very long chant, this opening material has been the subject of countless composers’ obsessions.
Rachmaninoff in 1940.
Berlioz used it in his own witch’s Sabbath of the Symphonie Fantastique, as well as in his Requiem; Liszt used it for a fabulous piano concerto-variations piece he called Totentanz (Dance of Death); Mahler, Mussorgsky, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, and so many others were intrigued by its musical possibilities.
No composer, though, obsessed over the Dies Irae more than Rachmaninoff. It appears as a motif in works stretching his entire career, from the First Symphony in 1895 to the Symphonic Dances in 1940. With Rachmaninoff, this ancient theme traversed still more diverse worlds - Tsarist Russia all the way to capitalist America. He used it, or strongly hinted at it, in literally dozens of works.
The Dies Irae is central to the First Piano Sonata. While it only emerges explicitly in the third movement, at the apotheosis, I believe that every theme is informed by its features, or put in a poetic way, its terrible message lurks behind every character in this novelistic Sonata. Its shape determines the boundaries for the melodic ideas in the piece, and that is why the emergence of the actual theme in the third movement’s Totentanz feels so exhilarating - the ghost finally becomes real.
Before going into some melodic analyses, it should be pointed out that Rachmaninoff actually uses a kind of inversion of the chant. Considered stepwise, the original melody consists of a half-step (HS) followed by two whole-steps (WS) (ex.1a). The inversion here is two whole-steps followed by a half-step (ex.1b). Heard in the same Dorian mode, they can also be layered on top of each other (ex.1c) :
Possibly he used this inversion rather than the original so he wasn’t trapped in Dorian mode for the entire piece - a sharp leading tone would spoil the original version, but harmonize with the inversion. That said, the powerful whole-steps are central to many of the themes in the Sonata.
The main idea that he started with, though, was the limited range of the melody, this portion captured within the interval of a fifth. A pure open fifth is what begins the journey of this piece (ex.2a), and in the first movement, these open fifths always return at pivotal points, and finally are heard from the distance at the very end of the movement (ex.2b):
The opening of the First Movement.
The ending of the First Movement.
Some commentators have likened the fifth to the questioning state of Dr Faust’s mind - at once a definitive interval yet neither major or minor. Again that is imagery that could be helpful in narrating the music, but the determinative factor seems to be the chant rather than the story. The borders of the fifth return as well in the second and third movements and become established as a strong idea.
Another basic idea he extracted was the simple but striking combination of whole- and half-steps. After the opening meditation on the open fifth, we hear a chorale-style theme, offset in a different tempo, that will be cyclical to the whole work. It happens to follow the intervallic content of the inverted Dies Irae:
Every odd bar in the soprano increases the upwards reaching interval.
Also featured is the rising and expanding interval within the phrase in the soprano, from a third, to a fourth, to a fifth, seen in the odd bars of ex.3, which is immediately taken up and developed as a thematic group:
Even the next theme, heard in a confusing flurry of notes, can be said to be derived from the intervals of the Dies Irae. While the opening material asserted the power of the fifth and the whole step, this theme is written entirely in half-steps:
This tortured theme is in all half-steps with an octave displacement.
By contrast, the official “second theme” of the Sonata form is practically static, and alternates whole and half-step when it changes at all:
The second theme is reminiscent of Orthodox chant.
The principle of intervallic content is what Rachmaninoff used to achieve effective contrast but also incredibly layered organicism (unity through diversity, as Medtner called it). For example, the expanding interval from the chorale theme reaches fruition - the fifth - at the climax of the first movement:
The tenor’s melody paves the way for the second movement romance.
And then in turn becomes the main theme of the second movement:
The soprano picks up the tenor melody from ex.7.
In the third movement, the expanding interval idea is first heard as a fanfare, precipitating the hellish gallop:
Now the expanding intervals descend.
And the same shape that Rachmaninoff used in ex.4 becomes a ghostly apparition that twice interrupts the forward drive of the music, and creates an astonishingly hypnotic effect:
This melody is derived from ex.3 and ex.4 from the first movement.
Nikolai Dahl.
Incidentally, Rachmaninoff’s own experience with hypnosis is one of the most famous anecdotes in music history. Creatively destroyed after the epic failure of his First Symphony, he eventually visited a professional hypnotist - Nikolai Dahl - and afterwards, in a fury, was able to compose again - his Second Piano Concerto, dedicated to Dahl himself.
Could it be a coincidence that the rock-a-bye music of ghostly apparition - like a pocketwatch swaying back and forth - precedes the two furious outbursts of the explicit Dies Irae tune? Lulled to a somnolent complacency, both times, the music, from the quietest depths, begins a terrifying crescendo that leads to the chant tolled out as if on giant church bells. The first event happens halfway through the giant third movement, marking the midpoint and the beginning of the second tableau:
Rachmaninoff’s inverted Dies Irae tolled out in the lowest piano register.
At the end of the movement, the theme is repeated several times in increasing alarm - and virtuosity - over the space of some forty bars.
The intonation of the Dies Irae is not just the climax of the third movement, but the culmination of the entire piece. Every idea - I believe - is connected to it, spiritually or materially, and those ideas all find their fulfillment in the cataclysmic final pages.
- Nathan Carterette