Miscellaneous solo piano compositions (Rachmaninoff)

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...

produced a number of solo piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

pieces that were either lost, unpublished, or not assigned an opus number

Opus number

An Opus number , pl. opera and opuses, abbreviated, sing. Op. and pl. Opp. refers to a number generally assigned by composers to an individual composition or set of compositions on publication, to help identify their works...

. While often disregarded in the concert repertoire, they are nevertheless part of his oeuvre. He composed sixteen such pieces, and all others are lost. Ten of these pieces were composed before he completed his Piano Concerto No. 1

Piano Concerto No. 1 (Rachmaninoff)

Sergei Rachmaninoff composed his Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 1, in 1892, at age 19. He dedicated the work to Alexander Siloti. He revised the work thoroughly in 1917.-First version:...

, his first opus, and the rest interspersed throughout his later life. In these casual works, he draws upon the influence of other composers, including Frédéric Chopin

Frédéric Chopin

Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....

and Pyotr Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...

. The more substantial works, the Three Nocturnes and Four Pieces, are sets of well-thought out pieces that are his first attempts at cohesive structure among multiple pieces. Oriental Sketch and Prelude in D minor, two pieces he composed very late in his life, are short works that exemplify his style as a mature composer. Whether completed as a child or adult, these pieces cover a wide spectrum of forms while maintaining his characteristic Russian style.

Works

In the autumn of 1885, the twelve-year-old Rachmaninoff entered the home of Nikolai Zverev

Nikolai Zverev

Nikolai Sergeyevich Zverev was a Russian pianist and teacher known for his pupils Alexander Siloti, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Alexander Scriabin, Konstantin Igumnov, Alexander Goldenweiser, and others.- Life :...

to receive private piano instruction and at the end of May 1886, Zverev took his students to Crimea

Crimea

Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...

, where Rachmaninoff continued his studies, hoping to gain entrance to Anton Arensky

Anton Arensky

Anton Stepanovich Arensky -Biography:Arensky was born in Novgorod, Russia. He was musically precocious and had composed a number of songs and piano pieces by the age of nine...

's harmony

Harmony

In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...

class at the Moscow Conservatory

Moscow Conservatory

The Moscow Conservatory is a higher musical education institution in Moscow, and the second oldest conservatory in Russia after St. Petersburg Conservatory. Along with the St...

. It was during this time that Rachmaninoff created his first composition, a two-page Étude in F-sharp major (the manuscript is now lost). After admission to the class, he produced more exercises, the earliest of which is a Lento in D minor; it is the only surviving piece of ten he is said to have composed.
Now beginning to compose independently, Rachmaninoff's next project was a group he titled Three Nocturnes, and is regarded as his first serious attempt at writing for the piano. The first nocturne

Nocturne

A nocturne is usually a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night...

, in F-sharp minor, was written 14-21 November 1887, and has three parts: a beginning and an end in andante cantabile and a central section in allegro. The slower andantes are gentle sections, influenced by Pyotr Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

, while the allegro is unnatural and stiff and unusually fast for a nocturne. The second piece, in F major, followed on 22-25 November, also contains a slower portion coupled with a quick section. No. 3, in C minor, took more than a month to compose, dated from 3 December 1886 to 12 January 1887. With a chordal texture

Texture (music)

In music, texture is the way the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic materials are combined in a composition , thus determining the overall quality of sound of a piece...

spread over the entire keyboard, it is reminiscent of the music of Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....

. The nocturnes were published posthumously in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

in 1949, but were not assigned an opus number

Opus number

.

The Four Pieces of 1887 are perhaps Rachmaninoff's first comprehensive works. Each has a clear aim and method to attain it, and all unfold with a fluency significantly more advanced than that shown in the previous nocturnes. The opening Romance

Romance (music)

The term romance has a centuries-long history. Applied to narrative ballads in Spain, it came to be used by the 18th century for simple lyrical pieces not only for voice, but also for instruments alone. During the 18th and 19th centuries Russian composers developed the French variety of the...

, in F-sharp minor, harks back to Frédéric Chopin's

Frédéric Chopin

Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....

tenderness. The E-flat minor Prelude is an unremarkable but well-thought out piece. The third, a Mélodie in E major, is modestly expressive, but the Gavotte

Gavotte

The gavotte originated as a French folk dance, taking its name from the Gavot people of the Pays de Gap region of Dauphiné, where the dance originated. It is notated in 4/4 or 2/2 time and is of moderate tempo...

in D major is, although repetitive, the most energetic and vigorous piece. These were published posthumously in Moscow in 1948, without an opus number.

In 1890, after vacationing at Ivanovka, his family's summer residence, Rachmaninoff wrote a letter to Natalia Skalon, a family friend in Moscow, reporting that he had to write a fugue

Fugue

In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....

for Arensky's class, "an unpleasant circumstance however you look at it." It turned out to resemble a canon

Canon (music)

In music, a canon is a contrapuntal composition that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played after a given duration . The initial melody is called the leader , while the imitative melody, which is played in a different voice, is called the follower...

more than a fugue, however, and was published in 1949 as Canon in E minor. Although written as an assignment, the piece conveys the impression not of an academic contrapuntal

Counterpoint

In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...

exercise but rather of a vivid outburst. The texture and harmony show enough advancement over his earlier Four Pieces to indicate that he had been sensible not to publish them as his opus 1.
In 1891, Rachmaninoff composed his Piano Concerto No. 1

Piano Concerto No. 1 (Rachmaninoff)

Sergei Rachmaninoff composed his Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 1, in 1892, at age 19. He dedicated the work to Alexander Siloti. He revised the work thoroughly in 1917.-First version:...

(which became his first official opus) and afterwards in July, a small piece, Prelude in F major, which he revised later to include the cello

Cello

The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

. It was at this time, in 1892, that the Morceaux de Fantaisie

Morceaux de Fantaisie

Morceaux de fantaisie , Op. 3, is a set of five piano solo pieces composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1892...

were composed. In 1891 Rachmaninoff also composed his Suite in D minor for orchestra, considered lost until the manuscript was found in 2002, leading to the discovery that a previously-unattributed composition for piano is a reduction for solo piano of this Suite. The suite is in four movements: Lento: Allegro moderato in D minor, Lento in B minor, Menuetto in F-sharp major, and Allegro in D major.

He spent much of the next few years writing some of his orchestral pieces, including The Rock

The Rock (Rachmaninoff)

The Rock, Op. 7 is a fantasia or symphonic poem for orchestra written by Sergei Rachmaninoff in the summer of 1893. It is dedicated to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.- Inspiration :...

(1893) and Caprice Bohémien

Caprice Bohémien

Caprice Bohémien, Op. 12 is a symphonic poem for full orchestra composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1892-1894. An earlier example of Rachmaninoff's compositions, the piece consists of many immense moments played in full a tutti, which was the same bombastic nature that critics would lambast with his...

(1895). His return to pianistic work in early 1896 was marked by his contribution to Four Improvisations, a collaboration

Classical music written in collaboration

In classical music, it is relatively rare for a work to be written in collaboration by multiple composers. This contrasts with popular music, where it is common for more than one person to contribute to the music for a song...

with Anton Arensky

Anton Arensky

Anton Stepanovich Arensky -Biography:Arensky was born in Novgorod, Russia. He was musically precocious and had composed a number of songs and piano pieces by the age of nine...

, Alexander Glazunov

Alexander Glazunov

Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov was a Russian composer of the late Russian Romantic period, music teacher and conductor...

, and Sergei Taneyev

Sergei Taneyev

Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev , was a Russian composer, pianist, teacher of composition, music theorist and author.-Life:...

. After the Six Moments Musicaux

Six Moments Musicaux (Rachmaninoff)

Six moments musicaux , Op. 16, is a set of solo piano pieces composed by the Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff between October and December, 1896. Moments musicaux comprises a group of six separate works which reproduce musical forms characteristic of previous musical eras...

were completed in 1896, Rachmaninoff composed a single Morceau de Fantaisie in G minor on 11 January 1899. He subtitled it "Delmo", however what this means is unknown. It is two pages long and features an emphatic, if not brief, climax. He also produced a Fughetta in F major in February of that year, which is also short and has clean counterpoint. He composed most of his published works in this period, starting with the Chopin variations.

After the nine Études-Tableaux, Op. 39, Rachmaninoff composed several minor works in 1917. The Oriental Sketch is a fast-paced piece littered with sixteenth note

Sixteenth note

thumb|right|Figure 1. A sixteenth note with stem facing up, a sixteenth note with stem facing down, and a sixteenth rest.thumb|right|Figure 2. Four sixteenth notes beamed together....

figures. The piece was not intended to be associated with the Orient

Orient

The Orient means "the East." It is a traditional designation for anything that belongs to the Eastern world or the Far East, in relation to Europe. In English it is a metonym that means various parts of Asia.- Derivation :...

; the title was given by the publisher. The Prelude in D minor, a dark piece with thick and fast moving chords that repeatedly descend into low register, is a manifestation of his unhappiness with the October Revolution

October Revolution

The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...

. The manuscript survived and was first published in 1973. His penultimate piano composition (only his Corelli Variations came later) was a one-page piece entitled Fragments, a brief nostalgic piece from his final days in Moscow. It was first published in the magazine, The Etude, in 1919.

External links

Fragments, Four Improvisations, Oriental Sketch, Piano Piece in D minor, 2 Preludes: Free scores at the International Music Score Library Project
International Music Score Library Project
The International Music Score Library Project , also known as the Petrucci Music Library after publisher Ottaviano Petrucci, is a project for the creation of a virtual library of public domain music scores, based on the wiki principle...

. Piano.ru - Sheet music download Chubrik.ru - Audio download

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