A Secular Prayer

‘They threaten to let me through to a heaven starless and fatherless, a dark water.’

- Sylvia Plath

As noted by the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, to say that ours is a secular age is not just to say that the marriage of Church and State has been dissolved or that the religious practice of the populace is in decline, but it is to say that our society has become one in which ‘faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others’; where even the most revered saints of the modern age, such as Thérèse of Lisieux, confessed to being ‘assailed by the worst temptations of atheism’. And so, if religion really ever were an opiate, then its capacity for escape has long since deteriorated to the point at which the post-Kierkegaardian world is left wedded to a social consciousness that is ‘without the temporally conditioned presuppositions of metaphysics’ that Dietrich Bonhoeffer said traditional faith had relied upon.

Such a cultural milieu places great difficulty on religion providing support and solace to irreligious people in a ‘religionless’ era, as Bonhoeffer put it, but that is not to say it hasn’t been attempted. The literary projects of an August Strindberg or a Samuel Beckett and the philosophical writings of an Erich Fromm or a Martin Heidegger are testament enough to the earnestness with which the great secular thinkers of the 20th century went about trying to reconfigure past spiritual traditions for a secular age. And music was no exception to this trend, with particularly profound revisitations of Judaism in response to the Holocaust in works such as Arnold Schoenberg’s ‘A Survivor from Warsaw’ (1948) and Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Jeremiah Symphony’ (1942). But probably the most profound attempt to salvage meaning from the perceived wreckage of the Christian tradition came in the works of Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873 - 1943).

Though Rachmaninoff had ceased to attend liturgical services as an adult, his oeuvre is nevertheless marked by the stigmata of a faith planted in his youth. The seed of this influence was Rachmaninoff's grandmother whom he described as ‘very religious’. When Rachmaninoff was still relatively young, she became his primary caregiver and would often take him to Church; this being the place where the sounds of liturgy first made their way into his musical world. The time spent with her was a welcome break from the fallen aristocracy of his parents: they had separated by the time Rachmaninoff was ten years old, had found themselves virtually bankrupt after a lifetime of financial and moral laxity on the father’s behalf and were utterly grief stricken after the death of their daughter, Sofia. All of this original turmoil in Sergei’s childhood, with the death of his sister having no less affected him, only served to highlighted the other-worldliness of the cocoon like religiosity of his grandmother. It was this transcendent aspect to religious experience that would continue to fascinate Rachmaninoff throughout his life and spur him on to pen a great deal of religiously themed compositions.

Of the many religious features in Rachmaninoff’s writing, his liturgical settings in works such as the All-Night Vigil (1915) and his depictions of Petersburgian church bells in the likes of his Second Piano Concerto (1900 - 1901) remain the most discussed. But less noted is his use of traditional liturgical chants, which are of equal significance, both in terms of their prominence in his music and in relation to the astonishing inventiveness with which Rachmaninoff deployed them. Of the many chants that feature in Rachmaninoff’s compositional work, the medieval Dies Irae is the most noteworthy in terms of frequency and creativity, with it usually being quoted in a significantly altered form (for the original, see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Thomas of Celano, Dies Irae, c. 1260

The hymn, commonly ascribed to Thomas of Celano (c. 1260 – c. 1265), is a profound setting of a sombre Latin text about a ‘guilty’ penitent anticipating ‘the day of wrath’, which had been used in the funeral rite of the Roman Catholic Church from the Middle Ages up until the Second Vatican Council (1962 – 1965). Here it was removed from the Missal because the Council Fathers supposedly regarded it as having ‘overemphasized judgment, fear, and despair’, according to the reforming liturgist Annibale Bugnini.

Fig. 2: Rachmaninoff, Symphony No. 1, Op. 13, Violin 1, 1st movement, bars 1-4

A typical example of Rachmaninoff’s use of the theme can be found in his Symphony No. 1, Op. 13, written while he was still a Church attending Christian, though, of course, a member of the Eastern Orthodox communion. Here the Dies Irae theme is introduced by the strings straight from the opening measures of the work (see Fig. 2), where it has been transposed down a minor third and where it lacks the fifth note of the original melody, as is typical for Rachmaninoff who, as can be seen in later works, would often quote only the first four notes of the melody. This modified theme then undergoes a complex development which includes a brisk fughetta in the strings from the Allegro Vivace section following bar 112 (see Fig. 3), before the Dies Irae theme is reannounced with a complete and unadorned recitation that has been transposed up a tritone, given from bar 209 in the brass section (see Fig. 4).

Fig. 3: Rachmaninoff, Symphony No. 1, Op. 13, Violins 1 & 2, 1st movement, bars 114-118

Fig. 4: Rachmaninoff, Symphony No. 1, Op. 13, Trombones, 1st movement, bars 209-213

​​Fig. 5: Rachmaninoff, Symphony No. 1, Op. 13, Violins 1 & 2, 2nd movement, bars 3-8

The Allegro Animato second movement also opens with a newly modified form of the Dies Irae (see Fig. 5). There the theme has been transposed back to the original key, but it is played in minor thirds and it has become greatly fragmented, with the most complete form of the theme in bars 6-8 of the Violin 1 part only including the first five notes of the theme. In the third movement the French Horns reintroduce the version of the Dies Irae from the 1st movement (see Fig. 6) transposed up a semitone into the climax of the Larghetto and then the finale of the fourth movement offers a closing repose on the thematic origins of the Symphony, with brief quotations of the Dies Irae theme in sections 47 and 49 before the melody makes a full-blooded return in the Trombones at bars 157-159 (see Fig. 7), immediately prior to the start of the Largo section that closes the work.

Fig. 6: Rachmaninoff, Symphony No. 1, Op. 13, French Horns, 3rd movement, bars 89-91

Fig. 7: Rachmaninoff, Symphony No. 1, Op. 13, Trombones, 4th movement, bars 157-159

The pervasiveness and the variety with which the Dies Irae theme is arranged in such works as Symphony No. 1 corrects any notion that liturgical chant was used as little more than nostalgic mutterings in Rachmaninoff’s works, or even that they arose in his compositions as some kind of unconscious quotation, as Joseph Yasser suggested of his Piano Concerto No. 3. There is instead a very real urgency to Rachmaninoff’s use of such religious material and it is no simple coincidence that Rachmaninoff’s epigraph for Symphony No. 1 was “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord”, a scriptural reference to Romans 12:19 that mirrors the apocalyptic language of the original poem.

But while divine justice may have been the main association he attached to the Dies Irae chant during the writing of Symphony No. 1, a few years later such a notion would be profoundly challenged by the initial ecclesiastical prevention of his marriage to Natalia Satina, his first cousin, which was only possible after he evaded the Church authorities via his connections with the military. Such a struggle left him with, as Paul-John Ramos put it, a very ‘vicarious relationship with the Orthodox Church’, particularly as it occurred amidst a serious bout of depression for Rachmaninoff which followed the negative reception of his Symphony No. 1. This episode would soon put an end to the last vestiges of his personal religious participation.

Rachmaninoff continued to revisit the Dies Irae theme in his compositions, though it would now be in order to reflect on the question of mortality more generally, which became increasingly present in his concerns. The year 1915 saw the deaths of his teacher, Sergey Taneyev, and his friend, rival and fellow composer Alexander Scriabin (also a pupil of Taneyev). Then, just a year later his father Vasily Arkadyevich Rachmaninoff passed away. This being, of course, a turbulent time in Russia as a whole, with the ongoing World War I and the advance of the Russian revolution which would soon lead to Rachmaninoff’s reluctant emigration to Helsinki and soon after, New York.

We can discern the very significant degree to which these events had affected him from the mournful obituary he wrote for Taneyev, from the rather despairing letter he wrote at the time to Marietta Shaginyan about death and from the numerous concerts and works he immediately honoured to Scriabin. Of these works, the new set of Études-Tableaux were particularly noteworthy. As the title suggests these ‘study-pictures’ are each based on or inspired by a work of art, many of which remain unknown. The etudes in the Op. 39 group stand out both in terms of the degree to which they manage to capture an elusively Scriabinesque sound, with all its rich harmonic language and melodic sharpness, as well as in terms of their considerably melancholic character; of the nine works in the Op. 39 set of Etudes-Tableaux, eight of them are written in a minor key and, moreover, these works are littered with sombre fragments from the Dies Irae. Barrie Martyn tentatively links the extensive use of minor keys and the Dies Irae theme with a reaction to the death of Sergei’s father and concludes that ‘the obsessive recurrence of the chant throughout the set is likely to have come from something more than the usual mystical fascination’. If Martyn is correct, this provides an important insight into just how quickly a non-Church going Russian like Rachmaninoff would turn to his Christian past in search of answers in such troubling times.

The writer and musicologist Robert Matthew-Walker certainly concurs with Martyn’s description of Rachmaninoff’s use of the Dies Irae as ‘obsessive’ and he goes as far as to describe the Op. 39 works as ‘a hidden set of variations on this composer’s idée-fixe, the Dies Irae’ with ‘parts of the plainchant being quoted directly in all of the nine studies’. Such a description possibly overstates the prominence of the chant in the work, with Op. 39 Nos. 3 and 4 being reduced to the most meagre fragments of the theme (see Figs. 8 & 9), which are largely hidden by the musical texture. Even where the chant features prominently, as in the second and eighth etudes of the set (in both cases it is heard from the very first bar onwards throughout the rest of the piece), it nevertheless remains the case that Rachmaninoff only deploys the theme in the most fragmentary of forms, with only the first four notes of the Dies Irae being used as part of a slightly larger six note motif (see Fig. 10). But there is certainly a sense in which the Dies Irae in both its thematic and atmospheric qualities remains absolutely central in these etudes and this is above all true of the second piece of the set, written in A minor.

Fig. 8: Rachmaninoff Études-Tableaux Op. 39 No. 3, bar 6, RH

Fig. 9: Rachmaninoff Études-Tableaux Op. 39 No. 4, bar 11, LH

Fig. 10: Rachmaninoff Op. 39 No. 8, bar 1, RH

The Études-Tableaux Op. 39 No. 2, though often referred to as ‘the Sea and Seagulls’ actually remains of unknown programmatic origin with regards to the artwork it was based on. It is written in a loose ternary form and it begins by deploying the opening fragment of the Dies Irae in the solo left hand as part of a gentle triplet figuration that is to be used as a type of basso ostinato throughout the work. The right hand then enters, moving above and below the left hand with a marked difference between the mezzo forte dynamic of the treble clef and the piano dynamic marking in the bass; already the angular melodic writing is suggestive of Scriabin, though the more extensive use of chant helps retain the plaintive sound quality that is so unique to Rachmaninoff’s piano writing. Some would want to make a poetic inference here that reflects how Rachmaninoff himself had said in a letter to Ottorino Respighi (who would later orchestrate the piece) that this ‘first Etude in A minor [Op. 39, No. 2] represents the Sea and Seagulls’. But, as noted by Sergei Bertensson and Jay Leyda, ‘this program was suggested by Mme. Rachmaninoff’; meaning that Rachmaninoff couldn’t have originally intended the piece to be about ‘the Sea and Seagulls’. So no matter how apposite Rachmaninoff may or may not have later thought such a description and no matter how much he wanted people to understand the work as a scene at the seaside, no such concrete reading of the opening should be made.

If one wished to sincerely speculate on the work’s original inspiration, rather than the image of a soaring bird diving into the depths of the sea, a more convincing programmatic interpretation for the work’s mood and idiosyncratic textural writing is actually suggested by the music itself; namely, through the thematic prominence of the Dies Irae. Such extensive use of the hymn suggests an intention that the increasingly irreligious Rachmaninoff would perhaps be keen to obfuscate; a prayer.

The Dies Irae was, after all, originally a prayer of petition, which closes with the penitent saying to his divine judge:

Original Latin:

“Oro supplex et acclinis,

Cor contritum quasi cinis:

Gere curam mei finis.

Lacrimosa dies illa,

qua resurget ex favillaon

iudicandus homo reus.

Huic ergo parce, Deus:

Pie Jesu Domine,

dona eis requiem. Amen.”

English:

“I meekly and humbly pray,

[my] heart is as crushed as the ashes:

perform the healing of mine end.

Tearful will be that day,

which from the ash arises

the guilty man who is to be judged.

Spare him therefore, God.

Merciful Lord Jesus,

grant them rest. Amen”

This depiction of a desperate appeal to the divine Mercy of the speaker’s ‘Lord Jesus’, is perfectly captured by the angular, breathless treble writing in the opening measures of Rachmaninoff’s Études-Tableaux Op. 39 No. 2. In the first eight measures of the piece (see Fig. 11), with the exception of the A natural to B natural transition between bars 7 and 8, there remains a complete absence of adjacent stepwise movement in the upper melody. In fact, the average interval in the treble part during these opening bars is greater than a perfect fourth, which is very unexpected for the opening of a slow Rachmaninoff work, when we compare it to the melodic stillness found in the likes of Op. 33 No. 8, the slowest piece in his first set of Études-Tableaux (see Fig. 12).

Fig. 11: Rachmaninoff, Études-Tableaux Op. 39 No. 2, bars 1-8

​​Fig. 12: Rachmaninoff, Études-Tableaux Op. 33 No. 8, bars 1-8

In addition to the large intervals, Rachmaninoff further fragments the melodic material with the use of short disconnected phrasing in the treble. The mean average distance separating the first four phrases in the upper part is a dotted crotchet. This is very large for the beginning of a work and it sets up quite a disorientating opening melodic discontinuity. The use of diminuendi at the end of phrases, in addition to the use of slurs and phrase markings, further serves to emphasize the temporal gulf between the petitioner’s cries, as if they were gasping for air amidst the tears brought on by their remorse.

Fig. 13: Rachmaninoff, Études-Tableaux Op. 39 No. 2, bars 13-20 (Rachmaninoff, 1970, p. 44)

​​But while the upper part manages to represent the original anguished cries of supplication, the bass offers up a new dimension in which these cries are only answered by the distant piano-marked murmurs in the depths below. This distance, though, is never bridged. In fact it only increases as the piece goes on, with the slurred answers of the bass retaining their piano dynamic marking, as at bar 14, and with the lower part immediately disappearing whenever the intensity of the music must increase, as in the crescendo and poco più vivo of bars 17 and 18 (see Fig. 13).

​​Fig. 14: Rachmaninoff, Études-Tableaux Op. 39 No. 2, bars 48-62

As the music continues to build, the treble part itself continues to ask more and more of the bass, but still there is no clear answer. From bar 49 onwards we hear a cycle of crescendos on a significantly modified version of the Dies Irae motif that leads up to a prominent forte marked chord. Meanwhile the tonality rises from C major, to C-sharp minor (see Fig. 14 at bar 59) and then finally to D minor (see Fig. 15 at bar 71), by which point the tension peaks with the forte marked full D minor chord at bar 71. And now we hear an fractured Dies Irae motif played in thirds but, accompanied by a diminuendo, it simply descends four octaves down the piano. The climax is ultimately never realized. In the space of just four bars the music has sunk to a hollow piano marked whisper at the end of bar 74 and even the subsequent Più vivo and mezzo forte markings cannot help the bare remainder of the Dies Irae disguise the musica interruptus that has just occurred.

Fig. 15: Rachmaninoff, Études-Tableaux Op. 33 No. 8, bars 68-76

​​Fig. 16: Rachmaninoff, Études-Tableaux Op. 39 No. 2, bars 84-91

After a short but repetitive Meno Mosso passage from bar 85 (see Fig. 16), in which the music fragments totally into a series of two-note slurred motifs in treble and bass, the piano gradually prepares to move back to a slightly modified version of the opening section, which reappears at bar 100 (see Fig. 17). The effect of this transition across a few dozen bars from the suggested climax at bar 71 to the melancholic return of A minor at the Tempo primo section at bar 105, serves to rob the music of the purgation it had been in search of, which is precisely Rachmaninoff’s intention. Just as the penitent of the original Dies Irae had lamented ‘preces meæ non sunt dignæ’ (‘my prayers are not worthy’), the thematic ferment of the treble proves ultimately incapable of engendering a response to its petition that is sufficient to placate the penitent’s sufferings as they move toward ‘the gates of death’ and onto their final judgement. Instead the music passes by without the usual obligatory fortissimo-marked climactic moment that is found in all of the other Études-Tableaux Rachmaninoff wrote, including the Op. 33 set.

Fig. 17: Rachmaninoff, Études-Tableaux Op. 39 No. 2, bars 103-106

Such programmatic readings are, of course, controversial. Nevertheless, upon a close reading of the work I cannot help maintaining that the likes of Memling’s Last Judgement (c. 1467–71) would make a more viable candidate for Rachmaninoff’s original inspiration than images of ‘the sea and seagulls’, however profound some of the examples may be. Yet it is perfectly evident from those who have written about or have recorded the Op. 39 No. 2 etude, that a great many people understand the work very differently. Geoffrey Norris, for example, makes absolutely no mention of the Dies Irae motif and is instead happy to talk simply of the piece’s ‘quiet lyricism’ after having unquestioningly related the piece to Rachmaninoff’s wife Natalia’s suggested image of the ‘sea and the seagulls’. Similarly, though he does at least manage to note the extensive use of the Dies Irae theme in the A minor etude, Victor Yvinny nevertheless continues to refer to the etude as a ‘seafaring composition’ similar to Rachmaninoff’s ‘Isle of the Dead’. Any expectation that Yvinny is here speaking of a ‘dark water’ is dispelled as he comments on how the ‘work beautifully fades away’. This is quite a different understanding of the close to that of a frustrated search for divine mercy, as described earlier.

But the variety of understandings with regard to the discography of the piece is even more remarkable, given the dramatically contrasting ways the work has been interpreted and understood; in part because it is one of the Études-Tableaux that Rachmaninoff never recorded himself. With regard to the structural question just discussed, in which the Dies Irae seemed to build toward a climax at bar 71 but instead simply dissolved, the famous Russian pianists Evgeny Kissin and Sviatoslav Richter actually choose to anticipate this dissipation long before it arrives. Of the three main chordal apexes of the sequence, the final D minor spike is actually the quietest in each recording. Kissin and Richter playing this D minor section significantly below their C-sharp minor dynamic peaks at bar 60. Given that there is nothing tonally or registrally significant about bar 60 which necessitates Kissin and Richter inserting a very real fortissimo moment into a piece that actually avoids such a marking, it becomes apparent that their musical instincts are actually trying to escape the very tension towards which the work is directed. In contrast, another great Russian pianist, Vladimir Ashkenazy, does manage to make a very slight but noticeable staggered crescendo between these three peaks (see Figs. 18) and all within the bounds of a real forte, never a fortissimo, just as Rachmaninoff had marked. This allows the tonal structure of the music to speak, without it ever feeling that a real climax has been reached, which is critical to the structural success of the work.

Fig. 18: Close up Decibel/Time graph of Vladimir Ashkenazy's recording of Rachmaninoff's Études-Tableaux Op 39 No 2 bars 51-89

Pink circle denotes E flat major chord of bar 52, Green circle denotes C sharp minor chord of bar 60 and Red circle denotes D minor chord of bar 81

We can see, though, from the same examples another dynamic difference between Ashkenazy and the other two recordings, when we look at the following passage (see Fig. 19) in which the very spare Meno mosso moves back into quadruple time at the a tempo marking. Here an incessant series of slurred falling sighs are introduced in the tenor part with a forte dynamic marking.

Ashkenazy plays the whole passage and the musical bridge leading up to it at a considerably loud dynamic that seeks to link the musical fervour at the likes of bar 81 with the hollow third-less chords of the ​​close (see Fig. 20). But this is a rather dubious reading of the score. Rachmaninoff intentionally thins the texture dramatically between rise and fall of the D minor passage at bars 81-84 and the return of the bare, unadorned Dies Irae theme at bar 85. This is accompanied by an almost halving of the note frequency, since there are an average of 21 notes a bar in the last four bars before the piu vivo, whereas there are only 11 notes on average in each of the next four bars.

​​Fig. 19: Rachmaninoff, Études-Tableaux Op. 39 No. 2, bars 92-99

Fig. 20: Rachmaninoff, Études-Tableaux Op. 39 No. 2, bars 133-138

Added to this the notes and melodic material reach a dramatically lower pitch in the latter passage, with most of the notes in bar 81 having been in the treble and with most of the notes in bar 85 being played at D2 or below; a very significant difference to the accented C5-sharp and E5 of the previous bars. Such musical features, alongside the A minor tonality, suggests that when Rachmaninoff writes a forte mark at the entry of the tenor part at bar 94 a particular tonal quality, possibly even a shrill one, is in mind. It is certainly not to be taken as a prescription for a general forte dynamic. Ashkenazy, sadly, does takes such notation as a licence to maintain a loud dynamic throughout, including in the mezzo forte passage. Here he caricatures the Dies Irae theme in the process, which he chooses to highlight rather incongruously amidst a very thick use of pedal. All of this sounds completely unnatural by itself but, of course, it is designed to soften the blow of the uncompromising original architectonic structure of Rachmaninoff’s score.

Richter and Kissin, of course, have no such musical abyss to bridge, since they had already begun to taper off the etude in a passage which should have been the work's stolen climax. But while the two of them both avoid excessive use of pedal and an overplaying of the Dies Irae theme in the left hand, there remain significant differences in their interpretations. Kissin plays approximately a forte marking on the very spare textures of bars 94 and 116 in order to create very rapid increases in sound. This may well add more in the way of excitement to the close, but it ultimately comprimises a great deal of the music's pathos. In contrast, Richter captures beautifully the forlorn character of the music. His meticulous rhythmic bridging between the various patchworks of musical ideas that Rachmaninoff sows together in the ending of the work is critical to the success of the close.

In particular, the ritardando change from the common time of bars 93-99 back to the triple time in bar 100, as was heard from the opening, requires a subtlety in the use of rubato that Ashkenazy and Kissin fail to achieve. Here the latter two interpretations consist of a gradual ritardandi that bridge the tempo change completely, but again this results in a preempting of the musical material that does little to account for the piece's idiosyncratic structure when understood in terms of a larger scale. Richter, however, offers a masterclass in rubato control as he moves swiftly through the slurred tenor part, while nevertheless giving it sufficient room to allow it the necessary thematic space and the tonal grit. It is only then at the last moment in bar 102 that he bravely makes way for a great expansion of the pulse, which is perfectly executed so as to not harm the musical flow (see Fig. 21).

Fig. 21: Spectogram of Sviatoslav Richter's recording of Rachmaninoff's Études-Tableaux Op 39 No 2 bars 99-105 (see Fig. 17). Note: Each red line indicates a new bar and each alternate green colour block indicates a single beat as performed.

This dramatic rhythmic turn of phrase is actually quite typical of Richter's overall performance of the piece and is very much in contrast to the permanent flexibility of Kissin's pulse as well as to the relative stability of Ashkenazy's. The opening measures are a good example of how Richter will strictly maintain a tempo in order to enhance the drama when he does finally slow the pulse, for example in bar 3, where the penitential melody of the right hand is first introduced, or when he takes time away, as he does in the crescendo of bar 8. Kissin's extensive use of rubato on the other hand does little to elucidate the structural features of the music and often strikes one as arbitrary, as with the unnecessarily long first bar, which completely dwarfs the structurally more significant bars that follow. Ashkenazy chooses the fastest initial tempo of the three recordings, though the exaggerated accelerandi of Kissin’s recording means that the latter’s average tempo is slightly faster (Askenazy’s average tempo = 0.94 seconds per beat, Kissin’s average tempo = 0.90 seconds per beat and Richter’s average tempo = 1.00 seconds per beat). This comparative steadiness certainly assists with regards to the clarity of expression but such stability ultimately fails to communicate the restlessness of the music and only serves to facilitate the kind of banalised understandings of the piece critiqued earlier.

Of course Tempo rubato, with the exception of the occasionally marked ritardandi and tempo changes, nevertheless remains an interpretative feature that is largely extrinsic to the score. This, however, should not encourage the conclusion that because it is so little notated and because Rachmaninoff himself could be so varied in his use of rubato at the piano, discussion of rubato should therefore be regarded as entirely a matter of personal taste, without objective critical content. Nor should the same be said of tempi and dynamic choices, which are to be developed within the parameters of the broad vagaries of standard notation. Such extrinsic aspects of performance are of as much significance in determining the fidelity of an interpretation to the original music as are the intrinsic prescriptions of the score. So when the three peaks of the middle cycle (bars 51, 59 & 81) are all marked forte, not only is it important that fortissimos are avoided, as Richter and Kissin failed to do, but the pianist must also analyse the internal significance of the harmonic and motivic structures in order to recognise the climactic significance of the sequence, as demonstrated in Ashkenazy’s interpretation of the passage; for any score or any music that is worth its salt must point beyond itself to a holistic aesthetic vision that is to be continually interpreted, if never fully understood.

As Edward T. Cone put it: ‘the performance criticizes the composition’ since the artistic task of the performer is not static, but reactive. The role of the performer is not to correct that which is imperfect. In the spirit of Leonard Meyer, the performer should come ‘not to praise masterpieces, but to explicate and illuminate them’, as the performer is and must be of more than merely instrumental value.

In the Études-Tableaux Op 39 No 2, Rachmaninoff offers up a message that struggles to reconcile with secular culture; which was true in his day as well as ours. Like the Dies Irae prayer before it, the music manages to communicate the idea that there is no absolute freedom in this life, whether from sin or death, and that the promise of eternal beatitude is beyond the horizon of our mortality. From the mouth of one such as Rachmaninoff, for whom the hope of salvation seemed to have been all but lost, this message is a peering out to the abyss in search of a truth etched into the darkness.

Understood as such, the work strikes an apophatic tone, not so as to generate despair or even nostalgia but instead to search for the truth of the human condition as we meet our ‘shadow in the deepening shade’, as Theodore Roethke put it. This, though, is a darkness that few wish to enter. It is one that maybe even Rachmaninoff had wanted to avoid for both himself and his loved ones, but one that circumstances had nevertheless forced him to encounter.

It is intriguing therefore that while Sviatoslav Richter, Evgeny Kissin and Vladimir Ashkenazy, three of the greatest Moscovian pianists of the 20th century, all have moments in their performances of the A minor etude in which they demonstrate their supreme interpretative command, they nevertheless depart from both the extrinsic and internal demands of the score at some of the most structurally significant moments of the piece. This is not a mere coincidence. It is rooted in a shared aesthetic understanding that centres on a Deweyan search for resolution, in opposition to the critical capacity of art described in the writings of Theodor Adorno. Here, though, Rachmaninoff adds a new dimension to Adorno’s understanding of a ‘negative dialectic’, in which the resultant tension from an unresolved dialectic is taken as a mark of the ‘untruth’ of the human condition in contemporary society. Here the Etude-Tableaux Op 39 No 2 communicates a dialogue between man and his transcendent maker in which the lack of the expected synthesis, that the previous recordings all tried to force upon the music, marks out theologically an ‘untruth’ of the human condition. In agreement with Adorno’s own conviction, though, the precise nature of such untruth, whether in this case it be divine justice or human unbelief, cannot be known this side of an unredeemed world.

#Adorno #Rachmaninoff