Rachmaninov’s Vocalise
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
As we look forward to the start of this year’s York Chamber Music Festival, what better way to get in the mood than with a performance from Festival Artistic Director and cellist Tim Lowe.
Here, Tim performs Rachmaninov’s beautiful Vocalise — a short piece of just five minutes, but one with an extraordinary ability to draw you in.
Vocalise is the last of a collection of 14 art songs that Rachmaninoff composed mainly in 1912. The first thirteen songs were set to poems written by Russian romantic poets including Pushkin, Polonsky, Korinfsky and Fyodor Tyutchev. In contrast Vocalise was written without words relying for its success entirely on the beauty of the melodic line. Rachmaninoff also had in mind that the songs suited particular singers, notably the soprano voice of Antonina Nezhdanova, to whom Vocalise is dedicated. During rehearsals with the composer at the piano Nezhdanova questioned the absence of lyrics. In response Rachmaninoff reassured her:"What need is there for words when you will be able to convey everything better and more expressively than anyone could with words by your voice and interpretation."
Due to its sublime, soaring melody, Vocalise quickly became the most successful song of the Op.34 set and has remained one of his most popular compositions. Rachmaninoff revised it in 1915 and made several arrangements for other instruments.
Because Nezhdanova sang entirely on a single wordless vowel of her choice the melodic line does indeed carry an emotional purity and a timeless, expressive beauty. It is particularly suited to being played on the cello, which is the instrument most closely aligned with the range and vocal quality of the human voice.
Rachmaninoff’s lyrical line in Vocalise (and it might be added in the Cello Sonata in G minor) is deeply rooted in the traditions of Russian Orthodox sacred music; long, unbroken breathing phrases that give the piece its hymn-like, soulful quality. While Vocalise gives the main singing line to the cello, the piano part is not background, mere accompaniment, because its gentle, pulsing chordal and rolling textures provide the essential harmonic framework that propels the cello's long melodic line.
So there is an inner voice in this piece which is not a brooding melancholy but is a 'monastic' stillness which permeates Rachmaninoff’s music – a profound shared cultural memory rooted in Russian spirituality.
Addendum
Rachmaninoff’s life in the early years of the twentieth century
The Op.34 songs were written during a period when Russian society was festering under the repressive regime of Czar Nicholas, after the failed revolution of 1905 -1907. Rachmaninoff moved his family to Dresden where he enjoyed much success and a fertile creative period. He moved back to Moscow in 1910 but a few years on the destructive effect of the country's inability to function in the 1914-18 war led eventually to his exile. There was no common national purpose that could unite the country caught between revolutionary democracy and national bourgeoisie politics; this void assisted the Bolshevik party to come into power in October 1917. The Russian Revolution was the final straw for Rachmaninoff who left his beloved country for ever making his home in the United States of America, famous there for his compositional output but particularly as a virtuoso piano soloist and recitalist. He died in March 1943, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music.
