There are pieces of music that follow us our entire lives. Perhaps we have an echo of memory from pre-speech of music and light on leaves; or a fragment half-heard, half-remembered. Perhaps there are clues to memorable music, details that may resonate personally.
Often though, the listener might not have formal music theory education—even if they had some sort of training in the playing of an instrument. The listener might just have habitual genres for their music and occasionally stumble on a song they like. Sometimes, a tune does not stand up to repeated plays; the attracting elements do not sustain repeat experiences. And sometimes there’s the history of music itself: predating written history, often erased in colonization or cultural eradication, waiting like a seed to bloom to consciousness.
Perhaps it is a sense of atavism, some ancestral echo, that allows a four or five generation leap in temporal awareness to find fresh joy in a piece of music written over a century ago. Nonetheless, even Wikipedia acknowledges the longevity and complexity of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-Sharp Minor. Some listeners may have half-heard this music in a variety of films, including Schindler’s List, while the minor key might hark listeners back to folk music.
Traditionally, to learn a piece of music, as a musician would, there’s the text—the score—the hand of the artist upon the page. While multiple scores of the piece exists, now after more than a century after its penning, one introduction to the score, after describing the piece as approachable for pianists, also says: “so far it hasn’t lost any of its massive effect, and promises to live and speak as powerfully to future generations”. This document also includes learning notes for the musician, including notes for “martellato”, which poets might understand as stressed syllables. There’s much to note for all those who compose art that exists in motion of music scores. The practice notes interpret the textual notations—the language of sheet music—with a precision aware of the score as a blueprint for performance: “In measure 12, Rachmaninoff introduces slurs over the three-note motif C# – E – D#, suggesting an expressive phrasing”. This continues with a discussion of keyboard technique. Technical aspects are also a topic of the Wikipedia article, which summarizes the structure as “three main parts and a coda” and includes an audio clip of the artist performing what he had written.
Audio recordings of the piece are readily available. The above article includes one made by Edison Recordings (1919) and Apple Music offers a well-produced version played by Alexis Weissenberg. There are subtle variations in expression, but the latter recording works with Bluetooth amplification to facilitate sharing the piece with other listeners, to listen together. Sharing of music with nonhuman beings, especially a piece with which one is familiar, is an interesting test of cross-species communication. The responses to this piece on an ordinary midmorning causes a cessation of an argument among crows, and a set of behaviors from a horse that would be familiar to any chiropractor: lots of licking and a good long yawn of released tension. Is this not the task of music, and of art overall—a moment taken out of time?
Perhaps it is not an overwhelming request to listen intentionally. In consideration of the Prelude, another score for musicians prepared by Leopold Godowsky for the Art Publication Society, include a section in bold called “Poetic Idea” mixing both performance notation and the sought-for emotion:
From the fortissimo statement of the opening motive to the pianissimo chords at the close, there is an atmosphere of mystery, and sometimes of tragedy. The first section of thirteen measures may be likened to the solemn professional of some ritualistic ceremony; but in contrast, the chromatic sequential phrases in the second section (mm 14-42) are almost frantic in their mad onward rush. The return of the solemn melody in the third section is in a triumphant mood—a mood of grandeur and power, as if illustrating the inevitable survival of some great and mighty truth.
The text of the score is seven pages, with a performance time of less than five minutes (the Edison recording of Rachmaninoff himself is less than four at 3:48) as if the “mighty truth” requires only the time of an epiphany.
In listening to the Prelude, one might first be struck by the solo and analogue instrumentation: a single piano, yet it fills the landscape. There is a note, another going lower, and chords—that ancient structure of call and response between the single notes and the chords. There are clear pauses between the notes, as if breath, as if negative capability can be heard. That the piece changes tempo in its sections might be revelatory alone; that a scan of the score reveals a visual density of notes that are also labeled “agitato” or “tempo primo” yields an awareness of musical structure that echoes the arc familiar to those of literary works.
And yet, beyond this is the resonance: what Godowsky called “mystery” he also partially explains as “chromatic sequential phrases”, and what the pianostreet instruction describes as process of learning “two voice polyphony” before making multiple suggestions for chords and triplets. And yet, beyond this and ultimately first is the hearing of the piece, the experience of the art. The Prelude has a distinct tonality, as there’s a sense of the spaces between notes, of the rising notes and lower ones being somehow meticulous. Without necessarily knowing the scales, without necessarily having the musical technique to sight read, there are apparent patterns. All mentions of the piece mention variations on the concept of numerical 3: the triplets, the chords, the piece’s structure, and a visual look at the score itself gives an impression of that thirdness in their sequence of chosen notes.
An investigation into the rule of thirds reveals sequences of numbers that are in tune with the Prelude, as Godowsky blithely notes “the first thirteen measures a sombre melody” and makes a comment about “the chromatically altered D#, on the second half of the third beat of mm 2, 3 and 8”—what might be ordinary instruction for any musical piece, except that suddenly we are noticing this numerical sequence, more typically known as Fibonacci numbers and the Golden Ratio.
Perhaps our personal tastes have a universality to them? Certainly, we share that which pleases us with those about whom we feel some connection; certainly, the crows that heard the Prelude shared both the same geographical space as the device-speaker that played the recording; certainly the horse that listened responded obviously and physically. It is likely that we, organic life forms that we are, respond to more than the pleasure of the notes. The pianostreet score offers the words of Rachmaninoff regarding the composition of the Prelude:
One day the prelude simply came and I put it down. It came with such force that I could not shake it even though I tried to do so. It had to be—so there it was.
A sentiment of creation not unfamiliar to any artist. Perhaps it is that “great and mighty truth”, a theorem of mathematics as ancient as any in our history, yet alive to our ears as ever.
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