- by Art Sulit, www.MuSeeks.com/ArthurSulit
Music Timeline Author
Sergei Rachmaninov was born in Russia, under the old Eastern Orthodox Catholic period just before the Bolshevik uprising. A devout Russian Catholic, he had to flee his own country to the USA, when the Reds were starting to massacre the Whites.
After premiering his Symphony No. 1, in his early twenties, he suffered a deep depression from being panned in the press. He stopped writing music for a while, until a peer urged him to write another Piano Concerto, the No.2, which today still remains a smash hit.
Upon coming to America, concertizing all over New York to California, he was quickly disillusioned. He said, with great accuracy, "All they worship is money." Everyone kept asking him for his Prelude in C#-minor (which I have made a heavy metal version of). He died in the USA, having believed himself a failure to cure the then vulgar music with his own.
In my own opinion, he could have succeeded had he worked more closely with sound on moving pictures, as Disney did in his Fantasia of 1940. My own work is doing just that, but extending beyond Fantasia into politically-relevant comedy akin to South Park, but with Disney-like production values. See my upcoming Fantasia-I (independent) project.
My own works such as 'Prelude in A' have been compared to Rachmaninov and Chopin, with an American Joplin flavor. While I'm flattered, I prefer to have people recognize such works as prayer works, the same way Rachmaninonv was motivated by prayer, rather than mere showpieces. My works help me, and hopefully you, see a glimpse of joyful Heaven, or dark Hell, so that you can better discern things, and make better choices from now on. This is a goal which Rachmaninov himself would have blessed.