Advanced
Morceaux De Fantaisie, Op.3
3:31
Browse 8 Sheets
Sort:
Song library
Browse piano sheets by Sergei Rachmaninoff on Zen Virtual Piano. The premiere of Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony in 1897 was so disastrous that the 24-year-old composer nearly gave up composition entirely. He had graduated from the Moscow Conservatory with a large golden medal, as a piano student of Aleksandr Siloti in 1891 and as a composition student of Anton Arensky in 1892, and Pyotr Tchaikovsky had recognized the strong original talent already present in his earliest compositions. A medal at the conservatory and the early notice of Tchaikovsky stand in sharp contrast with a premiere that nearly ended his composing. He composed his Second Symphony mostly in Dresden in 1906–07 and led the premiere in St. Petersburg on January 26, 1908. That he led the premiere himself puts the composer at the centre of a symphony whose predecessor had gone so badly. Sketches for the opening pages, including the dark seven-note motto theme from which the first movement and the whole symphony grows, were lifted virtually intact from a fragment of a student work that was quickly abandoned. The faster main theme, still based on that motto, is a long-lined melody in which the composer achieves the soulful Russian melancholy that has become synonymous with love music. A symphony built from one dark seven-note motto suggests how much can grow from a small cell. His compositions include the operas “Aleko” (1892), “The Covetous Knight” (1904) and “Francesca da Rimini” (1904), the cantata “Spring” (1902) and the poem “The Bells” (1913). The Vocalise was the last of a group of 14 songs that he completed in 1912 as Opus 34; a vocalise is basically a song without text, with the voice part sustained on a single vowel sound. Its haunting, sinuous melody has been arranged for many different instruments. A song with no words and a melody that fits many instruments shows how much of its identity lives in the line itself.
Browse piano sheets by Sergei Rachmaninoff on Zen Virtual Piano.
The premiere of Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony in 1897 was so disastrous that the 24-year-old composer nearly gave up composition entirely. He had graduated from the Moscow Conservatory with a large golden medal, as a piano student of Aleksandr Siloti in 1891 and as a composition student of Anton Arensky in 1892, and Pyotr Tchaikovsky had recognized the strong original talent already present in his earliest compositions. A medal at the conservatory and the early notice of Tchaikovsky stand in sharp contrast with a premiere that nearly ended his composing.
He composed his Second Symphony mostly in Dresden in 1906–07 and led the premiere in St. Petersburg on January 26, 1908. That he led the premiere himself puts the composer at the centre of a symphony whose predecessor had gone so badly. Sketches for the opening pages, including the dark seven-note motto theme from which the first movement and the whole symphony grows, were lifted virtually intact from a fragment of a student work that was quickly abandoned. The faster main theme, still based on that motto, is a long-lined melody in which the composer achieves the soulful Russian melancholy that has become synonymous with love music. A symphony built from one dark seven-note motto suggests how much can grow from a small cell.
His compositions include the operas “Aleko” (1892), “The Covetous Knight” (1904) and “Francesca da Rimini” (1904), the cantata “Spring” (1902) and the poem “The Bells” (1913). The Vocalise was the last of a group of 14 songs that he completed in 1912 as Opus 34; a vocalise is basically a song without text, with the voice part sustained on a single vowel sound. Its haunting, sinuous melody has been arranged for many different instruments. A song with no words and a melody that fits many instruments shows how much of its identity lives in the line itself.
Search the library
Common questions
In 1897 it was so disastrous that the 24-year-old composer nearly gave up composition entirely.
Rachmaninoff himself led the premiere in St. Petersburg on January 26, 1908; he had composed it mostly in Dresden in 1906–07.
A song without text, with the voice part sustained on a single vowel sound; Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise was the last of the 14 songs of his Opus 34, completed in 1912.