Sergej Rachmaninoff, 1873-1943, zwischen Moskau und New York, Eine Kunstlerbiographie.

Cannata, David Butler

Sergei Bertensson and Jay Leyda's exemplary Sergej Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime

in Music (New York: New York University Press, 1956) and Robert Threlfall and Geoffrey Norris's Catalogue of the Compositions of S. Rachmaninoff (London: Scolar Press, 1982) have established English as the principal language for Rachmaninoff research. Titles in other languages have had unfortunate limitations. Some would argue that the specter of official censorship tarnished the integrity of Soviet contributions to the field. They may well be right: as work with the primary Rachmaninoff sources continues, it is increasingly evident that the conspicuous oversights in Vera Briantseva's S. V. Rachmaninoff (Moscow: Sov. Kompozitor, 1976) and Zarui Apetian's S. Rachmaninov: Literaturnoe Nasledie (S. Rachmaninoff: Literary Heritage [Moscow: Sov. Kompozitor, 1978--80]), and Vospominania o Rachmaninove (Reminiscences of Rachmaninoff [5th ed., Moscow: Muzyka, 1988]), may never be explained, nor corrected. Yuri Keldysh's Rachmaninov i ego Vremia (Rachmaninoff and his Time [Moscow: Muzyka, 1973]) stops abruptly at 1917, with no indication that this was to be the first in a series of volumes. Jean Charton's Les Annees francaises de Serge Rachmaninoff (Paris: Editions de la Revue Moderne, 1969), a book praised by Rachmaninoff's sister-in-law for its attention to detail, only covers some eleven years of the composer's life.

In an article written to makr the fiftieth anniversary of Rachmaninoff's death, Alexander Kulpok noted the following:

Zumal in Deutschland blieb die Literatur

uber Sergej Rachmaninow sparlich --

erst 1986 erschien ein kommentiertes

Werkverzeichnis, 1992 die erst deutsch-

sprachige Rachmaninow-Biographie.

("All diese Noten--wozu?," Suddeutsche

Zeitung, 27/28 Marz 1993: ii) The fate of the unpublished "Werkverzeichnis" remains unknown: coming hard on the heels of the Threlfall/Norris Catalogue, it may never be commercially issued. But now German-speaking music lovers have to hand Maria Biesold's recent, handsomely presented Kunstlerbiographie.

Biesold draws on a large amount of secondary literature to produce a well-annotated volume. Following the example of Bertensson and Leyda, she carefully integrates Rachmaninoff's professional activities into the framework of his life. The only significant problem in doing so is that Rachmaninoff's compositional development was not always conjunct with his itinerary. For example, Biesold may have found that a chapter discussing the Dresden years through the first American tour (1906--10) enhanced the flow of her narrative. But mentioning the Second Symphony (1907) alongside the Isle of the Dead (1909) misses a crucial point in the depiction of Rachmaninoff's stylistic maturation as a post-Wagnerian symphonist. His manipulation of the late-nineteenth-century harmonic syntax, reflected in the middle-dimensional tonal cohesion of the Isle of the Dead, marks this piece as a watershed in his oeuvre and sets it apart from the Second Symphony, a point Biesold fails to appreciate. This criticism aside, Biesold writes a unified and focused narrative tracing Rachmaninoff from his early years in Moscow through his years in the United States. In a succinct style, she leads the reader through the political and cultural influences that affected Rachmaninoff's life. The result is a well-written biographical introduction.

But Biesold's work is only as good as the secondary sources with which she worked. To cite but one important example: Soviet censorship of Apetian's collected Rachmaninoff correspondence (noted above) would have become obvious had Biesold consulted the original documents--in this case, the easily accessible letters at the Library of Congress. The text transmitting Rachmaninoff's poignantly expressed feelings concerning his exile (first paragraph, letter of 12 January 1918) is conspicuously absent from Apetian's edition, and because it is missing from the Soviet publication, it unfortunately goes unrecorded by Biesold (p. 290).

Surprisingly, Biesold does not make the best use of the Threlfall/Norris Catalogue. Correcting an array of previous misconceptions, Threlfall and Norris (Catalogue, p. 162) noted that the key of the early Scherzo is D-minor and not F-major, saying "F major ... is obviously incorrect as a glance at the score will reveal." Biesold, seemingly still unable to ascertain the key for the piece, gives both alternatives (pp. 36 and 457).

To criticize Biesold's work for not integrating on-site primary source research into the volume would be somewhat unfair, especially in light of the book's intended audience. However, by incorporating firsthand observations from the primary documents, not only could she have clarified many of the omissions and misconceptions that have confused the previous secondary literature, but also she would have made her text an indispensable addition to any Rachmaninoff Handbibliothek. To cite just a few examples: (1) Threlfall and Norris listed the problems in dating the early Piano Piece in D-minor (Catalogue, p. 149). Maria Biesold, holding to Mariana Grigorevna Rytsareva's dating (Autografy S. V. Rachmaninova [Rachmaninoff Autographs in the Archives of the State Central Glinka Museum of Musical Culture (Moscow: Sov. Kompozitor, 1980)!), places the composition in 1890. Rachmaninoff clearly dated the autograph [18]89 (State Central Glinka Museum of Musical Culture, MS [phi]18.105). (2) Similar problems beset the discussion and dating of the aforementioned Scherzo: Rachmaninoff inscribed the autograph "1888," a date only later changed by an unknown hand to 1887. (3) Paleographical evidence on the autograph manuscripts redate the four piano pieces Rachmaninoff originally intended as his op. 1 from 1887 to 1891/2. (4) Biesold's description of the genesis of the cantata Panteley Tseletel (Pantely the Healer) is confused. She correctly gives the year of composition as 1899 in her narrative (p. 119), but in her worklist she lists the publication date, 1901, as if it were the year of composition--a situation that occurs more than once in her inventory. The problem is easily solved when one realizes that Rachmaninoff produced two versions of the musical text (State Central Glinka Museum of Musical Culture, MSS [phi]18.73 and .924). And, most important, (5) like all previous biographies, Rachmaninoff's 1904 revision of the First Piano Concerto goes totally unnoticed. The nature of this revision provides an invaluable precedent when assessing Rachmaninoff's revision practices in works such as the Fourth Concerto and the Second Sonata (where he subsequently published the revisions), as opposed to his reworking of the Isle of the Dead and the Second Symphony (where his second thoughts were transmitted in primary source documents and recordings only).

A few final points need clarification. At the end of the works list Biesold writes, "1991 Nachla[deta]veroffentlichung von 42 kleinen Fruhwerken" (p. 465). This may lead the uninformed reader to think that there are forty-two additional works for which the exact titles were unavailable. However, these works form part of the Rachmaninoff series published by Hans Sikorski, each of which Biesold enumerated previously in her works list. As these pieces include the Russian Rhapsody for two pianos, and the G-minor Trio Elegiaque, all cannot be correctly termed "kleinen." Additionally, by carefully reading the Threlfall and Norris Catalogue, or any of the discographies that Biesold lists on page 466, she should have noticed Rachmaninoff's three recordings as conductor of his own works (Philadelphia Orchestra: Vocalise, Isle of the Dead [1929 reading], 1929; Third Symphony, 1939). Unfortunately, these are conspicuously absent from her own discography (pp. 469, 470). Further, in a volume so clearly designed as an introduction to Rachmaninoff study, the problem of the Julian vs. Gregorian calendar deserves explicit clarification. And I am sure many readers would have been interested to know the identities of those depicted in the photographs on pages 244 and (especially) 359.

In short, then, Biesold's work provides a long-overdue foundation for the Rachmaninoff literature in German, but a fair number of problems exist in it for Rachmaninoff specialists.