On Music Theory
It often surprises people when I tell them that I do not listen to music. Really ever. It's not somehting I've ever done -- and I'm not terribly sure why. Something about it has never really clicked for me. It's not like I dislike music -- I really enjoy it! Just actively listening on a regular basis is something that never really clicked for me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That being said, I did take piano lessons from the age of 7 to the age of 22, so I'm rather well-versed in the world of "classical music" (that is, "art music") and managed to progress to a semi-competent level of piano performance, mostly hindered by my very poor track record of actually practicing.
Even though I never took my music studies too seriously, one thing I've very much been curious about is studying the periodization of music and seeing how different ideas developed throughout history. While there's many great compositions throughout music history, my all-time favorites are generally those from the Romantic era. If you're not familiar with music history, the Romantic era roughly covers most of the 19th Century and the very earliest part of the 20th Century. If you're familiar with art history, you may notice that this is later than the equivalent period there: this is more or less true for all the periods of music history with the same names as those in art history. They're named as such because of the overlap in the intellectual ideas behind them, but I digress...
Probably the biggest reason I love the Romantic era in terms of music is because this is when the development of the piano finally matured, and there's a huge corpus of incredible works for piano from this time period. While I do have some hot takes about music history and composers, here I'm focusing on one that's not very hot at all. One of my favorite Romantic era composers is the late romantic Sergei Rachmaninoff. In this piece, I'm going to focus in on one of his short works for solo piano -- Op. 10, No. 1: Салонные Пьесы – Ноктюрн. Why this piece? Well, for one, unlike many of his works, this one is within my technical skills to play. Second, something about this particular work has always scratched some sort of very satisfying itch for me. I'm not sure why, but I think it strikes a great balance: it's simple, but it really captures some of the great lyricism, multiple voicings, and interesting harmonies of many of Rachmaninoff's works. This is going to be a little bit technical, so it's worth following along on the score I downloaded from IMSLP. I've added measure numbers in blue to make it easier to follow:
You can grab that score here.
About Opus 10¹
First off, some quick background here. Opus 10 - often called "Morceaux de Salon" in English (why we translate the name of the set from Russian to French, rather than to English is beyond me) is one of his earlier works, dating to 1893 (published 1894). Among his whole corpus of piano works, this is certainly not among the most well known -- his concerti and preludes certainly take that hat.
This was shortly after he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1892. While he had studied there, he met many of the most prominent Russian musicians at the time: most notably Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky. 1893 was the same year he composed his famous Op. 3, No. 2 - Prelude in c♯ mior - arguably his best known work among the general public.
At this time, Rachmaninoff was earning money teaching at the Mariinsky Academy for Girls, alledgedly to help pay back money that was stolen from him. These pieces were quite possibly intended to be used as teaching material, and, as such, they don't display the same level of complexity and technical difficulty that many of the rest of his works for piano do.
It doesn't take much studying of music to realize the very strong ties this set of works has to Chopin. Although this is discussed extensively in Meza (1993), even as someone without much of a formal background in music, it was easy to recognize the parallels between Chopin's Op. 55 No. 1 and Rachmaninoff's Op. 10, No. 1: in the A section of both pieces, there's a slow, plodding, chromatically ascending bass line paired against a simple, slightly syncopated melody in two phrases, that sort of drifts and eventually wanders back to the tonic.
Nocturne in a minor
OK, I'm not at all a musicologist or a music theortician, but I'm certainly giving it a shot here. This particular piece is in pretty simple ternary form: there's an A section (measures 1 - 34) in the tonic key of a minor, followed by a B section (measures 35 - 68) in the subdominant key of F major, followed by a short recapitulation of the A section (measures 69 - 77), and, finally a short coda (measures 77 - 84), where the theme of the B section is re-expressed in, first, the relative major, quickly transitioning back to the tonic.
A Section
The A section begins with a relatively simple, slightly syncopated 8-bar theme in measures 1 - 8. In measures 10 - 17, this same theme is elaborated on a little bit: there's some rythymic changes as notes in the individaul theme are broken up: as an example, in measure 10, the E that's held in measure 1 is, instead, subdivided into a descending pattern of eighth notes before transitioning to the F♯ belo. There's a little bit more syncopation added to the main melody here, like the last beat of measure 13. What I really like about this section is the addition of the second, lower voice, that acts like a continuation of the cadence of the first expression of the theme. This little inner melody is vaguely reminiscent of the Dies Irae motif that Rachmaninoff uses extenively in his music.
Beginning on beats 3 and 4 of measure 17, there's the introduction of a second theme and my favorite section of the piece. Here, there's again two distinct themes: a chromatically descending inner melody and a more lyrical upper melody. They come together in measure 20 in an almost jazz-like cadence. I think this jazzy sound comes most from travelling form the major dominant E chord at beat 3 to the half-diminished seventh subdominant chord at beat 4 in this measure. Measures 22 - 26 repeat the same theme, again with a little bit of rythymic development, like in measures 10-17.
In measure 26, we're re-acquainted with the same, initial theme, only with more rythymic complexity. Of note here is also that the secondary, inner theme gets some more rythymic development, too. Here, the theme gradually builds up until the cadenza in measures 31 - 34.
B Section
The B section of this piece, like many of Rachmaninoff's works, has a very bell-like quality. Here, we transition into the subdominant F major and also move from common time to 9/8 time. Interestingly, the rythym of the theme here does not align with the time signature, giving it a syncopated quality.
Here, measures 35 - 40 introduce the main, bell-like theme of the B section. To me, this is almost like a softer, less syncopated version of the theme in Op. 23, No. 4 - Prelude in g minor and a less complex bell-like theme than Op. 23, No. 3 -- Prelude in D major. I, personally, think it's a really lovely little theme.
From measures 41 - 44, the exact theme is repeated again. But, beginning here, we continue the chromatic progression upwards and slowly crescendo from PPP to FF as we work our way up until to the C major at the top in measure 46.
Beginning in measure 49, we get a brief break with the introduction of some new thematic material. Here, there's two voices again, and, again, the middle voice is a simple, chromatically descending phrase. In measure 50, we continue the retardando and return back to F major. The alternation of chords in this measure is reminiscent, to me, of the almost jazzy cadence 20 - 21.
Beginning in measure 60 - 68, we slowly work our way back from F major to a minor, in preparation for the recapitulation of the A section. This strech is my second favorite portion of the piece because, like the secondary theme of the A section, there's some interesting harmonic stuff going on.
A Section (recapitulation)
Here, we go back into the main theme again. It's picked up a little bit more syncopation from the first few times through it and a little bit more textural complexity, but nothing major. Again, it slowly crescendoes up to FF in measure 75, drops back down to PPP in preparation for the coda.
Last, we re-express the main theme of the B section, here in the relative major, A major, for one measure. At measure 79, we abruptly transition back into a minor, giving it a much darker quality. We transpose down, still in a minor, as there's a slow retardando and diminuendo all the way until the end of the bell-like theme.
Finally, we build a simple set of descending triplets off of the main A theme, that works is way to a rather simple, mysterious chord at the end.
In Conclusion
I truly love the complexity of sound that this relatively simple piece poses. It's really, really cool to see how Rachmaninoff begins with relatively simple thematic material and transforms it so effectively, adding counterpoint and more rythymic complexity. To me, the final, mysterious chords and extreme softness that conclude this piece cause an interesting sort of tension. In my mind, this works really well with the beginning of the waltz, Op. 10., No. 2 in A major, with it's almost carnival-like theme right at the beginning.
It was really interesting to try and do a little bit of reading up on this pieces, which I've adored for a really long time. It was very tough to find any information on it! It was also a really neat exercise to go and try to find what, exactly, I found interesting about it. It's probably rather obvious that this is an EXTREMELY surface-level dive into this piece, but it's kind of amazing to me that even such a short, simple piece can have so much.
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Footnotes:
¹Most of this history comes from Meza (1993), a doctoral dissertation from the University of Arizona. This was the only source I could find that we nt into any detail about this particular work.
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References:
Meza, Esequiel, Jr. (1993), External influences on Rachmaninov's early piano works as exemplified in the "Morceaux de salon", Opus 10 and "Moments musicaux", Opus 16. [Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona]. UA Campus Repository. https://hdl.handle.net/10150/186276
Web link to the dissertation.