Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner How great is Rachmaninov as a composer?

While I think there is fairly general agreement that he was one of the very great pianists, I think there is less agreement on his status as a composer. I wouldn't put him in my top ten composers for piano(I'd probably put him somewhere 10-15 which is still pretty high), I think a good percentage of pro pianists, amateur pianists, and listeners would disagree with me. I think the frequency of his appearance in recital programs is quite high and increasing.

So how big a Rach fan are you and why? Would he be in your top ten?

As a composer, I think Rach is underappreciated, compared to say Stravinsky or Prokofiev. Perhaps because there was a time when his music was too glamorized by Hollywood in the 40's and thus too "popular" for the classical cognoscenti. But his symphonic output, piano concertos and choral works are justly deserving of the 20th Century late romantic modern style. Not as groundbreaking as Stravinsky, Schoenberg or Bartok, but his place is assured.
As far as piano music, he's probably in my second tier, about where Mendelssohn and Liszt would fall, only for the fact that his music is so difficult to play and thus not as easily accessible for me to sight read. Plus it helps if you have a wide span hand width.
I base a lot of my top ten composers on my ability to sight read through their scores, so Sergei would not fall into that category.
But his piano music is very enjoyable. I love playing his "Vocalise" in the Alan Richardson transcription.

Why would you use your ability to play or even more extremely your ability to sight read their music as a criteria? That seems like a criteria for choosing a composer's pieces to sight read.

.......maybe gives us a new chance to rank composers.
We're done it before, but I think not in a couple of years. And since I would probably give different lists every 10 minutes, I don't think this will be whatever I might have said then.
BTW I'm only doing composers that I know, which leaves out composers that I know belong here, like Stravinsky and Bartok (even though I actually took a course on them.....maybe school is overrated) ....Shostakovich, Mahler, and even Wagner (and, like, Verdi) who I don't know well enough ....I know they belong because of what I see people who do know them saying about them.

I'm trying to do it on "greatness," not how much I like them. Of course it's hard to separate those, but the list would definitely be different if I were doing how much I like them.

I'll go down to whatever number gives Rachmaninoff.

1. Bach
2. Beethoven
3. Mozart
4. Chopin
5. Brahms
6. Debussy
7. Schubert
8. Liszt
9. Haydn
10. Schumann
11. Scriabin
12. Handel
13. Ravel
14. Scarlatti
15. Tchaikovsky
16. Prokofiev
.....and I guess
17. Rachmaninoff

BTW, I realize that such lists probably usually say more about the person making the list than about the composers.

My revised ranking:
1. J. S. Bach
2. Beethoven
3. Haydn
4. Everybody else in no particular order, really

...since for a while now I've been developing more of an appreciation of Haydn's greatness. Rachmaninoff? I'd place him at about the same level as Saint-Saëns. As Richard Strauss once said, "I may not be a first-rate composer, but I'm a first-class second-rate composer" or something like that. (I'd rank R. Strauss higher than Rachmaninoff btw.)

Tweaking Mark's list ......based on the "greatness" criteria and total body of work .....and I agree it says a lot about the person making the list......but here goes.......

1. Bach
2. Beethoven
3. Mozart
4. Chopin
5. Brahms
6. Haydn
7. Handel
8. Schubert
9. Schumann
10. Mendelssohn
12. Liszt
13. Wagner
14. Verdi
15. Tchaikovsky
16. Debussy
17. Stravinsky
18. Prokofiev
19. Ravel
20. Strauss
21. Rachmaninoff
22, Bartok
23. Scriabin
24. Pucinni
25. Saint Saens
26. Scarlatti

Let's face it - these guys were all great !!!!!

Debussy below Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky?

You risk getting your music degrees canceled!

Many pianists would say what you did, but I'd be surprised if many music historians or musicologists would.
(Just in case historians and musicologists matter.)

BTW, my old teacher, W. W. Austin, who loved Chopin, felt that Debussy was clearly superior.

Ha ha - what can I say?

Actually I struggled with that one. I know how important the guy was in the great scheme of things, but I suck at playing impressionistic music - so I allowed some personal preference to creep in.

Now that I look at it, with the exception of Scarlatti, my list is fairly chronological in order once you get past Handel. Hmmm....wonder what that means.

I read Austin's textbook, Music in the 20th Century cover to cover while in college (I just pulled it off the shelf and everything is underlined). Apparently I didn't pay enough attention to the Debussy chapter.....

Chopin rocks.

Hey! -- you still have it??!!

Pretty cool.
Can you do me a favor.....

I remember that he had a (short) portion on Scriabin -- and that he hated him.
Can you take a look and give the skinny on what that was about?

To rank a composer, I would need to have some criteria to avoid being too partial. Unhapilly i do not have any formalized system, so i do not rank. Most ranking are a mix of some rational criteria and a lot of personal preferences. And my preferences change over time. Some composers that I listened a lot, I listen less nowadays. For Beethoven for example I tend to prefer his quartett. I am more interested in vocal music than piano when listening or going to concert, so that creates a bias. Thats why I prefer Haendel and Verdi to Bach.

My personal preference is that there are a few pieces by Rachmaninoff that i like but I find most are uselessly noisy. So as i am not very sensisitive to his style, i would not put him in the list of my preferred composers.

Yes, part of my criteria for favorite composers of piano music would be based on my ability to play or sight read, that leads to my enjoyment. The feeling of hitting those keys and hearing the sounds that the composer has written all add to that experience. Therefore the ability to make that music and perform it as the composer intended is part of my criteria. It may not be yours.
Looking at my library of piano scores, here is my list of piano composers I enjoy:

1. Chopin
2. Bach
3. Beethoven
4. Schumann
5. Schubert
6. Brahms
7. Mozart
8. Scarlatti
9. Haydn
10. Debussy
11. Ravel
12. Mendelssohn
13. Liszt
15, Rachmaninoff

1. Bach
2. Chopin
3. Scriabin
4. Beethoven
5. Mozart
6. Bruckner
7. Sibelius
8. Mahler
9. Debussy
10. Shostakovich
11. Tchaikovsky
12. Stravinsky
----
Rachmaninoff - between 20 and 30

Why does the criterion of "greatness" matter? If the music pleases, then play it and enjoy it.

Regards,

The Scriabin portion is five pages long. Your memory is accurate. The general tone of the narrative is negative. For example:

"Scriabin followed a course just opposite to Rachmaninov's. Setting off from the same point, he gradually modified his style until it was fascinatingly, radically different from common practice, while his craft became more and more mechanical and his taste more and more absurd."

Other tidbits:

"One victim of Scriabin's influence, who was intelligent enough to cure himself, and then generous enough to identify and adhere to Scriabin's true small achievement, despite the bad influence, was the poet Boris Pasternack."

Eaglefield Hull thought the last sonatas were a "contribution to instrumental music worthy to rank with any of the great masters -- Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Chopin.."

"Scriabin is a useful reference point in a picture of musical history: More clearly than Wagner or anyone else Scriabin embodies the straw man for anti-Romanticism. His decadent sort of Romanticism provoked in the next generation a healthy emphasis on intelligence and craftsmanship. If sometimes the reaction went to the point of ascetic punishment of the senses and emotions, Scriabin and his like may be blamed as much as the rebels against them. Whenever, on the other hand, a rebel against romantic softness and sweetness, inspiration and expression, exalts some technique of escalating harmonies without troubling himself to master such traditional crafts as fluent sight-reading, counterpoint, and structural modulation, then he is an unwitting victim of Scriabin's worst influence."

Finally, Austin made the point that "Scriabin never learned to read notes fluently."
He also quotes Scriabin as saying that "Bach was entirely unnecessary."

Wow.

Carey: Thank you so very very much!

Interesting that in the process of sort of trashing Scriabin, albeit more mixedly than I remembered and giving him a lot more space than I remembered, he indicates him as having had more influence (albeit negative) than I've ever coming across his being given:


This next thing from Austin feels odd because to me, Scriabin's music seems so Bach-influenced:

My list would be about the same but in a different order. I would also add Scriabin, Bartok, and Prokofiev somewhere on the list. With those 18 composers I think there would be lots of overlap with different people's lists if the lists are based on piano music only.

Yes - I thought that was a tad strange as well.

Another interesting quote: "In larger works he follows the textbook model of sonata form, but his harmony lacks the driving logic that animates the successful forms of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. In later works where harmony is more complex and peculiar, Scriabin deliberately simplifies the forms, maintaining rigorously the normal two- and four-measure symmetries and the literal recapitulations of longer sections. In the course of five minutes or more this has appalling results."

ALSO - after Scriabin died of blood poisoning in 1915, "Rachmaninov was one of the musicians who came to the rescue of Scriabin's family, by playing benefit concerts of his music."

HOWEVER - "When Rachmaninov played Scriabin, Scriabin's admirers protested that the performance was prosaic and hard, too fast for the detail, too cold in bring out the harmonic logic. Scriabin himself said of Rachmaninov: 'Everything he plays has the same lyric quality as his own music. In his 'sound' there is so much materialism, so much meat....almost some kind of boiled ham.' "

If people are interested in comparing lists I think it's better to decide if lists are based on piano music only or a composer's entire output. I think piano music only makes more sense.

That's a really good point, PL. Mine was based on my limited knowledge of each composer's total output. And doggone it, I completely forgot Mahler !!

I've always admired Rachmaninoff's compositional craft, even though I find his music schmaltzy. That's just a matter of taste though.