Sergei Rachmaninoff “The Bells,” Poem for orchestra, chorus, and soloists, Opus 35 SERGEI VASILIEVICH RACHMANINOFF was born in Semyonovo, district of Starorusky, Russia, on April 1, 1873, and died in Beverly Hills, California, on March 28, 1943. He began composing his choral symphony “The Bells”—after Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Bells,” as translated and adapted into Russian by Konstantin Balmont—in Rome in early 1913 and completed it at his home at Ivanovka, Russia, on July 27, 1913. The score is dedicated to “my friend Willem Mengelberg and his Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam.” The first performance took place on November 30, 1913, in St. Petersburg, with soloists E.I. Popova, A.D. Alexandrovich, and P.Z. Andreev and the chorus of the Mariinsky Theatre conducted by the composer. IN ADDITION TO THE CHORUS AND SOLOISTS, the score calls for an orchestra including three flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, three clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, six horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, tambourine, side drum, bass drum, cymbals, tam-tam, tubular bells, glockenspiel, harp, celesta, upright piano, organ (ad lib.), and strings. In Russia, bells have long held intense spiritual and cultural power. Regarded as living beings, these “singing icons” were often given names, and their pealing was believed to protect hearers from plagues and other misfortunes. At one time, Moscow had 4,000 church bells. Many visitors to Russia have commented on the beauty of the exotic sound of the ringing bells, and numerous Russian writers have celebrated them in poems, stories, and novels. Russian composers often included the sounds of bells in their works, including—besides Rachmaninoff—Glinka (the rousing finale to A Life for the Tsar), Tchaikovsky (the heroic climax of the 1812 Overture), Mussorgsky (the Coronation Scene in Boris Godunov) and Rimsky-Korsakov (in the opera The Invisible City of Kitzeh and elsewhere). After the Bolshevik Revolution, the new adamantly atheistic Soviet Communist government prohibited bell-ringing; thousands of priceless bells were melted down to build tractors, and master bell-ringers were persecuted. Happily, since the fall of the USSR in 1991, the tradition of Russian bell-making and bell-ringing has seen a robust revival. Having spent much of his childhood and youth in the Russian countryside, Sergei Rachmaninoff grew up with the sound of bells, as he remembered later in Rome in 1913 when he was beginning work on what would become his choral symphony The Bells:

The sound of church bells dominated all the cities of the Russia I used to know—Novgorod, Kiev, Moscow. They accompanied every Russian from childhood to the grave, and no composer could escape their influence. All my life I have taken pleasure in the differing moods and music of gladly chiming and mournfully tolling bells. This love for bells is inherent in every Russian....If I have been at all successful in making bells vibrate with human emotion in my works, it is largely due to the fact that most of my life was lived amid vibrations of the bells of Moscow....In the drowsy quiet of a Roman afternoon, with Poe’s verses before me, I heard the bell voices, and tried to set down on paper their lovely tones that seemed to express the varying shades of human experience.

Rachmaninoff’s love of the sound of bells had already found its way into several of his compositions for piano (the opening measures of the Second Piano Concerto, the Prelude in C-sharp minor, Opus 3, No. 2). Strangely, it was an anonymous letter he received from a young admirer, later revealed to be a cello student in Moscow, that led him to undertake his choral symphony. She sent him a copy of Poe’s famous 1849 poem, “The Bells,” as freely translated in 1900 by the Russian Symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont (1867-1942), and urged him to consider it as a possible subject. It was the right idea at the right time, and inspired Rachmaninoff to produce (rather quickly, given his usually slow pace of composition) his most ambitious work to date. The composer said later that The Bells was his favorite among all his compositions. One of the most popular and virtuosic Russian poets of his generation, Balmont was only six years Rachmaninoff’s senior. Like him, Balmont spent much of his life abroad, and abandoned Russia after the 1917 Revolution to live in France. Known as the leading representative of the Russian Decadent movement, the prolific Balmont produced about 7,000 poems, including many translations from various languages. Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Miaskovsky, and other Russian composers set his mellifluous poems to music. With his deep fatalism, gothic sensibilities, incantatory style, and fondness for the mystical, Poe resonated deeply with all the members of the Russian Decadent movement, especially Balmont, who published five volumes of Poe translations.

Balmont considered his version of “The Bells” an “adaptation, more an imitation than a translation.” He retains Poe’s four-stanza structure, each stanza treating a different kind of bell: silver sleigh bells, wedding bells, alarum bells, funeral bells. The same basic trochaic meter (strong accent on the first of two syllables, unusual in Russian poetry) is also there, in lines of regularly varying length, producing the same monotonous, hypnotic sensation of tolling bells. But Balmont employs very different imagery, particularly in the last stanza, giving the funeral bells a considerably darker, more hopeless, and more devilish atmosphere. In his choral symphony, which runs about thirty-five minutes, Rachmaninoff gives each of Balmont’s four stanzas its own movement, varying in length and forces. The chorus is heard with orchestra in all four movements, joined by the tenor soloist in the first, soprano in the second, and baritone in the fourth. The longest movements are the second (Lento; wedding bells), and the fourth (Lento lugubre; funeral bells). Rachmaninoff frequently repeats particular lines and phrases from Balmont’s version, savoring the rich onomatopoeia of the Russian words. The first movement opens in A-flat major, with the flutes, oboes, clarinets, triangle, piano, harp, and second violins repeating a three-note motif in imitation of small silver bells. After a lengthy introduction that gradually involves the entire orchestra, the tenor soloist enters on a held E-flat at pp, on the opening word: “Slyshysh” (“Hear”). The entire chorus responds with the same word at ff. The jubilant mood gradually becomes more reflective, with the chorus taking up a wordless dirge-like motif, as the text changes to promise “rebirth” after “days of wandering,” and “sweet sleep.” At the end, the cheerful mood returns, but tempered in the strings by a falling and rising phrase that recalls the tune of the Dies irae from the Latin requiem mass. As the symphony progresses, the Dies irae motif grows in prominence, until it comes to dominate the final, funereal movement. In the second movement an atmosphere of languid tranquility reigns, expressing feelings of sensual rapture associated with romantic love and marriage. Although the shortest stanza in Balmont’s poem (only fourteen lines), this is the symphony’s longest movement. The strings open with the same motif heard at the end of the preceding movement, colored with what sounds like the tolling of bells in the brass and woodwinds. The soprano solo part soars into high territory, rising to a high A on the words “golden bells,” set against a shimmering, transparent orchestral accompaniment. Ecstatic and sublime, the orchestral writing here recalls Rachmaninoff’s 1909 symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead, another rumination on mortality, that one inspired by Arnold Böcklin’s painting of a boat carrying a coffin to its final resting place. To open the third movement, Rachmaninoff builds a powerful sound picture of alarm bells filling the air with tension, despair, and terror, the harps and violins (playing sul ponticello) later joined by the entire orchestra, then the full chorus. So dense and complex are the vocal parts that Rachmaninoff later made a revised, simpler version for some performances in England. Abruptly the movement ends, after some marvelous word painting in the choral parts on the word “moaning.” Owing to its funereal imagery, Balmont’s final stanza required that the symphony end with a quiet, slow movement. Although unusual, this structure had a strong precedent in Russian music in Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique. The last movement of The Bells features some of the most seductive and complex orchestral writing of Rachmaninoff’s career, from the opening haunting English horn solo, to the intricate reworking of the Dies irae motif, to the liturgical threnody of the baritone solo over an obsessively rocking accompaniment in the strings (playing divisi in ten different parts). There is little hope here, only endless grief and mourning. But in the score’s last few pages, the darkness lifts as the key changes from gloomy C-sharp minor to affirmative D-flat major. The strings offer some final consolation, playing a glowing refrain of the lyrical theme heard at the movement’s opening, promising peace and rest in the afterlife. Harlow Robinson THE ONLY PREVIOUS BSO PERFORMANCES OF “THE BELLS” were given (sung in English) on November 23 and 24, 1979 (see page 48). Edo de Waart conducted, with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and soloists Sheri Greenawald, Neil Rosenshein, and John Cheek. Valery Gergiev led the visiting Kirov Orchestra and Chorus in a Tanglewood performance on July 27, 1996, with soloists Marina Shaguch, Yuri Alexeev, and Nikolai Putilin. I. Hear,

hear the sleigh bells fly past in line, fly in line, The little bells ring out, their light silvery sound sweetly obsesses our hearing. With their singing and their jingling they tell of oblivion. Oh, how clearly, clearly, clearly, like the ringing laughter of a child, in the clear night air they tell the tale of how days of delusion will be followed by renewal; of the enchanting delight, the delight of tender sleep. The sleighs fly past, the sleighs fly past, fly past in line, the little bells ring out; the stars listen as the sleighs fly into the distance with their tale and listening, they glow, and dreaming, glimmering, spread a scent in the heavens; and with their flickering radiance and their silent enchantment, together with the ringing, together with the singing, they tell of oblivion. II. Hear the holy call to marriage of the golden bells. Hear the holy call to marriage of the golden bells. How much tender bliss there is in that youthful song! Hear the call to marriage... Through the tranquil night air it is like someone’s eyes glowing and through the waves of ringing sounds gazing at the moon. From beckoning, wondrous cells filled with fairy-tale delights, soaring and falling, fly out sparks of light. Dimmed again, glowing again, they shed their radiant light on the future where tender dreams slumber tranquilly, heralded by the golden harmony of golden bells. The holy call to marriage

of the golden bells. Hear the holy call to marriage of the golden bells. III. Hear, hear the howling of the alarm bell like the groaning of a brazen hell. These sounds in wild torment keep repeating a tale of horror. As though begging for help, hurling cries into the night, straight into the ears of the dark night, every sound, now longer, now shorter, proclaims its terror. straight into the ears of the dark night, every sound, now longer, now shorter, proclaims its terror. And so great is their terror, so desperate every shriek, that the tortured bells, incapable of ringing out, can only batter, batter, and shriek, shriek, shriek, only weep for mercy and to the thunderous blaze address their wails of grief. But meanwhile the raging fire, both heedless and tumultuous, ever burns. From the windows, on the roof, it soars higher, higher, higher, as though announcing: “I want to soar higher, and aflame meet the beams of moonlight; I will die, or now, now fly right up to the moon.” Oh, alarm bell, alarm bell, alarm bell, if you could only take back the horror, the flames, the spark, the look, that first look of the fire, which you proclaim with your howls and wails! But now we are past help, the flames seethe everywhere, but now we are past help, the flames seethe everywhere, everywhere is fear and wailing. Your call, this wild disconsolate noise, proclaims our peril, the hollow sounds of misfortune

flowing and ebbing like a tide. We can clearly hear the waves in the changing sounds, now ebbing, now sobbing, of the brazen, groaning surf! IV. Hear the funeral knell, lengthy knell, Hear the sound of bitter sorrow ending the dream of a bitter life. The iron sound proclaims a funeral’s grief. And we unwittingly shiver, hurry away from our amusements, and we weep, and remember that we too shall close our eyes. Unchanging and monotonous, that faraway call, the heavy funeral knell, like a groan, plaintive, angry, and lamenting, swells to a lengthy booming. It proclaims that a sufferer sleeps the eternal sleep. From the belfry’s rusty cells from the just and the unjust it sternly repeats its theme: that a stone shall cover your heart, that your eyes will close in sleep. As the mourning torch burns someone shrieks from the belfry someone is loudly talking. Someone dark is standing there, laughing and roaring, and howling, howling, howling. He leans against the belfry and swings the hollow bell, and the hollow bell sobs and groans through the silent air, and the hollow bell sobs and groans through the silent air, slowly proclaiming the stillness of the grave. Translation Decca 1986; all rights reserved To Read and Hear More... The best quickly available source of information about John Harbison is the website of his publisher, G. Schirmer (www.schirmer.com), which contains a biography, work list, reviews, and several interesting essays about the composer and individual pieces, including his opera The Great Gatsby. David St. George wrote the essay on Harbison in the New Grove II (from 2001); Richard Swift wrote the one in The New Grove Dictionary of American Music (1983).

Koussevitzky Said: hasn’t yet been recorded commercially, but much of John Harbison’s catalogue is available on CD and in downloads. All six of his symphonies were recorded by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in live performances during the 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons and are available for download at the orchestra’s website bso.org. The BSO also recorded the composer’s Symphony No. 1 under Seiji Ozawa’s direction in 1984, the year of its premiere (New World Records). The Boston Symphony Chamber Players, with pianist Gilbert Kalish, recorded the Piano Quintet and Words from Paterson, the latter with baritone Sanford Sylvan, on a disc with Simple Daylight performed by Kalish and soprano Dawn Upshaw (Nonesuch). Boston’s Cantata Singers, under David Hoose’s direction, recorded Harbison’s Four Psalms and Emerson (New World Records); the same forces, with soprano Roberta Anderson and baritone Sanford Sylvan, also recorded the composer’s Pulitzer-winning “sacred ricercar” The Flight into Egypt (New World Records, with the Concerto for Double Brass Choir and The Natural World). Also of interest are three recordings by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project—the ballet Ulysses and the short operas Full Moon in March and Winter’s Tale (all on BMOP/sound)—and the Lydian String Quartet’s recording of Harbison’s first four string quartets (Centaur). A live Metropolitan Opera broadcast recording of Harbison’s evening-length opera The Great Gatsby, under James Levine’s direction and featuring Dawn Upshaw, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and Jerry Hadley, was released by the Met on its own label and is available at the Metropolitan Opera shop (online or in person). Ēriks Ešenvalds’ own website, eriksesenvalds.com, is a rich source of information on the composer, including a comprehensive work list, biography, and discography. His publisher Musica Baltica also maintains a site with some of the same information (musicabaltica.com/en/composers-and-authors/eriks-esenvalds/). Among recordings of Ešenvalds’ music is a monograph disc of choral works performed by the vocal group Polyphony, with and without the Britten Sinfonia, conducted by Stephen Layton, which includes the composer’s Passion and Resurrection and other works (Hyperion). His Go away rain, A drop in the ocean, and an arrangement of Amazing Grace are on the all-Latvian choral disc “Dawn Is Breaking,” with music of Pēteris Vasks, Rihards Dubra, Valts Pūce, and Artūrs Maskats (Quartz). Other recordings that appear on Ešenvalds’ website might be tracked down via European sources. Robert Kirzinger The important modern study of Prokofiev is Harlow Robinson’s Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography. Originally published in 1987, this was reprinted in 2002 with a new foreword and afterword by the author (Northeastern University paperback). Robinson’s book avoids the biased attitudes of earlier writers whose viewpoints were colored by the “Russian”-vs.-“Western” perspectives typical of their time, as reflected in such older volumes as Israel Nestyev’s Prokofiev (Stanford University Press; translated from the Russian by Florence Jonas) and Victor Seroff’s Sergei Prokofiev: A Soviet Tragedy (Taplinger). More recently Robinson produced Selected Letters of Sergei Prokofiev, newly translating and editing a volume of previously unpublished Prokofiev correspondence (Northeastern University). Sergey Prokofiev by Daniel Jaffé is in the well-illustrated series “20th-Century Composers” (Phaidon paperback). Other useful books include Boris Schwarz’s Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, Enlarged Edition, 1917-1981 (Indiana University Press) and Prokofiev by Prokofiev: A Composer’s Memoir, an autobiographical account covering the first seventeen years of Prokofiev’s life, through his days at the St. Petersburg Conservatory (Doubleday). Robert Layton discusses Prokofiev’s concertos in his chapter “Russia after 1917” in A Guide to the Concerto, for which Layton was also editor (Oxford paperback). Yo-Yo Ma recorded Prokofiev’s Symphony-Concerto for cello and orchestra with Lorin Maazel and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (Sony). Mstislav Rostropovich’s first recording of the piece outside of Russia was with Sir Malcolm Sargent and the Royal Philharmonic (EMI “Great Recordings of the Century”); the cellist later recorded it with Seiji Ozawa and the London Symphony Orchestra (Warner Classics). Other recordings feature Gautier Capuçon with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra (Virgin Classics), Lynn Harrell with Gerard Schwarz and the Royal Philharmonic (Avie), Truls Mørk with Paavo Järvi and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (Erato), and Daniel Müller-Schott with Jukka-Pekka Saraste and the West German Radio Symphony Orchestra (Orfeo). Geoffrey Norris’s article on Rachmaninoff from The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980) was reprinted in The New Grove Russian Masters 2 with the 1980 Grove articles on Rimsky-Korsakov, Scriabin, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich (Norton paperback). Norris revised his article for

the 2001 edition of Grove, the composer’s name now being spelled “Rachmaninoff” rather than “Rakhmaninov.” Norris also wrote Rakhmaninov, an introduction to the composer’s life and works in the Master Musicians series (Littlefield paperback). Also useful are the smaller volumes Rachmaninov Orchestral Music by Patrick Piggott in the series of BBC Music Guides (University of Washington paperback); Sergei Rachmaninov: An Essential Guide to his Life and Works by Julian Haylock in the series “Classic fm Lifelines” (Pavilion paperback), and Rachmaninoff: Composer, Pianist, Conductor by Barrie Martyn (Scolar Press). An older book, Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music, compiled by Sergei Bertensson and Jay Leyda with assistance from Sophie Satin, Rachmaninoff’s sister-in-law, draws upon the composer’s own letters and interviews (originally New York University Press; reprinted by Indiana University Press). Michael Steinberg’s program note on The Bells is included in his compilation volume Choral Masterworks–A Listener’s Guide (Oxford paperback). Noteworthy recordings of The Bells, listed alphabetically by conductor, include Vladimir Ashkenazy’s with the Concertgebouw Orchestra and Chorus of Amsterdam (Decca), Semyon Bychkov’s with the West German Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus of Cologne (Profil), Charles Dutoit’s with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia (originally Decca; reissued on Newton Classics); Mikhail Pletnev’s with the Russian National Orchestra and Moscow Chamber Chorus (Deutsche Grammophon), Simon Rattle’s with the Berlin Philharmonic and Berlin Radio Chorus (Warner Classics), Robert Shaw’s with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (Telarc), and Yevgeny Svetlanov’s as recorded live in 2002 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (ICA Classics). Marc Mandel