Prelude in C-sharp Minor (Rachmaninoff) - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

• In the Marx Brothers comedy, A Day at the Races, 1937, Harpo plays the C-sharp minor prelude with such energy, the piano explodes. He takes the harp out of the wreckage and begins to play that, instead.
• Ben Linus (Michael Emerson) is seen playing the C-sharp minor prelude in the episode "The Shape of Things to Come" from the fourth season of the TV series Lost.
• Paul Revere Dick, leader of Paul Revere & The Raiders, based his team's first chart single, the instrumental "Like, Long Hair," on this prelude.
• The prelude formed the basis for George L. Cobb's Russian Rag.
• In 1970 the Dutch rock/jazz band Ekseption recorded a song called "On Sunday They Will Kill The World" which is based on the C-sharp minor Prelude. The song was then covered by gothic/doom metal band Draconian.
• In 2000, the popular R&B group En Vogue sampled the piece in their recording "Love Won't Take Me Out" on their album Masterpiece Theatre.
• The French black metal band, Anorexia Nervosa, included a recording of the C-sharp minor Prelude (which they entitled 'Hail Tyranny') on their 2001 album, New Obscurantis Order.
• The movie Weekend at Bernie's used a (broken) playback of it, via stereo system for the incidental, soundtrack music.
• The prelude is an important element of the plot of Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn novel Overture to Death, written in 1939
• In the movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Emily plays the opening of the Prelude.
• The Blackalicious song "The Rise and Fall of Elliot Brown" incorporates this prelude throughout the song.
• Mao Asada skated to this piece during her long program at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, earning a silver medal.
• On Mingus at the Bohemia, Charles Mingus recorded "All The Things You C♯", a blend of "All the Things You Are and the Prelude.
• In the television show Arthur, the main character Arthur bluffed to his music teacher that he could play the Rachmaninoff Prelude in C-sharp minor blindfolded. When asked to perform the Prelude, he told the teacher he couldn't without a blindfold.
• Canadian progressive metal band Protest the Hero recorded a song on their third album, Scurrilous, entitled "Sex Tapes", which has melodies based on Prelude in C-sharp minor.
• The Beastie Boys sampled Prelude in C-sharp minor in their 1998 song "Intergalactic".
• Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) plays a segment of this piece in the movie Limitless.
• In 1994, the theme melody of the action strategy game Dark Legions.