Symphony No. 1 (Rachmaninoff) - Form

Form

The composer Robert Simpson regarded Rachmaninoff's First Symphony as much superior to the two that followed it, feeling that it had been created "naturally and without strain" on the whole and with all four of its movements "thematically genuinely integrated." He also felt the symphony sidesteps what he called the "lyrical inflation" and "forced climaxes" of the Second Symphony and the piano concertos. Instead of this lyric inflation, as Robert Walker pointed out, a person could chart an increasing brevity and concision in Rachmaninoff's orchestral compositions in the works he completed after graduating from the Moscow Conservatory—in other words, from Prince Rostislav to The Rock and from The Rock to the symphony. Simpson essentially agreed about this musical economy, commenting that the symphony's structure as a whole could not be faulted. While Rachmaninoff did have a habit of relaxing into a slower tempo with the second subject of his first movement (a habit at which, Simpson claimed, Rachmaninoff became much worse later in his career), he kept a firm grip on the corresponding material in this work. Simpson especially cited the last movement's climax as overwhelmingly powerful and extremely economical in the use of its musical material.

Rachmaninoff biographer Max Harrison writes, "The most original element in this work comes from a network of motivic relationships," adding that while the composer had employed this network in his Caprice Bohémien, he takes its use still further in the symphony. The result is that, while the symphony is a fully cyclic work, the level of thematic integration is taken far more extensively than in most Russian symphonies. As musicologist Dr. David Brown points out, "Themes and thematic fragments from earlier movements are transformed, sometimes profoundly, to help shape existing material as well as to generate new material." In taking the level of thematic integration thus far, Rachmaninoff was able to use comparatively little musical material to combine all four movements. César Cui may have complained of exactly this quality when he wrote about the "meaningless repetition of the same short tricks," but motivic analysts who have since studied the symphony have considered these "tricks" a compositional strength, not a weakness.

Harrison writes that these same motivic analysts lay claim to the First Symphony as proof "that Rachmaninoff could write genuinely symphonic music rather than the ballets squeezed into sonata shapes written by many Russian composers, from Tchaikovsky to Stravinsky." Harrison adds that Rachmaninoff's treatment of symphonic form might for this reason be more closely descended from Alexander Borodin, a point the St. Petersburg critics may have either failed to notice or ignored at the work's premiere. Another original idea of Rachmaninoff's, as pointed out by Harrison, was his "use of Znamenny Chants (знаменный распев) as the source of thematic ideas." While the material Rachmaninoff derives from them occasionally lends a decidedly religious air, he never quotes these chants literally. They resemble what Béla Bartók would call "imaginary folk music"—formally composed music that closely resembles folk music due to his complete absorption of the spirit and musical syntax of Eastern European folk song and dance.

Some analysts such as Rachmaninoff scholar Geoffrey Norris mention that the symphony also has its problems. The slow movement lapses into a static central episode referring back to the motto theme and the scherzo becomes depleted of rhythmic drive by ramblingly repeating repetitions the same theme. The symphony's clogged and sometimes brash orchestration can make the work sound portentous, though an attentive performance can make the symphony a dark, forceful and rapturous musical statement by helping clarify the orchestration and minimize the potential pitfalls in that area."