Listening to Rachmaninoff is like walking down a hall of mirrored doors. Each note is an opening to an emotion, one’s life caught in neatly staffed lines on a white page of manuscript. When the door is opened a tidal wave of the actual feeling, the love, the loss, the joy, the hope, the despair hits the listener before there is even a chance to breathe. The notes create a deep jungle of our own experience that must be traversed with a machete, a sense of humor, and plenty of snake bite remedy.
On the surface Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme from Paganini may seem to be
an ardent explosion of love, longing, and lust. A frenetic opus to the disquietude of romance it may well be.
But to me, when heard in the context of the complete movement, the rhapsody is less about romantic love, than the love of survival, of living life, of the heart pulsing in the chest and the throat and the wrist. Each breath, each beat, each pulse building the bittersweet fragility of life. It is the morning dawn soft and smudged across the dark memory of night. The glimpse of genius in a life that seems dull and spent.
The cry of a baby.
The blossoming of a rose.
It is the prayer of longing from one soul to another to be heard, and loved, for who one truly is and not what one seems to be.
The quieting of the inner voices.
The knowing of self.
The shaft of light through the darkening cloud, the sea of calm surrounded by the maelstrom of hurricane. The breathing point between one despairing disaster and the next reversal of life. A flickering candle in a livid tinged nightmare, the ease of somnolence after a sleepless night, the transparent, unbelievable moment of casting aside pain, rejuvenation after chronic illness.
Cliché? It may be, but the reason these are cliché images are because they are common, experienced by all. They will never be trite. As with all of Rachmaninoff’s music,though it holds a promise of respite, it also holds the reality of hardship. This most beloved variation of Paganini’s theme is so beautiful because it occurred to Rachmaninoff to turn the notes upside down on the staff, to invert normalcy and discover the unexpected beauty in a reversal. We wouldn't have the rhapsody if it weren't for a change, a break with what was wanted or expected. Each bright note is paired with darker notes. The dark underpinnings of life, the heartbreak, the hurt, the finality of death may be real, but the rhapsody encapsulates the eternal pulse of life, of breath, of hope.
