Rachmaninoff "24 Preludes" Research

Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) is a great romantic composer and piano concert performer in 20th century of Russia. He inherits the classical music tradition of Russia and his melody writing has massively derived the Russian folk song style characteristic. As the representative personage of later romantic music, his music creation is extremely rich and involves the opera, the symphony, the chorus, the chamber music, the song and so on, among which the piano work holds the important status. In piano work, 24 preludes is one of Rachmaninoff's main works in maturation period, which is most representative and can most display his music style works. The present paper intends to thoroughly expound the historical vein, the cultural origin, music main body, the style characteristic and the performance annotation of Rachmaninoff's 24 prelude, to better understand Rachmaninoff 's this important set of work and provide the theoretical basis for the future performance and the teaching.The first chapter of this paper is about the piano prelude historical vein which has combed the piano prelude historical development situation emphatically. The second chapter mainly expounds the cultural origin of Rachmaninoff's piano prelude from the perspective of social historical background and the social consciousness shape. Third chapter analyzes the main body of Rachmaninoff's piano prelude music, in which analyses of the work musical form structure, the mode adjusts the natural, the melody constitution, weaves the body level and with the sound characteristic and so on is involved. The fourth chapter discusses the style characteristic of Rachmaninoff's piano prelude, including its inherited national style, the romantic style innovation and tragedy style developing. The fifth chapter is about the performance annotation of Rachmaninoff's piano prelude which emphatically analyzed the key point in performance method: Using and expansion of imagination, the complete body and mind investment, expansion and contraction rhythm processing, the timbre and the color, the melody and the clause, the high spot, concrete difficulty, the difficulty graduation and classification, the program choice and match etc. The paper attaches great importance to the scientific utilization of performance method, summaries the technical topic of Rachmaninoff's piano prelude, had pointed has carried on the performance prompt to this interpolating style characteristic, and elaborated Rachmaninoff 's music individuality and this set of prelude precious value from music culture angle.