Rachmaninoff "24 Piano Preludes" Analysis And Interpretation

Sergei Vassilievitch Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) is a great romanticism composer and pianist of Russia in the20th century. His creation inherits the strong Russian classical music tradition and learns the unique style characteristics of Russian nation folk in a large number of melody writing. As an important representative of the late romanticism music, his music creation involves very rich fields, including operas, chamber music, orchestra, chorus, songs, etc. Among these genres creation, the creation of the piano works occupies an important position. In his piano works,24Preludes is the work that occupies the main position during his mature creation period, has significant representativeness in his all piano works and fully embodies Rachmaninoff s music style. This dissertation intend to have detailed and comprehensive discussion on the historical development vein, various causes of culture, the main music ontology analysis, analysis of music style characteristics and play interpretation aspect of Rachmaninoff’s24Preludes in order to better understand this work and to provide some theoretical basis and reference for my future playing and teaching. The first chapter of this dissertation is the historical development trajectory of piano prelude. This part first begins to comb from music genre and then clearly comb the historical development of piano prelude according to its gradual development process. The second chapter is the creation background of Rachmaninoff s24Preludes. The first part is Rachmaninoff s life and his major works, which tells an overview of Rachmaninoff; the second part is the social creation background and life creation background of this work, which understands the work from an overall point of view. The third chapter is the music ontology analysis of Rachmaninoff piano prelude. Rachmaninoff piano prelude’s creation underwent three periods and is made up of three parts, i. e. Prelude in C-sharp minor, ten preludes in Op.23, and thirteen preludes in Op.32. According to the creation time, we take turns to do the music analysis. The fourth chapter is the music style characteristics of Rachmaninoff piano prelude, including the national style inheritance, the innovation of romantic style, and the carry forward of tragedy style. The fifth chapter is the performance annotation of Rachmaninoff piano prelude. This chapter briefly analyses some critical points of playing methods, using the Prelude in C sharp minor, No.5of Op.23and No.12of Op.32that I practiced before as the main entry points in combination with the summary of my exercise. The dissertation summarized the creation background of Rachmaninoff piano prelude and this work’s style formation through the comprehensive investigation of some external and internal causes, and discussed Rachmaninoff s music personality and the precious value of this prelude.