A Study On The Musical Expressive Techniques Of Rachmaninov's "Paganini Rhapsody" (Op.43)

Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini is the last piano and orchestra-cooperated concerto during Rachmaninoff's twilight years, taking a “rhapsody” as the title and written in the form of partita and played by cooperation of piano and orchestra. The piece is based on the last theme of 24 Caprices for Solo Violin, which was composed by the famous violinist, Paganini above 100 years before that, and makes 24 variations to complete a single-movement piano and orchestra-cooperated work.This paper analyzed techniques of musical expression in Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and discussed the theme, musical form, concord, piano language and musical emotion. The paper was divided into four chapters. Chapter I was reviews of Rachmaninoff and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, introducing major works during his three musical creation stages, the major study object, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, and the original work and discussing the form of the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and relevant forms. In Chapter II, techniques of musical creations concerning Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini were specifically analyzed;preservations and extensions of the original piece were discussed in detail, including analysis on preservations and extensions of the original piece and detailed analysis on three themes in the work, the theme of Paganini(i.e. the original theme), the theme of“Dies Irae”(also named the theme of “death”) and the theme of “love”(a new theme achieved by inverting the original theme). Microanalysis on the work was also conducted, analyzing the musical structure of Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and discussing inheritance and development of rhythm, concord and musical texture.,Thereafter, relation between piano and orchestra were analyzed to discuss complementary and coordinated performance and skill competition in detail. Chapter III, the last part of this paper, studied techniques of musical expression concerning emotions, including two major emotions, nationality and tragedy, expressed by the composer in this work. Firstly, causes of national characteristic lingual connotationswere analyzed; secondly, clips reflecting nationality in the piece were analyzed; then,tragic lingual connotations on this rhapsody were analyzed from multiple factors;lastly, the nationality and tragic connotations in Rachmaninoff creations were compared with several contemporaneous musicians' musical creations styles.Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini was comprehensively analyzed on both macroscopic and microscopic aspects from the perspective of expression techniques,therefore, to make readers understand some techniques of musical expression in Rachmaninoff's musical creations and better understand in-depth musical connotations in his work and to facilitate performances of his works.