Rachmaninoff, S :: Vocalise

Musicians Publications presents Sergei Rachmaninoff s Vocalise arranged for woodwind quintet by Bill Holcombe.

This Vocalise is arranged by Holcombe to be a French Horn Feature. The french horn sings Rachmaninoff s beautifully dark melody accompanied by the woodwinds: flute, oboe, clarinet, and bassoon.

For the six minutes of hypnotic beauty that are Rachmaninoff s Vocalise, we can thank Ivanovka, the composer s country estate. He loved Ivanovka, loved the expanse of the countryside that ringed it, loved the vast space between his eyes and the long horizon. Most of all, he loved its distance from a world of exhausting duties. Not that he ignored that world. For it wanted his music. And Ivanovka was a quiet place that seemed made for a composer to meet the demands of his public. There, in the summer of 1912, Rachmaninoff completed the fourteen songs that make up his Opus 34. The Vocalise, last of the group, is wordless music whose calm, and whose expansive lines, capture the spirit of its birthplace. Some have called the Vocalise an exercise for voice, though the work is about more than pitch structures, and to do it justice a singer must have a sense of what the music is saying not through words, but in gestures, inflections, and concentrated intensity of expression. Three years after completing his version for voice and piano, Rachmaninoff turned the Vocalise' into a work for orchestra.

Larry Rothe