B.G. Gnilov Sergei Rachmaninoff’s personal stylized rhythmic formula

Abstract: The subject of the article is presented by the specific method of fixation of compositional authorship in a musical work. In the annotated article the musical legacy of Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff is researched in the aspect of segregation and individualization in it of certain constant elements of the composer’s musical language, which in an invariant or a somewhat modified way migrate from one musical composition to another. Bearing in mind such personal stylistic emblems of Rachmaninoff as the “Rachmaninoff subdominant” and the Dies Irae motive, the author of the article focuses on a personal specific resource of this composer’s musical rhythm. The article’s methodology is presented as an aggregate of analytic and synthesizing methods fundamental to musical scholarship with a specially active application of comparative procedures. The conclusion that is presented in the annotated article is that Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff is in a certain sense obsessed by the declarative fixation of his compositional authorship, the idea of a ubiquitous implementation of the emblem studies of its individual style. The circumstance that on the rhythmic plane this directedness of the Russian musician appears, in all likelihood, even more explicitly and insistently than in harmony and melody, is seen as extraordinary. The novelty of the article is that it contains information about a previously unknown stylistic rhythmic emblem of Rachmaninoff, discovered during the course of research, one that spans and permeates through his mcompositions that are the most representative in the repertoire.

Keywords: