Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony

Here is a link to some biographical information on Rachmaninoff:
http://victorian.fortunecity.com/parkstreet/746/rachring/rachring.html#

Here is a link to a page about the Second Symphony (there is even a video you can watch):
http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/index.cfm?fuseaction=composition&composition_id=3061

To understand why this work is important to me you would have to head back about thirteen years in my life. At that time my younger son was a baby in arms and I was taking care of him during the day, I was working full time afternoon shift, and I was attending a small local university full time on the weekends. In addition to all of that I was taking a music appreciation class at the local community college. I had previously attended a large university for a couple of years, and I had enough transfer credits that I only had to take classes in my major at the small one and all of my general ed classes were done - except for one humanities class. Hence the music appreciation class to finish up that one requirement at a much lower cost.

Pretty much two years of my life are now a big blur in my memory from while all of that was going on. One of the very distinct memories I have (other than of my children) is one from that music class.

Now, the professor was really into roots music and blues and jazz. But he did sprinkle in bits of classical from time to time. And one day he had everyone come in and put our heads down on our desks and close our eyes, he turned off the lights and told everyone to relax. He then started playing a piece of classical music - one of the most beautiful melodies I had ever heard (and have still ever heard right up until today!). And then he told everyone to raise their hands when they heard the climax!

Well that music was the third movement, the adagio, of Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony. It is beautiful. It is like someone took the best sex they could ever have and turned that experience into music. That lovely melody just builds and builds and builds...until yes, there is a climax.

Later we listened to the entire symphony. It is some of the most beautiful music I have ever heard. It is lovely...it is like a celebration of beauty, but it is not sugary sweet. There is plenty of passion mixed in, and enough doubt and darkness to give it a nice edge.

I have always thought that this (particularly the third movement) is the music that the Wraiths must dance to at the Celebration of Spring in Andelain in Donaldson's First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.