Rachmaninoff Prelude In C Sharp Minor

[Prudie]

I've just heard this piece on the radio, probably his most well known. It's always given me the creeps because as I child my mother told me it represented someone buried alive who was banging on the coffin to get out. Anyone else heard this vintage urban myth or any evidence to suggest that was the meaning behind it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X4ez9HQ9ks

[DTCwordfan]

Urban myth in the sense of someone else coming up with the story, probably in the States as it was a popular piece there.

Rachmaninov actually didn't like the piece that much. Though it's thought that he probably had a story in his mind for such preludes, as many musicians do, he didn't exactly share his thought.

Anyway, the story develops as follows: the start - the opening chords are church bells with the slow, largo procession of a funeral march to the cemetery.

The casket is interred. The fast presto movement is then the desperate scratching of the person in the casket trying to get out.

The next moderato movement is the recession of the mourners heading back off to a wake or going their separate ways. The final chords are the church bells again. Next one in?

[Samuraisan]

Wow what a thing to say to a child. No offence.

[shoota]

That's what you get when you listen to this 'modern' music....

[Prudie]

Mums weren't all perfect in those days samuraisan :-)

[ducksie]

I live in a town steeped in history and it's our history draws in tourism, when we were children were taken on a walkabout by our teacher and the guide at one of the churchyards told us about the graves with the railings around them, apparently a string was tied to the little finger of the corpse and connected to a bell on the railing, if the 'corpse was alove, they'd move the little finger and trigger the bell, those working on the 'graveyard shift' might hear the bell go off and dig up a person buried alive or body snatchers could come upon a new grave and find the person died scratching the lid of the coffin, there wouldn't be a nail left on their fingers - wasn't my Mum told me that :)

[ducksie]

alive-not alove ^^^ typos tut

[Prudie]

oo er ducksie, the thought of it is horrific - anyone remember the old Vincent Price movie Fall of the House of Usher, that terrified me.

[ducksie]

I remember that Prudie, was brilliant, loved Vincent Price and all those Hammer house movies

[tonyav]

Gawd that film scared me as a kid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqBR8knRM2w

[DTCwordfan]

A modern version is mobile phones going off inside the coffin.

"Hello, Ernie, are you in?"

[ducksie]

I told my family do that to me DTC ha
tony you big girls blouse afraid of that film ;)

[lardhelmet]

I think the older generation's mum's had a lot to answer for - all the tripe they used to tell us to frighten us, get us to go to sleep (fat chance after something they'd just told us) or whatever they wanted us to do/say.

[murraymints]

my fav rachmaninoff piece !

[tonyav]

tony you big girls blouse afraid of that film ;)


Yeah, I hid behind a cushion :-)

[ducksie]

lardhelmet, not only the stories they told us but the nursery rhymes - the one where the baby falls from the cradle - rock a bye baby and all that stuff, not very comforting

[Prudie]

shiver

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0Xe7TdClbA

[ducksie]

I bet you did tony ;)

[Prudie]

I don't blame you Tony

[ducksie]

speaking of usher, I remember being thrown out of a cinema once for laughing too much at a horror movie, the Usher hit me with her torch and told me 'this is not a comedy' ha made me laugh even harder

[tonyav]

Another Edgar Alan Poe story. Rachmaninoff prelude in C sharp major would have suited this film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxPSRFFkDNg