Nostalgia as a cultural factor in the creation of S. Rachmaninoff ’s prelude Op. 32 No. 10 in B minor (1910) in the context of impressions from A. Böcklin’s painting Returning Home

Abstract

The paper analyzes the memoirs of B. Moiseiwitsch, a pianist, S. Rachmaninoff ’s contemporary and friend, and examines the musical work which was first discovered and introduced in the art history—Prelude Op. 32 No. 10 in B minor (1910)—composed under the impression from A. Böcklin’s painting Returning Home (1887). Nostalgia isstudied as a cultural factor in the creation of the musical work by S. Rachmaninoff in the context of impressions from A. Böcklin’s painting. The fact that awork by S. Rachmaninoff based on the B. Moiseiwitsch’s memoirs about one of his meetings with S. Rachmaninoff was discovered and introduced in musicology. This constitutes the academic and theoretical novelty of the paper. Therefore, academic inquiry is interdisciplinary, overlapping with cultural studies. The understanding of a correlation between fine and musical arts and historical period, which allows to explain certain phenomena in culture, was expanded. The notions of nostalgia, mirror metaphor, artist biography, and romantic wanderings were substantiated. The aim of the work is to consider nostalgia as a cultural factor in the creation of S. Rachmaninoff ’s Prelude No. 10 in B minor. The subject matter of research is the S. Rachmaninoff ’s nostalgia that was projected on the writing of this musical work. Comparative approach revealed common and distinct features in the content, imagery, and mood of A. Böcklin’s painting and S. Rachmaninoff ’s prelude. In addition, the issues of romantic wanderings were considered, revealing the approaches to romantic interpretation of the eternal mythologeme of the journey: travel as a path to knowledge, wanderings as a curse, exile or travel as an approach to new artistic horizons. This musical piece is closely linked to religious and philosophical ideas of life, death and immortality, of sin, redemption and forgiveness, and to the prevailing idea of transfiguration.