Ex. 12-9: All Things Pass

No. 15 — the last song — of Rachmaninoff's 15 Romances (Op. 26), composed in 1906. The poem is by Daniil Ratgauz. It is a dark song in E-flat minor: all things pass and do not return. Another song from Op. 26 is also in this app. (Ex. 2-16: When Yesterday We Met by Sergei Rachmaninoff)

Rachmaninoff had just resigned as a conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre, and he wrote Op. 26 in Russia in the summer of 1906. That November, to get away from the unrest that followed the 1905 Revolution, he moved his family to Dresden, in Germany, where he went on to write his Symphony No. 2 and Piano Sonata No. 1.

The poet, Daniil Ratgauz, has a link to Tchaikovsky: his poems make up all six of Tchaikovsky's last songs, the Six Romances (Op. 73), written in 1893, the year Tchaikovsky died.

Rachmaninoff deeply admired Tchaikovsky. When Tchaikovsky died in 1893, the twenty-year-old Rachmaninoff began a trio in his memory that same day — the Trio élégiaque No. 2, "to the memory of a great artist."

Op. 26 is dedicated to Arkady and Maria Kerzin, a Moscow lawyer and his wife who ran a music-lovers' circle and supported young Russian composers, Rachmaninoff among them. Several of the Op. 26 songs were first sung at their concerts.

With Op. 26, Rachmaninoff turned to more serious, literary poets than in his earlier songs — among them Tyutchev, Fet, and Ratgauz.

From the album Rachmaninoff: Songs by Julia Sukmanova and Elena Sukmanova (2016)
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