Rachmaninov: Symphony No. 2

Listening to the early morning syndicated program featured by my local Public Radio station, I was startled to hear a very familiar melody. I had heard the announcer's introduction and registered it subconsciously, but had not grasped it completely. The words that popped into my mind each time the melody returned were: "Never gonna fall in love again!" In contrast to the determined sobriety of the words, the tune was quite jaunty to begin with, though it retreated into a rather injured melancholy, only to make a sally again with some slight optimism, and so on. Of course, I had to find out more.

As soon as I could wake myself up enough to get on the Internet and find out more, I discovered that the playlist of this early-morning filler program that was aired before Weekend Edition was not published with the same meticulous care as were those of the NPR programs and those created at the local studios. The only clue I had were the words "Never gonna fall in love again," and I didn't know for certain that it would be "gonna" rather than "going to". As it turned out, I myself knew at least two songs that had many of those words in them. Google gave numerous references, including songs by New Kids On the Block, and so on. What I needed was a source that would play the songs right away. The next stop was YouTube, and within seconds I had a hit with Eric Carmen. This was the song I remembered, a jaunty tune, with rather peevish lyrics that expressed the unworthy feelings many of us experience at the demise of a love affair. The sumptuous sound of the orchestral version I had half-heard while still asleep, with its broad repeating sequences was in weird contrast with the popular song, though the song faithfully retained the harmony of the original. Going back to Google, I was sent to Wikipedia, which had not only an article on Eric Carmen, but on this specific song, with a pointer to Sergei Rachmaninov's Symphony No. 2.

Of course I had to narrow down the actual movement. Going back to YouTube, I found several clips of this symphony, and I finally hit the jackpot with Movement 3. It was precisely this movement that I had heard; a sweetly earnest assertion of youthful desire, still not in the stage of disappointment expressed by Mr Carmen. The youthfulness of the Rachmaninov movement is actually quite comparable to that of the popular song; but where the symphonic movement is romantic and positive, the song is ambiguous and negative. Still, Mr Carmen has to be congratulated on a song that deserved better than it got, in my opinion. And he deserves a lot of appreciation for pointing me in the direction of Sergei Rachmaninov's Second Symphony.
Archimedes