Sergei Rachmaninoff Tops the Pop Charts
Growing up, I seldom went anywhere without a portable radio, from the pocket transistor with the mono earphone jack to the stereotypical 80’s boombox to the Sony Walkman AM/FM Radio-Cassette. I loved Casey Kasem and Top-40 music, and would stay up late at night with my transistor radio listening to CBS Mystery Theater and static-filled baseball play-by-play signals from faraway cities. During U.S. Navy Boot Camp and aboard ship, among my greatest worries was what hit songs I was missing out on.
My tastes in music have since widened from 60s-80s Top-40 to include Smooth Jazz, R&B, and Country. Over the past year I have learned to enjoy the work of numerous Classical composers as well. The local Classical radio station happened to play two different pieces by Sergei Rachmaninoff yesterday that made me stop and say, “HEY! I know that melody! It’s a 70’s pop song!”
The first piece was his Piano Concerto #2 in C Minor. Listen to movement 2, especially 12:55-13:25.
And now the 1975 Top-5 Pop hit. Just the intro will suffice.
Later in the afternoon, the Classical station played Rachmaninoff’s Symphony #2. Listen especially at 3:35-3:50, but you can hear the theme throughout the 3rd movement.
And now listen to the chorus (0:40-1:15) of this 1976 Easy Listening hit by the same pop artist, obviously a big fan of Rachmaninoff.
I remember being told that the melody of the 1965 hit “A Lover’s Concerto” was actually based on a minuet written by J.S. Bach (now attributed Christian Petzold), and learning that Barry Manilow‘s “Could It Be Magic” begins with a piano prelude written by Frederic Chopin. My guess is there are many more examples. As for the lyrics, they can either match the beauty of the melody or not. Consider “You Light Up My Life,” a monster hit in 1977. The words matched the lovely melody until the very last ill-conceived lyric, “It can’t be wrong when it feels so right.” Um, yes, it certainly can be wrong if he already has a wife. Again, there are probably many examples of pretty melodies being saddled with sappy or poor messages. Beautiful melodies are beautiful melodies, however. No matter the genre.
Feature photo: Sergei Rachmaninoff at a Steinway Grand Piano 1936 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
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