It is this reflectiveness that has caused the attribution of
the work to ateliers.
And had M. Rachmaninoff instead of being a musician been a painter,
would not a like destiny await his compositions? For do they not proceed
from the point of departure of the entire brilliant school of
piano-compositions? Are they not a sort of throwback to the salon
school, the school of velocity, of effect, of whatever Rubinstein and
Liszt could desire? Are not the piano-pieces of M. Rachmaninoff the
result of a relationship to the instrument that is fast becoming
outmoded? There was some slight justification for the pompous and empty
work of his models. The concerti, the often flashy and tinselly
pianoforte compositions of Liszt and Rubinstein were the immediate and
surface result of that deeper sense of the instrument which arrived
during the nineteenth century, and intoxicated folk with the piano
timbres, and made them eager to hear its many voices in no matter how
crude a form. A whole school of facile virtuosi arose in response to the
demand. Since then, however, we have gotten a subtler sense of the
instrument. We no longer require so insensitive a display. And together
with those rather gross piano-works the piece _par excellence_
characteristic of the period, the brilliant piano-concerto with its
prancing instrument embedded in the pomp and clangor and ululation of
the band, has lost in favor steadily.
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