The Bells

It was almost by chance that Rachmaninoff came to compose what he regarded as his finest work. In the summer of 1912, Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Bells, as freely translated by the great Russian Symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont, was sent to him anonymously by a young music student: she was convinced it was ideal for the composer, known for his love of bells and already famous for his tone poem The Isle of the Dead. Rachmaninoff instantly saw its potential as a four-movement choral symphony—one remarkably similar in concept and even some of its musical ideas to Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony, whose premiere he had heard in Leeds when performing in the same concert in 1910. Rachmaninoff composed The Bells in Rome, completing it in 1913. Its first movement is a joyous affirmation of birth and youth, symbolised by a sleigh’s silver bells. The second is more reflective, describing a marriage ceremony accompanied by golden bells. Then follows bronze bells, ringing an alarm at the outbreak of a terrible conflagration. Finally, an iron bell tolls, signifying death, though that movement ends with a passage for strings of tranquil beauty representing God’s mercy.