Resonances of Memory: Tracing Rachmaninoff’s Signature

In this reflective essay, Emre Aracı traces the quiet resonance of a single autograph by Sergei Rachmaninoff—a page torn from time, yet bearing the soul of a composer who spoke most eloquently through silence. From Saint Petersburg to London, from concert hall to forgotten notebook, Aracı weaves together music history, personal memory, and archival sleuthing in a lyrical meditation on art, loss, and the enduring dignity of a signature.

Among the traces left behind by the passage of music history, there are some which, though neither manuscript nor autograph score, possess nonetheless the power to convey the spirit of an age and the inner world of a genius. Such is the elegant yet quietly resolute flourish of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s signature, delicately inscribed in the corner of a plain sheet torn from a modest notebook—its poised serenity the very embodiment of grace. To imagine the truths that lie behind that sweeping hand, to piece together a narrative from the faint but enduring ink strokes of that pale page, especially when undertaken to the accompaniment of his music—reconstructing history from so unassuming a leaf—feels a potent and compelling adventure.

For that graceful curve conveys more than a name alone; it seems also to contain the morning mist drifting across the veranda of a Russian country estate, the image of a young composer absorbed in his reading, captured in monochrome within the frame of an old photograph, and the echo of church bells tolling through the memories of a distant childhood. Each curl of the pen appears to whisper of a trembling Saint Petersburg dawn, of the sorrow of a homeland lost.

"The elegant yet quietly resolute flourish of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s signature" (© Emre ARACI)

And yet the curious truth is that this page did not emerge from some ancestral house in Novgorod, nor from the rural seclusion of Ivanovka. I came upon this precious autograph quite by chance last year while perusing the digital catalogue of documents offered for sale by a bookseller in England. In that moment, a curious excitement stirred within me—one difficult to articulate. At the instant my eyes fell upon Rachmaninoff’s familiar name, time seemed briefly suspended; the cold glare of the computer screen took on, just for an instant, the quivering dimness of the past. Though I had longed to visit that London bookseller in person—to wander in silence among shelves no doubt brimming with curious ephemera, to breathe in the scent of faded paper and lay my hand upon the page itself—encountering the document online felt like an unexpected consolation seeping through the cracks of an age in which I find little joy.

When the original autograph finally arrived by post, I felt a faint tremor in my chest as I carefully opened the envelope. It was as though I were holding not merely a document, but time itself in my hands. 

Sergei Rachmaninoff in his youth

This delicate leaf—once held by Rachmaninoff himself, touched by his fingertips, and graced with that elegant signature so meticulously inscribed—seemed, after all these years, to come alive once more. The ink may have long since dried, yet it bore the trace of a memory still warm, quietly transmitting the composer’s presence across the page into the present. It was not only a signature I held, but the very scent, texture, and weight of the past made tangible. In that moment, history ceased to be an abstract notion—it took on flesh and form, dwelling once again in the same room, at the same table, beneath the same light as I. It was clear that this page had been carefully torn from a signature album, the margin still bearing signs of its gentle detachment. 

Rather than a relic from Rachmaninoff’s youth in Russia, it was likely the trace of a moment following one of his concerts in Britain—a mark left hastily yet courteously in a fan’s album, offered in admiration after the performance. Perhaps it was made backstage, or as he left the hall, casting a swift glance at the proffered book amidst a blur of unfamiliar faces. But when had that moment occurred? After which concert? In which city, in which venue? Who had extended the book with such quiet hope? Sadly, there were no clues—no date, no location, no faint imprint of a concert hall’s name in the background. The page was silent. Only the signature spoke—and it spoke in the past tense.

And so the rest must be left to the imagination. The only incontrovertible truth was this: that Rachmaninoff’s real signature now lay in the palm of my hand.

At a time when the world seems to have veered madly off course, when time itself feels unmoored and human voices echo without response, this small page bearing a signature has become, for me, a quiet source of solace. Perhaps it is, in its way, a silent prescription from a great composer—one who, though scarred by the wars, exiles, and sorrows of former ages, continues to inspire us with a dignity undiminished by suffering. For this signature is, in a sense, Rachmaninoff’s unspoken self-portrait.

Alexander Glazunov
by Ilya Repin, 1887

Gazing upon that calligraphic flourish, I found myself transported to March 1897—to the ill-fated première of his youthful First Symphony in D minor, Op. 13, in Saint Petersburg, a work that now plays gently beneath these lines in the recording by Vladimir Ashkenazy with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. The neglect of conductor Alexander Glazunov, the orchestra’s lack of preparation, and the critics’ unkind pens left wounds so deep that the young man, once so full of promise, fell into a near-paralysis of spirit, unable to write a single note for three years. And yet, in time, Rachmaninoff found his way back—helped by the quiet interventions of a hypnotherapist, he regained his confidence, composed the legendary Second Piano Concerto, and returned not merely as a pianist but as a monumental figure of the musical world. That is why one must never lose hope. Was it not he who, by the very arc of his life, reminded us of Heine’s words: 

“What the world has taken from us, music gives back”.

Though Rachmaninoff outwardly appeared to observe the classical symphonic model in his First Symphony, he in fact shaped its musical architecture according to the contours of his own inner landscape. The four-movement structure — Grave – Allegro non troppo, Allegro animato, Larghetto, and Allegro con fuoco — served not an inherited tradition, but an internal necessity. These movements unfolded less as formal divisions and more as emotional states: a lament gives way to tempest, subsides into a wistful sigh, and finally collapses in a turbulent descent.

The musical language Rachmaninoff employed in this early symphony, though deemed “inadequate” or “excessive” by some of his contemporaries, was in truth the product of a deliberate aesthetic vision. The dense harmonies, saturated orchestration, and obsessive thematic insistence were not mere indulgences but the sonic projection of an inner world. 

In writing this symphony, Rachmaninoff did not merely compose a work in the abstract; he composed himself—his youth, his darkness, his unrest.

Moreover, the symphony’s voice is not confined to sound alone. When approached with the thought that “at times, the deepest expression lies in what remains unsaid”, one realises that this work also speaks through its silences. And silence, ironically, became its fate: the First Symphony would never again be heard in Rachmaninoff’s lifetime, and its full score would vanish without trace. Yet, decades later, the orchestral parts were discovered in the archives of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. In 1945, two years after the composer’s death, the work was at last revived. No longer dismissed as a youthful misjudgement, it now emerged as a symphony of haunting beauty—an utterance of inner turmoil and the sorrows acquired too early in life.

Emre Aracı with the Saint Petersburg Conservatoire Orchestra, 4 April 2011

On 4 April 2011, I myself had the opportunity to conduct the Saint Petersburg Conservatoire Orchestra in the historic concert hall that now bears the name of Alexander Glazunov. I also had the chance to explore the Conservatoire’s spellbinding archives—

—an experience that, however fleeting, reaffirmed a belief I have always held: that historic buildings and performance spaces possess a singular power to nurture, and even shape, the artistic soul. 

Emre Aracı at Saint Petersburg
Conservatoire, 4 April 2011

As a music historian, I am deeply convinced that the subtle threads of connection such spaces preserve carry messages every bit as valuable as the works themselves. And yet, for all this knowledge and feeling, I have still found no clue as to the origin of that elusive signature—no trace of the concert or the hall in which it was inscribed. Perhaps it is now time to follow my intuition more closely and examine, in greater depth, the concerts Rachmaninoff gave during his visits to the British Isles.

Rachmaninoff first set foot in London in 1899, still a young composer and pianist, and he would return frequently during the 1920s and ’30s on various concert tours. On that first visit, on 19 April 1899, he appeared under the auspices of the Royal Philharmonic Society, performing selections from his Morceaux de fantaisie, composed in 1892—including the unforgettable Prelude in C-sharp minor, Op. 3 No. 2, etched into the memory of us all, alongside the poignant Élégie. That same evening, he also took to the podium as conductor, leading a performance of his symphonic poem The Rock, Op. 7.

Many years later, on 10 March 1932, Rachmaninoff would once again appear in a Royal Philharmonic Society concert, this time at the Queen’s Hall under the baton of Sir Henry Wood, performing his celebrated Third Piano Concerto. On that occasion, before an elegantly assembled audience, he was also presented with the Society’s Gold Medal by the Duchess of Atholl.

Katharine Stewart-Murray, Duchess of Atholl presented Rachmaninoff with the Society’s Gold Medal

Among the audience that evening was one of the most distinguished music critics of the day, Ernest Newman, who would later write the following lines:

Ernest Newman

“The great thing of the evening was the playing of the incomparable Rachmaninoff in his own third piano concerto. This work will never be as popular as the second, but pianists of the first rank will probably come more and more to prefer it for public purposes. Its virtue resides less in its basic ideas than in the beauty and ingeniosity of the writing for the solo instrument; the inlay on the casket is so dexterous that one can be made to forget that the underlying metal is not always precious. As usual, Rachmaninoff gave us the impression of being, all in all, the first among living pianists. A Feinschmecker could have sat there all night merely observing how many shades, how many inflections—and shades and inflections of what incredible delicacy!—he could manage to give to the opening subject alone. At the conclusion of the performance Rachmaninoff was presented by the Duchess of Athol with the Society’s gold medal. I hope this intrusion of his into the sacred circle will not be resented by some of the other initiates....”, (Sergei Bertensson, Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music, New York University Press, 1956, p. 285).

Newman’s final remark reveals, poignantly, that even a genius of Rachmaninoff’s stature was not immune to the rigid prejudices of his time. 

Yet, Sir Henry Wood so deeply admired Rachmaninoff’s music and artistry that, on 5 October 1938, he invited the composer to perform his Second Piano Concerto under his baton at the Royal Albert Hall, as part of a grand jubilee concert. Earlier that year, during a spring concert and recital tour of England, Rachmaninoff had given a press conference ahead of his performances. From a piece published in the Daily Herald on 10 March 1938, we know that the journalist Stuart Fletcher was among the reporters present.

Rachmaninoff by Konstantin Somov, 1925 (© Emre ARACI)

There sat Sergei Rachmaninoff, then sixty-five, in a heavily furnished hotel lounge overlooking Piccadilly—exhausted, hollow-eyed, and with the demeanour of one grown weary of the world. He stared blankly at the dull red carpet, anxiously tearing burnt matchsticks into fragments, while some twenty journalists directed their questions towards him. The composer was withdrawn; his gaze was distant and shrouded in shadow—just as I have always imagined it from the 1925 portrait by Konstantin Somov, reproduced on a vintage postcard I have long kept. A leading figure of the Mir Iskusstva (World of Art) movement, Somov was known for his refined, often melancholic aesthetic, blending Symbolist nuance with Rococo elegance—his portraits capturing not only the likeness but the inner weather of a bygone, dreamlike world.

In his report, Fletcher would use a striking turn of phrase to describe Rachmaninoff “like a sardonic ghost from a past generation”. And indeed, the page I now hold in my hand feels as though it, too, has emerged from the depths of just such a soul—

—a man who had transformed solitude into nobility, who spoke through silence, and whose heart still lingers in this quiet trace of ink.

Perhaps I shall never discover the precise concert or occasion at which that signature was inscribed—but perhaps, in the end, such details are irrelevant, for the true significance lies not in the moment it was written, but in the quiet resonance it still carries. The echo it bears speaks of a sorrow woven through with triumph—a silent cry committed to music that, like a guiding light, continues to reach towards generations yet to come. One day, I should like to frame that signature alongside the vintage postcard of Somov’s portrait of the composer: the ink and the image, united at last, bearing silent witness to a soul who spoke most eloquently through silence and the nobility of his music...

Emre Aracı’s article was originally published in Turkish under the title ‘Rahmaninov’un imzasında geçmişin ve müziğinin yankısı’ in the May 2025 issue (No. 223) of Andante.

Link to the original article in Turkish

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