The Journey Home

Circuits was written in 1990 for the Denton Chamber Orchestra of Denton, Texas. 

The title, Circuits, is meant to characterize several important aspects of the work’s musical language: a strong reliance upon circuitous structures such as ostinatos; the use of a formal design incorporating numerous, recurring short sections; and the presence of an unrelenting, kinetic energy achieved through the use of 16th notes at a constant tempo of 152 beats per minute. 

The inclusion of jazz elements and the playful manipulation of musical materials using syncopation, sudden transposition, and juxtaposition are also characteristic of the work. 

When I’m between film and television projects, my wife Bridget often encourages me to write pieces for the concert hall. It stretches my imagination and leads me in directions I may never explore in a visual medium. In the summer of 2022, I took her up on the challenge. When searching for inspiration, I often turn to Beethoven, and as I listened to his string quartets, his 13th (Op. 130) particularly spoke to me. Upon further investigation of the work, I discovered that a recording of the fifth movement is included on the Golden Record, a disk featuring the ‘sounds of Earth’, aboard both Voyager spacecrafts. The spark hit me immediately, and I decided to write a piece that tells the story of Voyager’s journey through space, with the Cavatina providing thematic material. 

It begins on the launchpad, with the sounds of calculating computer systems created by electronic synthesizer, the sheer power of the rocket characterized by rumbling low strings and brass, mechanical sounds of tapping metal and wood, an original motif, and a single, staccato oboe, representing the communications system aboard Voyager itself. Anticipation builds, with these systems growing louder and louder, until the rocket finally launches, unleashing a burst of energy and momentum. It’s toward the end of this energetic section that the first reference to the Cavatina occurs—a fragment played like a fanfare in the horns and violas. 

The rocket’s fuselages fall away from Voyager, and it is in orbit. While marveling at the beauty of Earth from above, the first page of the Cavatina is played in its original string quartet form, accompanied by synthesizer sounds and a recording featured on the Golden Record. On it is a series of greetings spoken in dozens of languages, signifying the precious cargo Voyager is carrying—our identity. 

The Cavatina and original motif are presented in new arrangements, each one grander than the next, expressing the indescribable sights of this journey. The spacecraft passes Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune. Suddenly, Voyager reaches the edge of our solar system. 

It is no longer traversing the beauty of the universe but rather a cold void. The dizzying feeling of being confronted by this enormity is expressed by the return of the Golden Record greetings, as well as sounds of nature. These are distorted and time-stretched, accompanied by icy, shivering strings, and a somber duet between French and English horns. 

The music builds to a climax that bursts with triumph, and out from it emerges peace, with the four principal string players playing a canon featuring new fragments of the Cavatina. 

The sounds fade, except for quiet, high string harmonics, synthesizer effects and the single oboe representing Voyager. As these sounds slowly drift away, we are left with Voyager all alone, floating ever deeper into the great beyond. 

—Daniel Slatkin, 2024 

THE COMPOSER 

Sergei Rachmaninoff was born into an aristocratic family near Novgorod, Russia. Both his parents were amateur pianists and they recognized Sergei’s musical talent at an early age. Rachmaninoff’s father incurred serious gambling debts that forced the family to move to Saint Petersburg where Sergei began studying at the conservatory. His father deserted the family in 1883 and his maternal grandmother then took a large role in caring for the children. She took Sergei to services at the Russian Orthodox Church where he experienced liturgical chant and church bells, both influencing his later compositions.  

 Rachmaninoff moved to Moscow to pursue studies at the conservatory there but was an indifferent student, often failing classes, perhaps because he didn’t find them challenging. His teachers included Alexander Siloti, Anton Arensky, and Sergei Taneyev. Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky provided mentorship and Rachmaninoff was devastated at Tchaikovsky’s death in 1893.  

After graduation, Rachmaninoff began what would be a recurrent cycle throughout his life. A publisher’s payment for his compositions was delayed and so he concertized to support himself, limiting time for composition and creating even more pressure to perform in order to pay bills.  

Scathing reviews following the disastrous 1897 premiere of Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony drove him to a nervous breakdown. He composed virtually nothing for three years. Eventually, hypnosis and psychotherapy provided by Nikolai Dahl helped Rachmaninoff regain his self-confidence and begin composing again. The resulting Second Piano Concerto, a tremendous success, was dedicated to Dahl.    

In 1902, Rachmaninoff married his cousin Natalia Satina after an extended delay due to religious concerns over the union. The marriage would last until Rachmaninoff’s death in 1943. A conducting post at the Bolshoi Theatre followed in 1904 but political unrest led Rachmaninoff to leave after two years, moving to Italy and then Dresden, Germany. His first tour of the United States took place in 1909, increasing his popularity on these shores.  

The Russian Revolution was a dramatic breaking point for Rachmaninoff. His home was confiscated and he was determined to escape the turmoil in Russia. A concert tour in Scandinavia served as the excuse to leave. He would never return. Shortly thereafter, the Rachmaninoffs immigrated to the United States where he earned his living primarily performing and recording.   

Rachmaninoff was in ill health during a concert tour in the winter of 1942-43, and a recital on February 17, 1943, in Knoxville, Tennessee would prove to be his last. He died from advanced melanoma just over a month later at his home in Beverly Hills, California.  

 THE MUSIC 

Consideration of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Third Symphony perforce requires contemplation of his first two works in the genre for context.  Prodigiously talented, Rachmaninoff graduated from the Moscow Conservatory with honors at the tender age of 19 in 1892, earning recognition for both composition and piano performance. With the enthusiasm and audacity of youth, he poured his heart into his First Symphony, completed in 1895.  Despite its youthful genesis, the work amply displays the melodic and romantic characteristics endemic to Rachmaninoff’s music throughout his career. With high hopes for its success, the young composer was understandably crushed at the symphony’s 1897 premiere, an infamously catastrophic performance conducted by Alexander Glazunov, whom many thought to be so drunk as to sabotage the debut.  Critics flayed the work which shattered Rachmaninoff’s self-confidence, setting off a debilitating episode that extended for three years during which he composed virtually nothing. Thus, the symphonic form became freighted with connotations of incompetence, an implication lacking in substance but still a powerful disincentive for his return to the genre.  

The story of Rachmaninoff’s successful resumption of composition includes a course of hypnosis and psychotherapy with Nikolai Dahl resulting in the delightful Second Piano Concerto in 1901. Rachmaninoff’s long-delayed marriage to his cousin Natalia Satina in 1902 provided yet another form of affirmation, as did a conducting post at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1904.  Unfortunately, the social and musical demands in Moscow were draining, leaving Rachmaninoff with little time or energy for composition.  That factor, in tandem with Russia’s increasing political instability led Rachmaninoff to take a position in Dresden, moving there in the fall of 1906.  The change was salubrious and he began composing his Second Symphony which was finished in a couple of months, premiering — most successfully, this time — in St. Petersburg on January 26, 1908.  The Second Symphony, best known of the three, is quintessential Rachmaninoff with lush orchestration and soaring melodies.  Some found its length of roughly an hour to be daunting and Rachmaninoff later reluctantly acceded to some cuts but the symphony was undeniably a success. After such a triumph, one might expect a relatively quick sequel but nearly three decades would elapse before he undertook a symphony again.  That tumultuous period would include the Russian Revolution and many years of exile as well as the continual struggle for time to compose in tension with economic imperatives for piano performance and conducting.  

It was May 1935 when the 62-year-old Rachmaninoff finally began composing his Third Symphony at Villa Senar, his newly built summer residence on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland.  Progress was steady but not as rapid as he would have preferred.  Much of the work was either complete or in draft form by the end of summer, as he wrote to his cousin, Sofiya Satina: “I have finished two-thirds in clean form but the last third of the work in rough. If you take into account that the first two-thirds took seventy days of intense work, for the last third — thirty-five days — there is not enough time. Travels begin and I must get down to playing the piano. So it looks as though my work will be put aside until next year.”  He returned on Villa Senar on April 16, 1936 for a summer break and the symphony was finished on June 29.  Leopold Stokowski conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra in the premiere a few months later on November 6, 1936.   

Reaction to the work was equivocal; some complained about a veneer of modernism while others decried a lack of innovation.  While the response was perhaps less acute than the reaction to his First Symphony, it was still troubling and Rachmaninoff keenly felt the lack of appreciation for his work, evincing a belief in its quality despite reviews to the contrary. Writing to his friend Vladimir Wilshaw, he commented, “Personally, I am firmly convinced that this is a good work. But — sometimes composers are mistaken too! Be that as it may, I am holding to my opinion so far.”  Perhaps adding to his disappointment with the negative reaction was its contrast to the glowing embrace of his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini just two years earlier.        

Rachmaninoff’s three symphonies certainly share musical DNA but they represent quite different aspects of his compositional journey. As musical siblings most adjacent temporally, the First and Second Symphonies bear the greatest resemblance.  The Third Symphony represents Rachmaninoff’s musical growth across four decades, albeit perhaps to an insufficient degree for avant-gardists of the era attuned to the music of Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Edgard Varèse, and others. His harmonic palette is more adventurous than in earlier works but remains steadfastly tonal.  

The Third Symphony is compact at 40 minutes spread across three movements instead of the more traditional four.  To begin the work, Rachmaninoff uses a “motto” theme, introduced by solo violin and clarinet in unison, which recurs in various guises throughout the symphony.  The movement proceeds through a series of vignettes, facilitating the musical drama.  Tautly developing the motivic material, Rachmaninoff retains his hallmark lush orchestration while frequently showcasing individual lines.  

A solo horn accompanied by harp reprises the motto theme to begin the second movement.  There are episodic flourishes throughout that contrast with more intimate solo moments and the texture, while sometimes spare, is never barren.  With its pronounced ebb and flow, the overall characteristic of the movement is one of malleability in service to emotive possibility.  

A sparkling gesture announces the last movement, gradually relaxing into a state of calm opulence. To reinvigorate matters, and perhaps to show off his compositional skill, Rachmaninoff launches the strings into a fugal section but he quickly drops it, rebelling against its formal boundaries. Snippets of the theme persist, propelling the music forward. Unsurprisingly, the Dies irae (medieval chant for the dead) — one of Rachmaninoff’s obsessions — appears just before the movement’s recapitulation. Luxurious sounds abound but an undercurrent of tension builds to a frenzy and the symphony ends with an exultant shout.  

— Eric T. Williams