Prelude in C-sharp minor, Op. 3 No. 2, by Rachmaninoff
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How to learn Prelude in C-sharp minor, Op. 3 No. 2
- Hear it through at Slow (50 bpm). Open it in the reader, choose Slow, and follow the page with your eyes without playing. As it plays, count 4 to the bar.
- Learn the right hand of bars 1 to 8 on its own, in C♯ minor. Say the note names out loud the first time through, then play it three times without stopping.
- Find the chords under it: Amaj7, C♯m, C♯m7 and Emaj7. Play each one as a block in your left hand and say its name, so you know what the harmony is before the left hand has to move.
- Learn the left hand of the same bars on its own. Keep it quiet and even: it is the floor the tune stands on.
- Put hands together at Slow, 50 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (75 bpm) once Slow feels easy three times in a row. Then learn the next 8 bars the same way: right hand, left hand, together.
- Play the whole piece (about 3 minutes) from the start, at whatever speed keeps it going. A steady run with a few slips beats a fast one that stops.
About this piece
Rachmaninoff was nineteen when he played this prelude in public for the first time in 1892, and it made him famous almost overnight; audiences called for 'the Prelude' at his concerts for the rest of his life. Three solemn bell-like notes open it, a fierce Agitato rushes through the middle, and the return of the bells is so massive that Rachmaninoff wrote it on four staves; here those are set on two.
How to play it
Let each opening chord ring like a bell and give it time to fade before the next. In the final section the weight comes from the arm and shoulders dropping into the keys, never from hitting; keep the wrists loose and pace the volume so the last page is the loudest.
Reading it, and printing it
The score opens in Artform's reader, which shows the music as engraved notation and plays it back so you can hear the line before you try it. You can slow the tempo down, loop a passage that is not working yet, and print the page when you would rather have paper on the stand.
The file itself is MusicXML, which MuseScore, Sibelius, Finale and Dorico all open, so the notes are yours to keep whatever you read them in.
Edition: Mutopia Project #2033, licensed CC BY-SA. Converted to MusicXML by Artform and checked note for note against the original.
More free Rachmaninoff sheet music
Who Rachmaninoff was
Russian composer, pianist, and conductor, and by his own reckoning one of music's last true Romantics, arriving into a century that was rapidly moving past him and refusing to follow. The failure of his First Symphony sent him into a depression so severe he stopped composing for three years, recovering only through hypnotherapy sessions with a doctor to whom he later dedicated his Second Piano Concerto. He fled Russia after the 1917 Revolution with almost nothing, rebuilt a career in the West largely as a touring pianist, and wrote comparatively little afterward, though what survives, the preludes and concertos, carries an unmistakable, aching lyricism shaped by his own enormous hands, which…
Learn the music behind it
Reading a piece and understanding it are different skills. If you want the harmony under this one, the chord trainer teaches chords the way songs use them, and the scale pages cover the fingering for every key, including C♯ minor.