Ellen Bakulina, University of North Texas

Polyphonicized Recapitulation in Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto

Few studies of form take into serious account texture, particularly textural changes across large spans of time. The present paper suggests that such changes can serve as an important form-building strategy, by exploring a special type of recapitulation -- one that is climactic and polyphonicized. A number of polyphonicized recapitulations from the works of Piotr Chaikovsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff show that the technique was important for both composers. Movement 1 of Rachmaninoff's famous Second Piano Concerto is a unique representative of this technique: the recapitulation's polyphonicized opening is not only climactic, but also includes the telos theme -- the goal point of a teleological genesis, a process that takes up a large portion of the movement.