The Lost Chord

Earlier I was sorting out a box of uncategorised CDs I haven't touched in years when I found an old CD from my past, The Cliff Adams Singers: The Golden Years of Song. These are songs loved by our parents and influenced on us.  Upon review of the 20 tracks, I dawned upon few I'm familiar with and love to this day. One song in particular haunted me: The Lost Chord. With a bit of research, I realised the music is composed by no other than Arthur Sullivan, a setting of an 1858 poem by Adelaide Anne Procter. Sullivan composed it in 1877 whilst tending to his brother on his deathbed.

The Lost Chord was not written for public use but it quickly became a success, the subject of one of the first-ever phonograph recordings in 1888. It has been recorded by prominent singers at the time, including Enrico Caruso, Beniamino Gigli, and Nelson Eddy, among others. 

Below, the haunting but beautiful The Lost Chord, sung by Webster Booth, British Tenor. YouTube, BigTezza12. Accessed June 15, 2020. 



The Lost Chord 
Lyrics by Adelaide Anne Procter
Music composed by Arthur Sullivan. 

Seated one day at the organ
I was weary and ill at ease
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the noisy keys

I know not what I was playing
Or what I was dreaming then;
But I struck one chord of music
Like the sound of a great Amen
Like the sound of a great Amen

It flooded the crimson twilight
Like the close of an angel's psalm
And it lay on my fevered spirit
With a touch of infinite calm

Full Moon and Empty Arms

This post is inspired by full moon tonight. 

"Full Moon and Empty Arms" is a 1945 popular song by Buddy Kaye and Ted Mossman, based on Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2. Frank Sinatra's version is the best-known recording of the song.

The Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, is a concerto for piano and orchestra composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff between the autumn of 1900 and April 1901 The second and third movements were first performed with the composer himself as soloist on 2 December 1900. The complete work was premiered, again with the composer as soloist, on 27 October 1901, with his cousin Alexander Siloti conducting.




Hélène Grimaud plays beautifully movements 3 (Allegro scherzando), of this emotionally charged piece of music. YouTube, uploaded by StupeurAlice. Accessed June 5, 2020.

The second movement (adagio sostenuto theme) appears in Eric Carmen's 1975 ballad "All by Myself". The 3rd movement (allegro scherzando) which is featured in this video provides the basis for Frank Sinatra's 1945 "Full Moon and Empty Arms".

For the complete Piano Concerto No.2, I decided to listen to Van Cliburn, with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Kirill Kondrashin, conducting. Youtube, uploaded by classicalrarities.

The soundtrack of the 1945 classic movie "Brief Encounter", starring Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard, which centers on the lives of two happily married man and woman who fall in love with each other after a chance encounter at a train station, features a musical score based on this Piano Concerto. It's refreshing to find a classic romance without meet-cutes and pathetic attempts to be clever, with two adults who know what is happening to them, feeling passion which they may have thought was lost for good, by the same token both know their undertaking is unwise and know, within their realities, what needs to be done.

This piece is one of Rachmaninoff's most enduring popular compositions, and established his fame as a concerto composer.



c) June 5, 2020, 6pm. Tel. Leaves from my Musings. All rights reserved.