I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien. I cannot cast out the old way of writing, and I cannot acquire the new. I have made intense effort to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me. Unlike Madame Butterfly with her quick religious conversion, I cannot cast out my musical gods in a moment and bend the knee to new ones. Even with the disaster of living through what has befallen the Russia where I spent my happiest years, yet I always feel that my own music and my reactions to all music, remained spiritually the same, unendingly obedient to trying to create beauty.
R. Mitchell, Sergei Rachmaninoff, London, Reaktion Books, 2022, p. 12.
– Sergei Rachmaninoff
Rachmaninoff on modernity versus his musical style
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Habit is stronger than willpower or inspiration
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