fuckyeahhistorycrushes:

 Sergei Rachmaninoff -

6’7 of complete babe. He was a concert pianist as well as a composer, and was equally famous in both respects. His pieces were devilishly hard, which he could play with relative ease; it might have something to do with his massive handspan… C to G#. (yeah, that’s a 14th.) His music is absolutely gorgeous (see: 2nd piano concerto) as well as hauntingly beautiful (Isle of the Dead, The Bells, Prelude in C# minor) Even after the government trashed his house in the middle of the night, forcing him to watch his gorgeous Steinway be lit on fire and pushed from the second floor he went to New York and owned shit there. It was said that if Rachmaninoff was playing a piece, no other pianist dared to play it that season. His idol was Tchaikovsky, who was also a complete babe, and he was the one of the last Romantic composers, so basically when he died he took Romaticism with him. He died of skin cancer in 1943, and is buried with his wife in New York.