Prelude in C Sharp Minor - Sergei Rachmaninov

Sergei Rachmaninov was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music.

Born into a musical family, Rachmaninoff took up the piano at the age of four. He studied with Anton Arensky and Sergei Taneyev at the Moscow Conservatory and graduated in 1892, having already composed several piano and orchestral pieces.

As the story goes, Prelude in C Sharp Minor is Rachmaninoff's musical representation of how he believed his own death would look like to him.

In the start he sees a coffin, and he begins to walk forward to it. It's at 1:45 that he opens the coffin only to find that it is his own body lying inside, and that's when things start to go all manic. Eventually he accepts his fate and it is at this point that the music piece revisits it's initial stages.