All By Myself

Tuesday...and as I typed in the title for this photo, I was reminded of the song of the same by American singer-songwriter Eric Carmen as I started humming it to myself.  The song/record was released in 1975. The verse is based on the second movement (Adagio sostenuto) of Sergei Rachmaninoff's circa 1900–1901 Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Opus 18. The chorus was taken from the song "Let's Pretend", which Carmen wrote and recorded with the Raspberries in 1972.


According to Carmen, he first wrote the solo part of the song, writing four bars at a time, eventually completed the interlude after two months. He needed to put this into a song, and after listening to Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto, a piece famously used to underscore the 1945 British film Brief Encounter, he adapted the melody of its second movement to write the verse. 


Rachmaninoff's music was in the public domain in the United States at that time, so Carmen thought no copyright existed on it, but it was still protected outside the U.S. subsequent to the release of the album. He was later contacted by the Rachmaninoff estate and informed that it was protected.  An agreement was reached in which the estate would receive 12 percent of the royalties from "All by Myself" as well as from "Never Gonna Fall in Love Again", which was based on the third movement from Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2.



But back to the photo, and for many years, I have been drawn to taking photos of fields with rape seed growing, but more often than not, they are surrounded by tall hedges with limited access, so the challenge is to find those that are not and can also offer an interesting view like this one does with the lone tree....yes I know there are those right at the back on the horizon, but the front one is thinking about being "All By Myself".