A.woman.and.seven.husbands

When a 17-year-old Henry VIII took the throne back in 1509, he would’ve expected to end up in the history books. That's what happens when you're the King of England. What he definitely couldn’t have foreseen is that he'd become one of his country's most famous sovereigns, but largely due to his positively scandalous love life. The Tudor monarch started his own church, changed the constitution and became the first English king of Ireland — and yet it's his six wives (and some of their demises) that everyone remembers.

This composition can in a sense be regarded as a continuation of Selected Letters of Sergei Rachmaninoff, a piano cycle written after visiting Rachmaninoff’s grave. The starting point for the new piano cycle was as strong an impression, also in the US and also Russia-related: visiting the Novo-Diveevo Convent and Cemetery. It is a Russian Orthodox convent, and about seven thousand people are buried in the cemetery – mainly those who left Russia after the 1917 revolution, and their families.