Aleksandr Scriabin

Introduction

Aleksandr Scriabin (1872–1915) was a Russian composer and virtuoso pianist. Until 1903, the music he wrote was influenced by Chopin's music. He composed in a relatively tonal, late-romantic idiom. Later, and independently of his contemporary, Schoenberg, Scriabin developed a much more dissonant musical language that went beyond the usual tonality, but was not atonal. It found significant resonance in the concept of "total artwork" as well as synaesthesia. He associated colors with the various harmonic tones of his scale, while the color-coded circle of his fifths was also inspired by theosophy (“Alexander Scriabin”).

Scriabin is often considered a major Russian Symbolist composer and an important representative of Silver Age of Russia. He was an innovator as well as one of the most controversial composer-pianists of the early 20th century. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia wrote of him, "No composer had more contempt or love for him». Leo Tolstoy described Scriabin's music as "sincere expression of genius».  The composer's work had a major influence on the world of music over time and inspired composers such as Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Szymanovsky (“Alexander Scriabin”).

The importance of the composer declined drastically after his death. However, in 1970, his musical aesthetics were re-evaluated and his ten published sonatas for piano and other works garnered considerable recognition (“Alexander Scriabin”).

Early life

Scriabin was born in Moscow on Christmas Day 1871, according to the Julian Calendar, and died on April 14, 1915, at the height of his career. His mother, Lyubov Cetinina, was a concert pianist and former student of Theodor Lereishysky. After her death, Scriabin completed courses in Turkish and left for Turkey. Like all his relatives, he pursued a military career and served as a military attaché.  His father left the infant Sasha, as he was known, with his grandmother and aunt. He later remarried and had several children with his new wife (“Alexander Scriabin”).

As a child, Scriabin was often exposed to piano playing. Anecdotal accounts describe him demanding that his aunt play the piano for him. At a young age, he began making a piano after being fascinated by its mechanisms. Sometimes he would give out pianos he had made. According to one anecdote, Scriabin tried to conduct an orchestra made up of local children, an effort that ended in frustration and tears (“Alexander Scriabin”).

Later, he studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Arensky, Taneyev and Safonov. He became a well-known pianist despite his small hands. During musical practice he damaged his right arm. The doctor told him he would never recover. It was then that he wrote his first large-scale masterpiece, Piano Sonata No. 1 in F minor, as "cry against God, against fate». He eventually regained the use of his hand (“Alexander Scriabin”).

In 1892 he graduated with the Small Gold Medal in piano performance, but did not complete his degree in composition due to his strong personality and musical differences with Arensky and his reluctance to compose pieces in forms he was not interested in (“Alexander Scriabin”).

In 1894, he made his debut as a pianist in St. Petersburg. He performed his works, which received positive reviews. That same year, Belyayev agreed to pay Scriabin to compose for his publishing company. In August 1897, he married pianist Vera Isakovich. He then toured Russia and abroad, culminating in the successful concert of 1898. That year he became a teacher at the Moscow Conservatory and began to establish his reputation as a composer (“Alexander Scriabin”).

According to later accounts, between 1901 and 1903 Scriabin envisioned writing an opera. He exposed his ideas during the normal conversation. The play would revolve around an anonymous hero, a philosopher-musician-poet. Among other things, he stated: "I am the apotheosis of the creation of the world. I am the goal of goals, the end of goals» (“Alexander Scriabin”).

Music

When it came to Scriabin's music, the composer wrote almost exclusively for solo piano and orchestra, rather than seeking musical flexibility. His first piano pieces resemble Chopin's. They include many genres used by Chopin, such as 1) studies (“Alexander Scriabin”), i.e. instrumental musical composition, usually short, designed to provide training material for perfecting a particular musical skill ("Study"), 2) Preludes, i.e. short pieces of music ("Prelude (Music)"), 3) Night, i.e. musical compositions inspired by the night or bringing it to mind ("Nocturne") and 4) Mazurkas. Mazurka is a Polish musical form based on stylized folk dances in triple meter, usually in a lively rhythm, with a character determined mainly by the "strong accents" of the prominent mazur placed unsystematically in the second or third rhythm (“Mazurka”).

Scriabin's music evolved rapidly during his lifetime. The pieces of the middle and late periods use very unusual harmonies (“Alexander Scriabin”), i.e. processes by which individual sounds are joined or synthesized into whole units (“Harmony”) and textures (“Alexander Scriabin”), i.e. the way in which 1) rhythm, 2) melodic and 3) harmonic materials combine to determine the overall sound quality of a piece (“Texture (Music)”). The evolution of Scriabin's style is evident in his ten piano sonatas (“Alexander Scriabin”), i.e. pieces that are played as opposed to the pieces that are sung (“Sonata”). Piano sonatas are usually written in three or four movements, although some piano sonatas are written in a single movement, others in two movements, some contain five or even more movements. The first movement is generally composed in sonata form ("Piano Sonata"). The sonata form generally consists of three main sections: 1) exposition, 2) evolution, and 3) recapitulation (“Sonata Form”). The first sonatas were composed in a fairly conventional post-romantic way, but the later ones are quite different, the last five do not have a set musical scale. Many passages in them can be said to be tonally vague, although from 1903 to 1908, "tonal unity was almost imperceptibly replaced by harmonic unity." (“Alexander Scriabin”).

First Period (1880-1903)

Scriabin's music can be divided into three periods. The first period is considered to include his first pieces until Second Symphony. The works of this period follow the romantic tradition. That is, they use the usual harmonic language of the romantic period, although Scriabin's personal style is present from his early works (“Alexander Scriabin”).

In his early works, Scriabin particularly used the 13th dominant chord, usually with the 7th, 3rd, and 13th spelt in the fourth. According to Peter Shabanang, this chord was the main source of production of the later, mystical chord (“Alexander Scriabin”).

Second period (1903–07)

Scriabin's second compositional period begins with the Fourth Piano Sonata and ends around the Fifth Sonata and the Poem of Ecstasy. During this time, his music began to become more and more chromatic and dissonant, but he still clung to tonality. As the dominant chords expand more and more, they gradually begin to lose function. Scriabin wanted his music to have a bright, glowing feeling. He attempted this by increasing the number of chord tones. During this period, complex forms such as the mystical chord begin to be hinted at, but they still show their roots in Chopin's harmony. At first, additional dissonances are resolved conventionally, but gradually the composer's focus begins to turn into a system in which chord coloring is more important. Later, the composer stopped resolving dissonances in the dominant chords (“Alexander Scriabin”).

The Poem of Ecstasy

By the winter of 1904, Scriabin and his wife had relocated to Switzerland, where he began writing his Third Symphony. While living in Switzerland, Scriabin divorced his wife, with whom he had four children. The play was presented in Paris during 1905, where Scriabin was accompanied by Tatiana Schloezer, a former student and niece of Paul de Schlezer. With Schloezer, he had other children (“Alexander Scriabin”).

With the financial help of a wealthy donor, Scriabin spent several years traveling through Switzerland, Italy, France, Belgium, and the United States, working on more orchestral pieces, including several symphonies. He also began composing "poems" for piano, a form with which he is particularly associated (“Alexander Scriabin”).

In 1907, Scriabin settled in Paris with his family and participated in a series of concerts organized by Diaghilev. He then moved to Brussels with his family (“Alexander Scriabin”).

Third period (1907–15)

Scriabin's third compositional period began in 1907 and lasted until his death. As he describes it: "I decided that the higher tones that exist in harmony will turn out to be brighter, more intense and brighter. But it was necessary to organize the notes to give them a reasonable arrangement. Therefore, I took the usual thirteenth chord, which is arranged in thirds. But it is not so important to accumulate high tones. In order for it to shine, conveying the idea of light, a greater number of tones had to be increased on the string. And, therefore, I raise the tone: At first, I take the shining major third, then I also lift the fifth and eleventh – thus forming my chord – which rises completely and therefore really shines (“Alexander Scriabin”).

According to Samson, while the sonata form of Scriabin's Sonata No. 5 gives some importance to the tonal structure of the work, Sonata No. 6 and Sonata No. 7 create tensions from the absence of harmonic contrast and "between the cumulative momentum of the music, usually achieved by texture rather than harmonic means, and the limitations of the ternary form." He also argues that the Poem of Ecstasy and the On fire "find much better cooperation of 'form' and 'content'" and that later sonatas, such as the Ninth, use a more flexible sonata form (“Alexander Scriabin”).

Most of the music of this period is built on the 1) acoustic scale (“Alexander Scriabin”), i.e. on the seven-note scale (“Acoustic Scale”), 2) on the octatonic scale (“Alexander Scriabin”), i.e. on the eight-note scale ("Octatonic Scale") as well as (3) on the nine-note scale, which results from the combination of the two preceding scales (“Alexander Scriabin”).

Death

Scriabin gave his last concert on April 2, 1915 in St. Petersburg, performing a large program of his own works. He received rave reviews from music critics, who called his playing "most inspiring and influential" and wrote: "his eyes shone with fire and his face radiated happiness." Scriabin himself wrote that during her performance Third Sonata "I completely forgot that I was playing in a room with people around me. That very rarely happens to me on stage." (“Alexander Scriabin”).

On April 4, Scriabin triumphantly returned to his Moscow apartment. He noticed a resurgence of a small pimple on his right upper lip. He had mentioned the pimple as early as 1914 while in London. He developed a fever and went to bed and canceled his concert in Moscow, which was scheduled for April 11. Scriabin's doctor noticed that the wound looked "like a purple fire." His temperature soared to 41 °C (106 °F) and he was now bedridden. On April 12, incisions were made, but the wound had already begun to poison his blood and he became delusional. Bowers writes: "internally and inexplicably, a simple pimple developed into a terminal illness." On April 14, 1915, Scriabin died in his Moscow apartment, at the age of 43, at the peak of his career (“Alexander Scriabin”).

His funeral was attended by so many people that tickets had to be issued. Rachmaninov, in memory of Scriabin, embarked on a long tour of Russia, performing only Scriabin's music for the benefit of the family. It was the first time Rachmaninov performed public piano music other than his own. Prokofiev admired Scriabin, and some of his works bear a strong resemblance to Scriabin's tone and style. Another admirer was the English composer Caikosru Sorabji, who promoted Scriabin even during the years when his popularity had declined significantly.  Aaron Copland praised Scriabin's thematic material as "really individual, really inspiring", but criticised Scriabin for placing "this really new body of emotions in the tight jacket of the old classical form of sonata, recapitulation and all", calling it "one of the most astonishing mistakes in all music" (“Alexander Scriabin”).

Today

Scriabin, in Russia, was regarded as one of the best pianists of his time, although today he is best known as a composer (Rowen). His music, during the 1930s, was greatly underestimated in the West. In the UK, Sir Adrian Boult refused to play the plays chosen by BBC producer Edward Clarke, calling them "bad music", and even banned Scriabin's music from broadcasts. In 1935, Gerald Abraham called Scriabin "a sad pathological case, erotic and selfish to the point of fury." However, the pianist, Edward Mitchell, who, in 1927, compiled a catalogue of Scriabin's piano music, defended his music in recitals and considered him "the greatest composer since Beethoven" (“Alexander Scriabin”).

Scriabin's music has undergone a complete restoration and can be heard in major concert halls worldwide. In 2009, Roger Scraton called Scriabin "one of the greatest contemporary composers." In 2015, German-Australian pianist Stefan Amer teamed up with Scriabin's students to honour him at various venues in Australia. In 2020, a bust of Scriabin was placed in the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. Today, Scriabin's original illuminated piano, with its associated turntable of colored lamps, is preserved in his apartment, which is a museum dedicated to the life and works of the composer (“Alexander Scriabin”).

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