Aleksandr Scriabin

Russian classical composer

• Born: January 6, 1872
• Birthplace: Moscow, Russia
• Died: April 27, 1915
• Place of death: Moscow, Russia

Scriabin was an iconic figure in Russian music, composing for piano and orchestra. Through the innovative use of Western tonality, he created his own harmonic language, which was neither tonal nor atonal.

The Life

Aleksandr Nikolayevich Scriabin (skree-AH-bihn) was born to Nikolai Aleksandrovich, a lawyer, and Lyubov Petrovna Shchetinina, a famous Russian female composer and pianist. While Scriabin most likely inherited his mother’s musical gifts, her untimely death while he was still in his infancy and his father’s subsequent remarriage ultimately left him in the care of his devoted maternal aunt, Lyubov Aleksandrovna. She encouraged and orchestrated his early studies, including piano lessons at the age of eleven with Georgy Conus and at sixteen with Nikolai Zverev. Scriabin undertook the study of music theory with Sergei Taneyev in 1885 and continued these lessons after entering the Moscow Conservatory in 1888. At the conservatory he began piano lessons with Vasili Safonov.

Scriabin had a pronounced competitive spirit and a tendency toward nervousness, particularly with regard to his compositions. This combination led to difficulties for the young man. He practiced incessantly, at times leading to his own physical distress.

Scriabin graduated from the conservatory in 1892, earning a Small Gold Medal, as opposed to his classmate, Sergei Rachmaninoff, who won the Great Gold Medal that year. This was largely because of Scriabin’s many disagreements with his teacher, Anton Arensky, who found the young man’s stubbornness difficult to mitigate.

After leaving the conservatory, Scriabin began concertizing as a pianist, which led to an introduction to Pyotr Jürgenson, who published fourteen of his pieces in 1893. It was through Safonov that Scriabin’s work was introduced to Mitrofan Belyayev, who became the composer’s publisher in 1894 and funded his trip to Europe in 1895. Scriabin wrote a number of pieces during this trip, including many of the Op. 11 preludes. His well-received European debut took place in Paris at the Salle Erard in January of 1896. During this same year he composed and premiered the Piano Concerto, Op. 20.

Scriabin married the pianist Vera Isakovich in 1897. In 1898 they gave a joint recital of Scriabin’s works in Paris. Safonov and Belyayev arranged for a teaching position at the Moscow Conservatory, in which Scriabin served from 1898 to 1902, using the summers to compose. During these years several of his pieces premiered, including his orchestral works Mechtï/Rêverie, Symphony No. 1, and Symphony No. 2.

In 1903 he began a long-standing affair with Tatiana Schloezer, the sister of his friend, music critic Boris de Schloezer. Scriabin moved to Switzerland with her in 1904, where he completed his Symphony No. 3. In 1906 he traveled to America at the invitation of Modest Altschuler, and he made his debut with the Russian Symphony and performed in solo recital. Altschuler continued to champion Scriabin’s works after the composer’s return to Paris.

Scriabin met Serge Koussevitzky in the spring of 1908. The latter, a conductor and publisher, became one of Scriabin’s most enthusiastic supporters, signing him to a five-year contract with the newly established Éditions Russes and providing him with a stipend of five thousand rubles a year. Koussevitzky arranged a solo tour for Scriabin to all the major cities and towns along the Volga River in the summer of 1910. In return, Scriabin composed Prométhée, an ambitious work with a substantial piano part, which premiered in March, 1911. Not long after, Koussevitzky and Scriabin parted ways with a clash of mighty egos and an argument over money. The rift between them caused Scriabin to leave Kousseviztky’s publishing firm and in 1912 sign a contract once again with Jürgenson.

In 1913 and 1914 Scriabin toured successfully in performances of his own works in London. He gave a number of concerts after his return to Russia in 1915, the last of which took place in St. Petersburg on April 2, 1915. Scriabin developed a boil on his upper lip, which caused blood poisoning and ultimately led to his death.

The Music

Interestingly Scriabin’s early works reflected the influence of notable nineteenth century composers, particularly Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, and Richard Wagner. It is little wonder that he would be influenced by such men, especially considering the fame and cult of personality that surrounded the last, Wagner. It was not long, however, before Scriabin broke away from the confines of late Romantic style and forged his own.

Piano Preludes, Op. 48. The piano preludes of 1905 illustrate Scriabin’s use of the octatonic scale in place of the traditional key system. While not strictly atonal, these pieces are not tonal either. It seems apparent that Scriabin intends for there to be a reflection of tonality without the actual use of tonic. In Prelude No. 1, for instance, he moves through three octatonic scales in order to simulate tonal motion. However, he does not start on a tonic. These preludes encompassed the seeds of his harmonic style, which would come to full fruition in the Piano Preludes, Op. 74 of 1914.

Prométhée (Poème du feu). Premiered in Moscow in 1911 with the composer at the piano, Scriabin first conceived of this piece as a portion of a larger Mysteriya that would lead the listener through sensory input on a journey to a heightened plane of spiritual existence. He had communicated with both Rachmaninoff and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov in 1907 about his interest in the concept of synaesthesia, or the relationship between music and color. What eventually arose from these discussions was Scriabin’s assignation of colors to specific chords in this work, which correlated to the colors of the wordless vowel sounds being sung by the choir. In addition to this, Scriabin wrote a rather large piano part within the piece that was to be played on a color keyboard (clavier à lumière or tastiera per luce). Unfortunately, the construction of a functional color keyboard was not possible, and the premiere was given without the benefit of this effect.

It is important to note that even though he eventually abandoned the idea of including Prométhée in a larger work, he continued to work on the ideas he developed in this piece for the rest of his life. Indeed, at his death there was a copy of the manuscript for Mysteriya open on his piano. The colossal concept of universality is echoed in the forces required to perform the work. Even compared to the contemporary orchestra sizes called for by Richard Strauss and Arnold Schoenberg, the instrument and player requirements for this piece are enormous. His orchestration has a uniquely Russian identity, including polyphonic layering overarching timbral ideas and contrasting hierarchies that drive the music forward in the absence of traditional tonal structures.

Piano Preludes, Op. 74. These preludes of 1914 are of particular importance because they represent the culmination of Scriabin’s original harmonic style. The beginnings of these harmonic procedures were seen as early as the Op. 48 preludes. However, the experimentation with construction and harmony that Scriabin carried out in his piano compositions from Op. 58 through Op. 73 were finalized in Op. 74. Instead of using several octatonic scales to simulate tonal motion, as he did in the Op. 48 preludes, Scriabin allows for frozen moments within the music or the progression of related chords over a long period of time, which leads to resolution. He had first introduced this idea in Op. 59, No. 2, and continued to refine the technique. Demonstrated here also is his penchant for the elevation of the tritone to a harmonic tool instead of relegating it to its traditional role of dissonance. In the No. 3 prelude from Op. 74, Scriabin employs only one octatonic scale, and he utilizes sequences with transpositions at the tritone and minor third in order to achieve his resolution.

Musical Legacy

Scriabin’s music drew ardent admirers and severe critics, in part because of his larger-than-life persona, seen as saintly by his friends and megalomaniacal by his enemies. While some of his contemporaries disagreed with Scriabin’s musical doctrine, no one disputed his complete allegiance to it in composing his music. He sought to express the divine through his musical compositions, music being the means to immortality and heightened expression.

He was an ardent fan of philosophy, literature, art, and architecture, but only insofar as they reflected his ideals. While the synaesthetic and Theosophist movements were important to him, they were molded to his ideas, not vice versa. This was not an unusual situation within music at the time. While there was an abundance of synaesthetic composers, none truly agreed on how to apply color to sound; it was an individual creation.

Scriabin’s individuality, his dynamism, his charismatic character, and his unceasing pursuit of his ideals through music were a lasting influence on the music. His frozen moments and long progressions through related chords, as well as his interest in mysticism, could be cited as the evolutionary spark for Olivier Messiaen’s music in the decades following Scriabin’s death. Certainly his influence would be seen in the works of Russian composers. Elements of Scriabin’s style were apparent in the early works of Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky, as well as the compositions of Nikolai Myaskovsky, Yuri Shaporin, and Dmitri Shostakovich, who absorbed one or more aspects of Scriabin’s style. It is the shift between the mature styles of Scriabin and Shostakovich that defined twentieth century Russian music.

Principal Works

orchestral works: Piano Concerto, Op. 20, 1896; Mechtï/Rêverie, 1898; Fantaziya, 1889; Symphony No. 1 in E Major, Op. 26, 1900; Symphony No. 2 in C Minor/Major, Op. 29, 1901; Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 43, 1904; Symphony No. 4 in C Major, Op. 54, 1908; Prométhée, 1911; Symphony No. 5 in F-sharp Major, Op. 60, 1911.

piano works: Twenty-four Preludes, Op. 11, 1888-1896; Étude in C-sharp Minor, Op. 2/1, 1889; Ten Mazurkas, Op. 3, 1889; Three Pieces, Op. 2, 1889; Five Preludes, Op. 16, 1894-1895; Twelve Études, Op. 8, 1894; Two Pieces, Op. 9, 1894; Six Preludes, Op. 13, 1895; Piano Sonata No. 2 in G-sharp Minor, Op. 19, 1897; Piano Sonata No. 3 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 23, 1897; Fantaisie in B Minor, Op. 28, 1900; Eight Études, Op. 42, 1903; Piano Sonata No. 4 in F-sharp Major, Op. 30, 1903; Two Mazurkas, Op. 40, 1903; Two Poèmes, Op. 32, 1903; Piano Preludes, Op. 48, 1905; Four Pieces, Op. 51, 1906; Piano Sonata No. 5 in F-sharp Major, Op. 53, 1907; Two Pieces, Op. 57, 1908; Piano Sonata No. 7 in F-sharp Major, Op. 64, 1912; Piano Sonata No. 9, Op. 68, 1913; Piano Sonata No. 10, Op. 70, 1913; Piano Preludes, Op. 74, 1914; Vers la flamme, poème, Op. 72, 1914.

Bibliography

Bowers, Faubion. Scriabin: A Biography. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 1996. The information about the composer’s life is laid out chronologically, with numerous first-person accounts. Includes drawings and sketches by Scriabin, photographs, and a catalog of his works.

Rimm, Robert. “Feinberg and Scriabin: Humanity and Mysticism.” In The Composer-Pianists: Hamelin and the Eight. Portland, Oreg.: Amadeus Press, 2002. The chapter includes information regarding the composer’s emotional and mental states, as well as his pursuit of the spiritual through music. Includes numerous photographs of the composer at various stages in his life, as well as quotations about him from critics, friends, and fellow composers.

Roberts, Peter Deane. Modernism in Russian Piano Music: Skriabin, Prokofiev, and Their Russian Contemporaries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. Discusses the harmonic innovations of Scriabin and his contemporaries in Russia, as well as the influence they had on subsequent composers. Includes musical examples and a selected bibliography.