Alexander Scriabin is most well known for his idiosyncratic but exciting piano music, although he also composed a handful of orchestral works. His work was coloured by his interest in mysticism and theosophy, but is powerful and direct in its appeal.
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was born in Moscow, Russia, on January 6, 1872. His mother died when he was only one year old, and his father spent the rest of his life abroad, so Scriabin was brought up by a great-aunt. The wilfulness apparent in his music is sometimes ascribed to his being a pampered boy. He entered the Conservatory of Music in Moscow at the age of 16, studying piano and composition. Here he met Sergey RACHMANINOV, with whom he remained lifelong friends. When they graduated from the conservatory, Rachmaninov won the first gold medal and Scriabin the second.
Scriabin’s early piano pieces show the influence of Chopin, both in the intelligent use of the piano’s resources and texture, and in the sensuous evocation of mood. Thanks to the financial support of a well-to-do Russian patron and music publisher named Belyayev, Scriabin was able to move to Switzerland in 1904 to concentrate on composition.
Scriabin was in America for a few months during 1906 and 1907, and then settled in Paris. In 1908 he was befriended by Sergey KOUSSEVITZKY, who did much to encourage acceptance of Scriabin’s music. Scriabin came under the influence of the ideas of the German philosopher Nietszche, and later those of the theosophist Madame Blavatsky.
These concepts of the spiritual nature of the universe, coupled with an interest in Eastern mysticism, were sweeping Europe at the time and were eagerly embraced in Russia.
Scriabin had many discussions with Rimsky-Korsakov, the Russian composer, about the association of music and colour. They discovered that they both felt that musical notes could be related directly to colours—therefore mixing art with the senses. Scriabin attempted to convey this discovery in his work. He even attempted to design a keyboard that would create colours during performance, but it proved unworkable.
As his music matured, Scriabin’s work became very adventurous harmonically, and even approached atonality. He developed what has been called the “mystic chord,” which is based on intervals of fourths rather than the traditional thirds. Scriabin also used tritones—intervals of three whole tones—and scales built entirely from whole tones. Increasingly, a sense of a tonal centre was weakened in his compositions.
This approach to harmony already interested Claude DEBUSSY, and was to be further developed by Arnold SCHOENBERG. Scriabin’s orchestral tone poem Prometheus (1911) is a good example of his use of his “mystic chord.” Thus, already aware of Debussy’s work, Scriabin was working in the same direction as Schoenberg, moving ever further from conventional tonality, pushing it to an extreme that might have been revealed had he lived longer.
Scriabin’s works for the orchestra include a piano concerto (1897), Revene (1899), three symphonies, and Le poème de l’extase (1908). For piano, he wrote preludes, études, and mazurkas, for which only the titles of some of the movements—“Ironies,” “Danse languide,” and “Désir”—betrayed their character.
After a tour of Russia in 1914, Scriabin became ill, and died of blood poisoning after developing a sore on his lip. He died in Moscow, and his friend Koussevitzky organised a memorial concert devoted to Scriabin’s music.
Richard Trombley
SEE ALSO:
CHAMBER MUSIC; ORCHESTRAL MUSIC.
Baker, James M. The Music of Alexander Scriabin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986);
Bowers, Faubion. Scriabin, A Biography (New York: Dover, 1996).
Fantasy for pianoforte; Piano sonatas Nos. 5, 9, and 10; Poème nocturne; Prometheus; Symphony No. 3; Two dances for pianoforte; Vers la Flamme.