Alexander Scriabin

Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (?????????? ??????????? ?????????; sometimes transliterated as Skryabin or Skrjabin) (January 6, 1872 – April 27, 1915) was a Russian composer and pianist.

Music

Style and influences

Many of Scriabin's works are written for the piano; the earliest pieces resemble Frederic Chopin and include music in many forms that Chopin himself employed, such as the etude, the prelude and the mazurka. Later works, however, are strikingly original, employing very unusual harmonies and textures. The development of Scriabin's voice or style can be followed in his ten piano sonatas: the earliest are in a fairly conventional late-Romantic idiom and show the influence of Chopin and Franz Liszt, but the later ones move into new territory, the last five being written with no key signature. Many passages in them can be said to be atonal, though from 1903 through 1908, "tonal unity was almost imperceptibly replaced by harmonic unity." (Samson 1977) See: mystic chord.

Related Topics:
Piano - Frederic Chopin - Etude - Prelude - Mazurka - Harmonies - Piano sonata - Romantic - Franz Liszt - Key signature - Atonal - Mystic chord

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Aaron Copland praised Scriabin's thematic material as "truly individual, truly inspired", but criticized Scriabin for putting "this really new body of feeling into the strait-jacket of the old classical sonata-form, recapitulation and all" calling this "one of the most extraordinary mistakes in all music." According to Samson the sonata-form of Sonata No. 5 has some meaning to the work's tonal structure, but in Sonata No. 6 and Sonata No. 7 formal tensions are created by the absence of harmonic contrast and "between the cumulative momentum of the music, usually achieved by textural rather than harmonic means, and the formal constraints of the tripartite mould." He also argues that the Poem of Ecstasy and Vers la Flamme "find a much happier co-operation of 'form' and 'content'" and that later Sonatas such as Sonata No. 9 employ a much more flexible sonata-form. (Samson 1977)

Related Topics:
Aaron Copland - Sonata No. 5 - Sonata No. 6 - Sonata No. 7 - Vers la Flamme - Sonata No. 9

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Influence of Color

Though these works are often considered to be influenced by Scriabin's synaesthesia, a condition wherein one experiences stimulus in one sense in response to real stimulus in another sense, it is most likely Alexander Scriabin did not actually experience the physiological condition of synaesthesia. His color system, unlike most synaesthetic experience, lines up with the circle of fifths, indicating that it was a thought-out system influenced by his theosophic readings and based on Sir Isaac Newton's Optics. However, this pioneering use of multimedia also was influenced by Scriabin's theosophical beliefs; specifically, he thought he could bring about the end and rebirth of the world through a grand performance including music, scent, dance, and light that would take place in the Himalayas.

Related Topics:
Synaesthesia - Circle of fifths - Isaac Newton - Multimedia - Himalayas

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While Scriabin wrote only a small number of orchestral works, they are among the most famous portion of his output, and some are frequently performed. They include 3 symphonies, a piano concerto (1896), The Poem of Ecstasy (1908) and (1910), which includes a part for a "clavier à lumières" - an implement played like a piano, but which flooded the concert hall with coloured light rather than sound. Most performances of the piece (including the premiere) have not included this light element, although a performance in New York City in 1915 projected colours onto a screen.

Related Topics:
Orchestra - Symphonies - Piano concerto - ''The Poem of Ecstasy'' - Clavier à lumières - Light - New York City

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