Beyond Romanticism

6. Promethean Scriabin

As you are no doubt aware, debates about Russian music in the nineteenth century centered around the question of whether composers should strive to create a uniquely Russian music. Simply proclaiming independence from Western influences was easier said than done, since the criteria for distinguishing specific techniques or motifs were not always clear cut. One of the forms of Russian experimentation was with the use of older modal and "exotic" non-Western scales. Perhaps the culmination of these new approaches to harmony and totality based on artificial scales came in the work of Alexander Skriabin (1872-1915), who, interestingly enough, did not exhibit any philosophical or political orientation toward nationalism; in any event, he spent much of his adult life in Switzerland. In the Fifth Piano Sonata, nominally in F^# major, the larger tonal relationships of the piece remain ambiguous. As you can hear in the opening excerpt, the leading tone in the first statement of the theme is avoided, and the work both begins and ends in tonal obscurity.

In one of his few orchestral works, Prometheus, the Poem of Fire (1908-1910), Skriabin comes quite close to the atonality soon to be proclaimed by Schoenberg. 

Listen to the opening portion here, as Skriabin attempts to work out a "mystic chord" that defines a self-contained tonal system. Skriabin's mysticism is readily apparent from the cover to the score of Prometheus. It will perhaps come as no surprise that his feverish creativity has been associated with the decadent aspects of modernism.

Optional: If this is all a bit much for your taste, try this alternative approach courtesy of the pianist Nahre Sol. Watch the whole video to learn about what is distinctive in Scriabin's style. (And stay for the lapdog unperturbed by her performance.) Or if time is short, go to 16:22 for her explanation of how she arranged "Happy Birthday" in the manner of Scriabin. Or simply go straight to the lovely performance at 21:03. 

(Another composer who should be represented here: Nikolai Roslavets (1880-1944), whose Two Compositions for piano (1915) are atonal and foreshadow the subsequent invention of serialism by Arnold Schoenberg.)

See also Sabaneev's famous essay on Scriabin (in German) from Der Blaue Reiter.