Alexander Scriabin

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Scriabin – The First Russian Modernist

Music in the 19th-century Europe has gone through vast changes and transformation,

especially towards the end of the century. However, this evolution has begun to take place

subtly even as early as in the mid-19th-century, where the ‘Music of the Future’ group, led by

Wagner and Liszt have played an important role in it. The decades from 1900 to 1920

especially, saw important changes in the very language of music. Traditional tonal

organization gave way to new forms of musical expression and many of the foundations of

modern music were laid. This attenuation of tonality from this group was part of a tradition

that extended from the mid-19th into the early 20th-century through Schoenberg and his pupils

and beyond.1 But Busoni, Debussy, Bartok and Stravinsky later reinterpreted this tonal

expansion, whereas Scriabin, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern and Szymanowski took a different

path, the path to atonality.2 As a result, a new ‘period’, Modernism emerged, as most scholars

called it, was a multi-faceted but distinct and continuous tradition within 20th-century

composition, which took shape as a historical phenomenon between 1883 and 1914.3

In 19th-century Russia, many composers committed to a positivistic nationalism, for

example Balakirev, or positivistic realism, such as Dargomizhsky and Musorgsky; and by the

end of 19th-century, composers like Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov and Taneyev committed

themselves to a more ‘classical’ academicism.4 It can be said that every Russian composer

during that period, except Scriabin, explicitly rejected Wagner as an artistic role model; while

Scriabin not only embraced him, but also attempted to surpass him. The beginning of the 1 David Berry, ‘The Meaning[s] of "Without": An Exploration of Liszt's Bagatelle ohne Tonart’, Nineteenth Century Music, 27/3 (2004), p. 230 2 Jim Samson, Music in transition: a study of tonal expansion and atonality, 1900-1920 (London: Dent, 1993), p. iii 3 Leon Botstein: ‘Modernism’, Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy, <http://www.grovemusic.com>, p.1 4 Richard Taruskin, Defining Russia musically: historical and hermeneutical Essays (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000), p.310


20th-century, at the period of around 1910, marked a division between the old Nationalist

school and the rising avant-garde.5 However, Russian folk song still plays an important role,

not only had it influenced the Nationalist composers, but also continue to influence the

Modernist composers, especially in their pitch schemes and scale patterns, and their use of

dominant type chords in nonfunctional and even final positions.6 Nevertheless, Scriabin paid

no attention whatever to nations or nationalism spirit, and he was rarely characterized in

national terms.7 Only a few of his works, as identified by Roberts, were influenced by folk

song, for example, in the opening melody of his Study Op. 42 No. 2, and the modal passages

in his Prelude Op. 74 No. 2.8

Many of Scriabin's works are written for the piano, and only a small number for the

orchestra, but significantly important. It is generally acknowledged that an important

influence on the early piano works of Scriabin was the music of Chopin and Liszt, both of

whom were interested in East European folk music and its modal inflections.9 In addition,

Scriabin also includes music in many forms that Chopin himself employed, such as the etude,

the prelude and the mazurka. His works in this early period are not stylistically unusual, and

though the harmony is chromatic, it is not daring; but the use of ostinatos is a particularly

Russian trait in itself, often combined with other layered and rhythmically independent

voices.10 Apart from his earliest pieces, his works are strikingly original, especially the mid

and late-period music, which employed very unusual harmonies and textures. Scriabin’s 5 Peter Deane Roberts, Modernism in Russian piano music: Skriabin, Prokofiev, and their Russian contemporaries (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1992), p. 3 6 Roberts, Modernism in Russian piano music, p. 9 7 Elliot Antokoletz, Twentieth-Century Music (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1991), p.100 “In contrast to Stravinsky, Scriabin’s musical language was not rooted in Russian national folk sources but rather in various art-music traditions”; David Fanning, ‘Russia: East meets West’ in The late romantic era: from the mid-19th century to World War I, ed. Jim Samson, p.198 “Scriabin was in many ways atypical of Russian composers and he had no significant followers.” 8 Roberts, Modernism in Russian piano music, p. 17 9 Ibid., p. 3 10 Jonathan Powell: ‘Aleksandr Nikolayevich Skryabin, #4: The music and its philosophical background’, Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy, <http://www.grovemusic.com>, p.2


compositions can roughly be divided into four divisions, or periods, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1: The four periods in Scriabin’s life11

Period Compositions General Style 1 Opp. 1 to 18 The Apprenticeship works, but still worthy of full respect,

since they are all highly finished pieces never betraying a “prentice hand”.

2 Opp. 19 to 40 These works show the full personality on the old lines.

3 Opp. 41 to 52 The Transition period. Works of wonderful beauty and inspiration.

4 Opp. 53 to 74 The full consummation of Scriabin’s genius.

The change in Scriabin’s styles started from about 1903, when he gave up a teaching

post in Moscow to devote himself entirely to composing, mostly in Brussels, and performing.

Nevertheless, it was only in the 1910 when Scriabin began work on a series of compositions

for piano, and then he developed his own harmonic language and original constructional

methods.12 The development of Scriabin's style can be followed in his ten piano sonatas: the

earliest are in a fairly conventional late-Romantic idiom, which shows the influence of

Chopin and Liszt, but the later ones moved into a new territory, where the last five were being

written with no key signatures. Single-movement structures became the norm. Many

passages in them can be said to be atonal, though from 1903 through 1908, ‘tonal unity was

almost imperceptibly replaced by harmonic unity’13. 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’; while the later sonatas such as

11 A.E. Hull, A Great Russian Tone-Poet: Scriabin (London, 1916; rev. 3rd edn., 1970), p. 84 12 Lionel Salter, The Gramophone Guide to Classical Composers (Peerage Books, 1984), p. 173 13 Jim Samson, Music in transition: a study of tonal expansion and atonality, 1900-1920, p.85


Sonata No. 9, employs a much more flexible sonata-form.14 His harmonic language, in the

three pieces (Op. 58, Op. 59 Nos. 1 and 2) of 1910 for example, Scriabin gradually increased

the range of intervals above the root, which could be allowed in his chords.15 As a result, in

the context of dominant and whole-tone sound, the major 9th is easily absorbed without the

need for resolution.

Modernity, according to Hull, reveals itself in two ways in music: by texture, style of

handling, and also by the subject matter or the thought itself. 16 Scriabin’s music manifested

itself through these two ways- in the texture and the style of his later period, he demands a

new language, a new scale, a new way of listening and composing; while in the subject

matter, Scriabin has been wholeheartedly indulging in mysticism, based on Theosophist

philosophies, and attempted to bring Art, Religion, Philosophy, and even Science into closer

relationship in his music.17 An aspect of Scriabin’s artistic persona, which connects him with

Nietzsche and the Russian symbolists, is his solipsism, particularly evident in his diaries, as

witnessed by this excerpt from 190518:

… I am God! I am nothing, I am play, I am freedom, I am life.

I am the boundary, I am the peak.

… I am God! I am the blossoming, I am the bliss,

14 Ibid., p. 88 15 Roberts, Modernism in Russian piano music, p. 11 16 Hull, A Great Russian Tone-Poet: Scriabin, p.265 17 James Baker, The music of Alexander Scriabin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), p.vii-viii. “Those whose attention is focused solely on the mystical aspirations of Scriabin’s large works lose sight of an equally important aspect of his career: even when his harmonic practice was quite advanced and he was striving for magnificent ecstatic effects in his sonatas and orchestral works, Scriabin remained at heart a confirmed formalist. His compositions consistently reflect both his sensitivity to the finest detail and his interest in subtle, complex relationships worked out with meticulous precision”. 18 Faubion Bowers, Scriabin: a biography of the Russian composer, 1871-1915 (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1969), p.61


I am all-consuming passion, all engulfing,

I am fire enveloping the universe, Reducing it to chaos…

Although scholarly opinion has been split on the question of whether Scriabin was

significantly influenced by Theosophy, his Poem of Ecstasy is originated as a literary project,

where the text is replete with Nietzschean subjects: the sun, the heights, beauty, acceptance of

both suffering and joy, and the desire to be God.19 In addition, according to Baker, the

structure of Scriabin’s Preludes Op. 59 No. 2 has the geometrical proportions of a crystal,

which might well have mystical ramifications.20 For Theosophists, the crystal is the perfect

reflection of cosmic principles, and it gives us the sense that ‘we have in some mysterious

way penetrated to a plane higher than the purely physical.’21

From 1900 onwards, Scriabin became more and more deeply drawn into a mystical

philosophy of art, ‘a fusion of all the arts, but not a theatrical one like Wagner’s’.22 “Art”, he

said, “must unite with philosophy and religion in an indivisible whole to form a new gospel,

which will replace the old Gospel we have outlived”.23 In his last orchestral work,

Prometheus: Poem of Fire, one of his most daring compositions, Scriabin carried his

harmonic language a stage further to the very brink of atonality. This was a preliminary study

for the long contemplated ‘Mysterium’ in which Scriabin never lived to compose- a liturgical

act combining dancing, music, poetry, colours, and scents.

Scriabin also rarely wrote music that was either whole-tone or octatonic in the strictest 19 James M. Baker, ‘Scriabin’s music: structure as prism for mystical philosophy’ in Music Theory in Concept and Practice, ed. James M. Baker, David W. Beach & Jonathan W. Bernard, p.60 20 Ibid., p.78 21 Ibid., p.79 22 Gerald Abraham, ‘The reaction against Romanticism’ in The Modern Age 1890 – 1960, ed. Martin Cooper, p.35 23 Yuly, D. Engel, ‘A.N. Skryabin. Biografichesky ocherk’, Muzikalny Sovremennik (1916), no.4-5, p.56


sense, even though the whole-tone scale had been used in Russian music since Glinka; and

the octatonic scale was in particular vogue in St. Petersburg, around the turn of 20th-century.

Rather, he combined the two, and thus arrived at his own later language. Scriabin’s musical

language in this respect is in the use of ‘mystic chord’, also known as Promethean chord,

which is based on dominant and French Sixth chords (c – f# - bb – e’ – a’ – d”). The mystic

chord was for a long time regarded as the starting point of all of Scriabin’s later experiments,

together with his theosophy, colour and supposed effeminacy, contributed greatly to his

mystique. It is interesting to note that, when this chord is presented horizontally, while it is

neither whole-tone nor octatonic, it contains elements of both.24 Later in his five Preludes,

Op. 74, Scriabin introduced a profusion of foreign chromatic notes in his mystic chord, that

he reached a kind of twelve-note music, though it is certainly not the Schoenbergian kind, nor

atonal25, and these preludes also contain a synthesis of symmetry, traditional modality,

tonality and chromaticism.26 The scales that Scriabin applied in his Op. 74 Preludes formed a

very important basis in which Messiaen derived for his modes of limited transposition about a

decade later.27

Scriabin’s association of colour and music is one of his attempts to combine Art and

Science. However, the difficulty in applying colour to music is increased by the confusion of

ideas in its manner of relationship. Some connect the various colours with the various single

notes, while others will give certain colours to certain key. Scriabin would connect certain

colours to specific keys. Indeed, influenced also by his theosophical beliefs, Scriabin

24 Powell: ‘Aleksandr Nikolayevich Skryabin, #4: The music and its philosophical background’, p.5 25 Abraham, ‘The reaction against Romanticism’, p.137. Both the Promethean chord and the twelve-note row provide synthetic nuclei for a composition and since the one can be ‘verticalized’ into chords and the other ‘horizontalized’ into melodic lines, they appear superficially to be opposite sides of the same coin. But the notes of the Promethean chord are not related to one another as in Schoenberg’s twelve-note system. 26 Roberts, Modernism in Russian Piano Music, p.124 27 Ibid., p.76


developed it towards what would have been a pioneering multimedia performance.28 In his

autobiographical, Rachmaninov recorded a conversation he had with Scriabin and Rimsky-

Korsakov about Scriabin's association of colour and music. Rachmaninov was surprised to

find that Rimsky-Korsakov agreed with Scriabin on associations of musical keys with

colours; himself skeptical, Rachmaninoff made the obvious objection that the two composers

did not always agree on the colors involved. Both maintained that the key of D major was

golden-brown; but Scriabin linked E-flat major with red-purple, while Rimsky-Korsakov

favored blue29. According to Rimsky-Korsakov, a passage in Rachmaninov's opera, The

Miserly Knight, supported their view: the scene in which the Old Baron opens treasure chests

to reveal gold and jewels glittering in torchlight is written in D major.30 Later Scriabin

revealed that it is Rachmaninov’s intuition that has unconsciously followed the laws, which

the very existence he has tried to deny.31 In his Prometheus: Poem of Fire, Scriabin includes

a part for clavier à lumières, also known as the Luce, which was a colour organ designed

specifically for the performance of the symphony. It was played like a piano, but projected

coloured-light on a screen in the concert hall rather than sound. In the original score, there is

a supplementary stave denominated for Luce, where there are musical notes corresponding to

the colours determined by the composer.

In his book, Musical Poetics, Strainsky asks a question, which at the same time

requires an answer and displays a great deal of admiration: “After all, is it possible to link a

musician like Scriabin to any tradition? Where did he come from? Who are his

28 Bowers, Scriabin: a biography of the Russian composer, 1871-1915, p.94. In my own particular case, on two occasions I have seen radiant flashes of blinding colours and lights during performances of Scriabin’s music. I neither prepared for them, nor was I able to repeat them at any other time. They happened; I saw light unexpectedly and for no explicable or useful purpose. The experiences lasted for not more than a few seconds and were gone. 29 Sergei Rachmaninoff, Rachmaninoff's Recollections Told to Oskar von Rieseman, trans. Dorothy Rutherford (New York, MacMillan, 1934), p.77 30 Ibid., p.80 31 Ibid., p. 81


predecessors?”32 This question is a touchstone for all of those who look at the work of this

intriguing composer. It is regrettable that Scriabin’s place in music history has never been

fully understood or appreciated. This phenomenon is partly due to the indifferent of Scriabin

to widen the horizons of his art; rather they grew gradually narrower, and focused more and

more closely on himself.33 Regardless of what one might call him, whether a mystic, a

philosopher, a madman, a genius or a visionary, he is indeed a 20th-century modernist, who

has influenced many composers in Russia and abroad.

Bibliography Abraham, Gerald, ‘The apogee and decline of Romanticism’ in The Modern Age 1890 – 1960, ed. Martin Cooper (Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 31-7 Abraham, Gerald, ‘The reaction against Romanticism’ in The Modern Age 1890 – 1960, ed. Martin Cooper (Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 80-138 Antokoletz, Elliot, Twentieth-Century Music (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1991) Baker, James M., ‘Scriabin’s music: structure as prism for mystical philosophy’ in Music Theory in Concept and Practice, ed. James M. Baker, David W. Beach & Jonathan W. Bernard (New York: University of Rochester Press, 1997), pp. 53-96 Baker, James M., The music of Alexander Scriabin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986) Botstein, Leon: ‘Modernism’, Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 30 October 2006), <http://www.grovemusic.com> Bowers, Faubion, Scriabin: a biography of the Russian composer, 1871-1915 (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1969) Calvocoressi, Michel Dimitri, The national music of Russia: Musogorsky [sic] and Scriabin (London: Waverley, 1920) Fanning, David, ‘Russia: East meets West’ in The late romantic era: from the mid-19th century to World War I, ed. Jim Samson (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991)

32 Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music, trans. Arthur Knodel and Ingolf Dahl (New York: Vintage Books, 1947), pp. 100-01 33 Hugh J. MacDonald, Skryabin (London: O.U.P., 1978), p.7


Hull, A.E., A Great Russian Tone-Poet: Scriabin (London, 1916; rev. 3rd edn., 1970) Macdonald, Hugh John, Skryabin (London: O.U.P., 1978) Montagu-Nathan, M., A History of Russian Music (London: Reeves, 1918; 2nd edition, rev. and corrected) Powell, Jonathan: ‘Skryabin, Aleksandr Nikolayevich’, Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 30 October 2006), <http://www.grovemusic.com> Rachmaninoff, Sergei, Rachmaninoff's Recollections Told to Oskar von Rieseman, trans. Dorothy Rutherford (New York, MacMillan, 1934). Roberts, Peter Deane, Modernism in Russian piano music: Skriabin, Prokofiev, and their Russian contemporaries (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1992) Salter, Lionel, The Gramophone Guide to Classical Composers (Peerage Books, 1984) Samson, Jim, Music in transition: a study of tonal expansion and atonality, 1900-1920 (London: Dent, 1993) Scholes, Percy, ‘Alexander Skryabin’, The New Oxford Companion to Music, ed. Denis Arnold (Oxford, 1983), volume ii, pp. 1692-3 Stravinsky, Igor, Poetics of Music, trans. Arthur Knodel and Ingolf Dahl (New York: Vintage Books, 1947) Taruskin, Richard, Defining Russia musically: historical and hermeneutical Essays (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000)

Alexander Scriabin

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