The Mystical Flame of Alexander Scriabin

The era into which Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin lived was rife with waves of political discontent, social unrest, and rapid industrial change. A feverish period experienced in most parts of Europe that summarily reflects the fire of Alexander's music.

Scholars have given Scriabin two birthdays. Most sources indicate he was born on Christmas of 1871 in Moscow, Russia. A date which was based on the Julian calendar. Its modern equivalent though is January 6, 1872.

The young Scriabin was very shy and unsociable. His connection with music on the other hand, was the opposite. "A love for music was born with him in the cradle", his aunt recounts. Three year old Alexander would spend long hours in front of an instrument with keys he could hardly reach. Its mechanism fascinated him so that he built his own miniature pianos. Years later, he took lessons under Nikolai Zverev. An outstanding piano teacher whose czar-like methods mentored Russia's young prodigies that included a kid named Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Alexander's body was always frail and had small hands that made playing ninth chords difficult. Despite this handicap, Scriabin became an exceptional student. He received a gold medal from the Moscow Conservatory in 1892 through his performance of Beethoven's Sonata Op. 109. In addition, he held a unique distinction of having his name inscribed alongside Rachmaninoff on a marble plaque planted at the conservatory's hall.

Often labeled as egocentric, the music that only mattered to Scriabin was his own. While he cited Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner as his influences, he side stepped prevailing conventions of  tonality and rhythm as his style developed. Soon after, he crafted his own musical idiom anchored on the Mystic (Prometheus) chord. A set of pitch classes formed by  notes C, F#, Bb, E, A, D, G. This also served as backbone for Alexander's bold melodic and harmonic explorations. In his latter compositions, Scriabin began to incorporate irregular time signatures and allowed notes to be played at random. An approach prescient to Arnold Schoenberg's revolutionary system of serial tonality.

Hearing the Third symphony (The Divine Poem) in its nascent stages, Nobel laureate Boris Pasternak described his neighbor's music :

Oh God, what music it was! The symphony was crashing and collapsing again and again, like a town under artillery fire, and then it built up and grew out of the wreckage and ruins. It was brimming an with essence chiseled out to the point of insanity, and as new as the forest was new, full of life and breathing freshness.

Scriabin saw himself as a messiah whose vision was to unite all humankind. He sank his teeth into interests aside from music, ranging from literature, eastern philosophy, metaphysics and theosophy. Learnings from these various subjects found their way into his music as evidenced in his enormously ambitious work entitled Mysterium. Though unfinished, it was conceived as a week long interactive multimedia show of the grandest scale, performed by thousands of artists and audience as well. It showcases the synthesis of music, scents, choruses, light, literature, dance, architecture, and natural landscape of the Himalayas. Alexander believed that combining these elements would bring civilization to a close and herald the birth of a new world inhabited by nobler beings.

During his time, Alexander was regarded as Russia's own version of Chopin and was esteemed highly by his peers. In a letter to Scriabin, Alexander Glazunov on  February 1905 writes, "I played the Fourth Sonata a great deal and admired it a great deal as well... full of ravishing beauty, and the thoughts in it are expressed with extreme clarity and conciseness".

On the 7th of April 1915, Alexander fell severely ill. Seven days later, at the age of 43, he died of massive blood poisoning. His funeral was flocked by  intellectuals, artists, and members of the academic community. Russia's leading literary figures expressed their grief through poetry while preeminent musicians paid tribute by organizing series of nationwide concerts. This included thundering  recitals  of Scriabin's work by the inimitable Rachmaninoff.

The untimely death of Alexander left the world with few completed works. Majority of them were for his favorite instrument -- the piano. Unlike the well known composers in classical music, Scriabin had no opera or chamber music to speak of. The ground breaking sophistication and mysticism of his compositions, however, is of indissoluble value. A fellow composer Dmitri Shostakovitch notes in retrospect: "..After several decades we clearly see his innovation is deeply rooted in tradition... We are grateful to Scriabin for extending the boundaries of our art... We also Cherish him for his faith in the transformative power of art, in its ability to ennoble the human soul, to bring harmony to peoples lives..".

Given his limited output, Scriabin's significant imprint to contemporary music is somewhat difficult to outline. However, musicians and specially pianists of critical acclaim have already recognized the genius behind his work. Competitions and international societies dedicated to Scriabin exist up to this day. Furthermore, his torrid influence continues to extend beyond the boundaries of earth, when in 1988, an asteroid was named after him: 6549 Skryabin.  A fitting recognition to Alexander's cataclysmic legacy.

Images:

All images were re-shot and cropped from the book Scriabin: His Life and Times by Ye. Rudakova and A.I. Kandinsky, Paganiniana Publications.(pp.8,46,58,64,101) 
1. Scriabin 1909, signed portrait with passages from his Sonata No. 4. (original photographer unknown)
2. Young Scriabin 1879 portrait (original photographer unknown)
3. Scriabin 1901 portrait (original photographer unknown)
4. Scriabin 1894 portrait in the village of Zenino (original photographer unknown)
5. Scriabin 1910 moments before completing Prometheus. Photo by his friend A.E. Mozer.

Video:

Clip from youtube by arciduca31. Verse La Flamme, Op. 72; performed by Vladimir Horowitz from the video, Vladimir Horowitz " A reminescence".

Special thanks to Mr. Thiago Gasparino for the thematic inspiration of this post.