Скрябин (Софроницкий)

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About Скрябин (Софроницкий)

Alexander Scriabin (Aleksandr Skriabin) was born 25 December 1871 in Moscow. His mother died when he was two, and he was then raised by a grandmother and his Aunt Liubov. He began formal study of the piano at 12 with Georgy Conus. In 1884-85 he studied piano with Nikolai Zverev, at whose house a small group of piano pupils boarded, including 11-year-old Sergei Rachmaninoff. He entered the Moscow Conservatory at 17, studying piano with Vasily Sofonov. He learned theory with Sergei Taneyev, and was in Anton Arensky's composition class where classmate and friend Rachmaninoff was Arensky's star pupil. Ironically, Arensky once threatened to flunk Scriabin who was musically somewhat too adventurous for his teacher. In 1892, Scriabin sought to graduate a year early like Rachmaninoff but was refused by Arensky, whereupon, enraged, Scriabin quit and set out on a career as a concert pianist and recitalist. In 1897 he married pianist Vera Ivanovna Isakovich, The following year, Moscow Conservatory piano professor Paul Schloezer died, and Scriabin took his place. By 1902, the Scriabins had three daughters (Rimma, Elena, and Maria) and one son (Lev). During this time, he became interested in Goethe and Nietzsche. Then, in 1903, he left his post at the Moscow Conservatory. At the same time, he began an extramarital love affair with Schloezer's niece, the seductively attractive Tatyana Fyodorovna. The first significant phase of his artistic career (1891-1902, comprising opus nos. 4-28) is marked by sets of piano works in smaller forms (preludes, mazurkas, études, etc), modelled on the styles of Chopin and Liszt. In these works, however, Scriabin goes beyond his models, bringing an extra richness, delicacy, and clarity to the idiom of his early romantic predecessors. The enthusiasm and intensity in some of Scriabin's mazurkas, for example, make them seem at times more brilliantly 'Chopinesque' than Chopin himself! The Second and Third Sonatas give further witness to the fresh vitality Scriabin will bring to this form. In the early years of the century, Scriabin devoted much of his effort to symphonic writing, and it was through this that he first achieved a major metamophosis in personal idiom, strongly coloured with Wagerian harmony. Scriabin produced his first and second symphonies, and his Divine Poem, or Third Symphony, during this time. His robust and passionate Fourth Piano Sonata is a good example of this transitional period, especially in contrast with both the Third and Fifth sonatas. From 1904 to 1908, Scriabin lived abroad. In 1904 he went to a philosophy conference in Geneva, and heard Wagner's Die Walküre in Paris. In 1906 a daughter Ariadna was born - his first child by Tatiana. During the 1906-07 season, he made his American debut with his own Piano Concerto, but his tour was abruptly curtailed when its sponsors feared public impact were it discovered that he was still married to a woman other than the one he was with. In Brussels, he frequented theosophical circles, both satisfying and feeding his impulse for spiritual and philosophical realms. At this time, he composed both his striking Fifth Sonata and his orchestral Poem of Ecstasy, Op. 54. His compositions, whose harmonic language was now marked by a more elaborate chromaticism, were increasingly given titles of a symbolist bent (eg., Poème ailé, Poème languide). In 1908, a second child, a son, Julian, was born to Scriabin and Tatiana Fyodorovna. With the completion of his last symphonic work (The Poem of Fire: Prometheus), Scriabin completely broke through all tonal constraints and devised a harmonic style based on superimposition of diminished and augmented fourths - though it is also much more than this. [Note: All this is best understood through direct listening than through any amount of technical descriptive terminology.] The five last years of his life were devoted solely to the piano. These compositions include Sonatas 6 through 10, sets of smaller-scale pieces, and especially Vers la Flamme. His seventh and last child, Marina, was born, and his father and his son, Lev, also died. At the same time, he was an active performing artist. With Serge Koussevitzky and the Imperial Bolshoi Orchestra, he went as piano soloist on a Volga steamboat tour. He also made numerous acclaimed appearances as a solo recitalist in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and London. In this final period, Scriabin abandons even the need for any form of rhythmic beat, instead superimposing different time-values, through a layering of harmonic and thematic material, and making use of acoustic effects like trills and tremolos. He died rather abruptedly in Moscow on 14 April 1915 after developing septicemia - consequence of an initially small untreated infection he developed on his lip beneath his rich 'trademark' moustache. His death came as a great shock to many. Rachmaninoff, one of his deep admirers, shortly thereafter changed to all-Scriabin programs in his recitals for a time, as if to awaken and remind the musical world of the true nature and extent of its premature loss. Scriabin's pianistic technique exhibits a propensity for broad appegiated intervals, octaves and chords, demanding swift and often difficult jumps. He was a sort of musical representative of Symbolism, immersed in hazy mystical ideologies derived from Eastern philosophical and religious sources. Scriabin sought to stretch music to its limits of sonorous density and expression, toward creating an atmosphere of spiritual and esthetic ecstasy. He eventually envisioned the ideal musical experience as a multi-sensory "synaesthetic" event, which would also incorporate a visual dimension in the form of a light-and-color display - an idea 60 or 70 years ahead of its time with regard to the requisite technology and audience receptivity. While Scriabin certainly stands in stark contrast to his nationalist Russian contemporaries, his 'feet' rest solidly in tradition while his 'hands' reach toward a future yet unknown in his time. In Donald Garvelmann's words: Scriabin's music embraces the past and the future, formality and freedom. Its large range of expression - anger, fear, heroism, darkness, mystery, evil, light, fire, flight, intoxication, languor, love, six, ecstasy - is the very connective tissue of his life and thought. His remarkable harmonic scheme is like a burgeoning new language but with few cognates. His works are experiences of an inexhaustible range of color, from the most delicate nuance to rich multi-voiced textures, and of (his favorite word) "sensations." Copyright © 1998 Ned Rees . Acknowledgements to Daniel Kim for correction of facts. Reuse or re-publication in any form, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited without the expressed written consent of the author. Used by the Classical Composers Database with permission of the author.

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