Scriabin

[Despina41]

Yes, after much thought, I decided to put a Scriabin thread in the modern composers group.


At first I thought "Scriabin's a Romantic."

You have all that Chopin-influenced early piano music. It's very tonal, and it falls over itself being romantic. Listen to this Fantasy op.28. It’s got it all: the sweeping romantic melody, the dramatic chordal climax, the heroic 4-3 suspension, the dissolution into the minor again - a piece like this practically plays itself!

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pchD-jLpano"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pchD-jLpano[/ame]

You’d think it was composed in 1860. Try 1900. Ok, nothing modernist about that. Tell that 28-year old to get with the twentieth century!


But of course we don’t judge the modernist composers – at least not that 1870s generation – by their early works. Or else we’d be calling Schoenberg a Romantic too. And so he was – as much as Scriabin.

But then I thought “Well, Scriabin’s really a modernist too.”

His late music is barely tonal. What happened in his last years between 1900-1915? Cue someone posting the Wikipedia entry about his biography. But I think the point is that he strove to do new things and break barriers. Creating new chords and musical instruments is a good yardstick, no?

What happens to Scriabin is kind of like the early history of jazz harmony… except, amazingly so, it happens to a 19th-century Russian composer years before Coleman Hawkins and co. figure it out. He starts out with your typical 19th century Chopinesque harmonic palette,which you just heard, fine. Then he starts to heighten the most important moment of the progressions, which is apparently the pre-dominant-Dominant-Tonic business. He gets stuck on the tritone rather than the pure fifth. So your bass progression is not C-G-C anymore, it's suddenly C-F#-C. And suddenly you can slide all around chromatically from there.

Here is the breakthrough op. 53 sonata (53 – ironically) in F# major. It's still tonal, and it still has themes that are transformed, like Liszt on speed or something. You can tell from the opening DYAD (yes, that's only two notes, thanks, Richter, you're awesome), that this piece is something bizarre. But give it a listen or two, and it's still quite coherent and accessible. I love it because it's very colorful, with lots of greens.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0lfk2QgPhc&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0lfk2QgPhc&feature=related[/ame]

NOW: TRITONES!!! Go back and look at page two. (I included the score for a reason.) The bass just alternates between one tritone and another. A#-E to E-A#. Given the soprano, sounds like alternating 7 chords, A#-G to E-D#, and they're a tritone apart...

"But wait," you protest, "Mussorgsky has been about tritones since the beginning of time."
"Yes, and that's why we love him."

So yes, it's not unprecedented: you can go back to Boris Godunov in the famous coronation scene and you can find your dom 7ths alternating by tritones in the bass. You can also find it in Pictures. (This is why Muss is so exotic sounding, and why we are always surprised to remember that his music is from the 1870s.) And then you can find it in the French composers of the later 19/early 20th centuries. But Scriabin takes it in a different direction from Ravel and Debussy.

There are entire (Russian) theories devoted to understanding Scriabin's particular development of this particular bass progression and of his harmony in general. I believe Varvara Dernova dubbed it the "tritone nucleus" that begins to take over his late music. The thing is, I can’t think of any other composer born this early who’s got entire theories devoted only to his music. It’s so idiosyncratic – his development and style. I think that helps make him a modernist.

Oh yeah, and in 1914, you get something that sounds like this from the man:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5117qtMYKA"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5117qtMYKA[/ame]

where the opening sonority is something like A-C-C#-E, although not in that voicing. And that’s his home base harmony; he develops (via hardcore chromaticism and motivic work) away from it and returns (via another tritone cadence), which is all very traditional, but it sounds like you’re in outer space. Hey, this sounds like an apologist analysis of Schoenberg or Webern! Ah, but that’s my point.


So is Scriabin a modernist and not recognized as one? My friend thinks it’s about the “national condition.” Schoenberg is German and therefore gets the good press, while Scriabin, from "backwards-looking" Russia, is merely another Romantic. And because the Germans wrote the music history...

Well, I like to think of him as a modernist. What say you?

[Alpha Centauri]

Modernist, certainly.

And very, very odd. He planned to write a piece that would take a week to perform, and could only be played in the Altai Mountains of Siberia (which were very fashionable as a New-Age location at the time, and believed by the poet-painter-explorer-charlatan Roerich to be the "Gate To Shambala"). The performance of this work would, apparently, set-off a Doomsday Device which would cause the world to end. In a festival of love and ectasy, of course.

Luckily for the rest of us, he failed to complete the composition, let alone attempt to perform it (in the Altai Mts, or anywhere else).

Shall we mention the colour-organ?

The Altai Mts are very nice, I was just there two weeks ago to catch the end of the last decent weather for this year. No sign of the Gate To Shambala, however....

[Despina41]

Originally Posted by Reiner Torheit

And very, very odd. He planned to write a piece that would take a week to perform, and could only be played in the Altai Mountains of Siberia (which were very fashionable as a New-Age location at the time, and believed by the poet-painter-explorer-charlatan Roerich to be the "Gate To Shambala"). The performance of this work would, apparently, set-off a Doomsday Device which would cause the world to end. In a festival of love and ectasy, of course.

On October 14th, man...

[Alpha Centauri]

Originally Posted by Despina41

On October 14th, man...

Is that when the week-long performance begins... or ends?

[Herzeleide]

Originally Posted by Despina41

What happens to Scriabin is kind of like the early history of jazz harmony… except, amazingly so, it happens to a 19th-century Russian composer years before Coleman Hawkins and co. figure it out.

Wasn't all jazz harmony essentially derived from Classical practice? Only one can identify it as 'jazz' because of the idiomatic use of the harmonic language of European Art music.

I definitely think he's a modernist, since I think he only fulfilled his truest aims once he'd reached that stage which is 'modern'.

I like Scriabin and adore the late works: they're incredibly original, and the famous chord:



Is used like a bloc sonore: i.e. it is both vertical and linear, harmonic and melodic. The freedom this affords the music is reflected in the way the music effortlessly drifts between different textures.
Aesthetically, the music is no less remarkable: neither impressionist nor expressionist (but in a sense both!) It's otherworldly, highly sensuous, psychadelic, iridescent, luminous but also opaque and quizzical.

[Despina41]

Originally Posted by Herzeleide

I like Sriabin and adore the late works: they're incredibly original, and the famous chord:



Is used like a bloc sonore: i.e. it is both vertical and linear, harmonic and melodic. The freedom this affords the music is reflected in the way the music effortlessly drifts between different textures.
Aesthetically, the music is no less remarkable: neither impressionist nor expressionist (but in a sense both!) It's otherworldly, highly sensuous, psychadelic, iridescent, luminous but also opaque and quizzical.

I was waiting for you to chime in. Such a great, poetic description of the late style! It's so true; the music is all that, and there is nothing quite like it. I was thinking about Scriabin in the first place because one of my friends confessed that they could not tell apart Scriabin and Debussy/late Brahms! How do you explain THAT to someone if they can't hear it?!

Perhaps in your infinite eloquence you can think of some explanation that might help?

[Herzeleide]

Originally Posted by Despina41

I was waiting for you to chime in. Such a great, poetic description of the late style! It's so true; the music is all that, and there is nothing quite like it. I was thinking about Scriabin in the first place because one of my friends confessed that they could not tell apart Scriabin and Debussy/late Brahms! How do you explain THAT to someone if they can't hear it?!

Perhaps in your infinite eloquence you can think of some explanation that might help?

Was this a well-heard (the equivalent of 'well-read') friend? :sad2:

I can see Scriabin and Debussy together - educated Russians were always inclined more towards the Gallic; Gallic, rather than Teutonic. Which is why I can't make the link with Brahms. Schoenberg may have written and essay called 'Brahms the Progressive' but Brahms's particular form of symmetry and angularity adumbrates the second Viennese school. I'm afraid I'm stumped.

[Despina41]

Originally Posted by Herzeleide

Was this a well-heard (the equivalent of 'well-read') friend? :sad2:

I can see Scriabin and Debussy together - educated Russians were always inclined more towards the Gallic; Gallic, rather than Teutonic. Which is why I can't make the link with Brahms. Schoenberg may have written and essay called 'Brahms the Progressive' but Brahms's particular form of symmetry and angularity adumbrates the second Viennese school. I'm afraid I'm stumped.

I tried to explain the differences with a lot of musical examples. I find Debussy and Ravel enjoy a lot more "minimalistic" effects - in the sense of repeating figures AND in the sense of starkness and simplicity of material. And despite the fourth-based nature of the Prometheus chord, its effect to me is one of saturation -- that is, not related in sound to the "pure" open fourths and fifths you find in the Frenchies.

As for BRAHMS... he taught me how to get into Schoenberg and Webern. But he sounds so GERMAN, I have no ieda how to explain, if said friend can't already hear that, why he's not Scriabin.... OI!

Op. 116/5 is the best example of pre-Webern, no?

[Alpha Centauri]

Originally Posted by Herzeleide

Schoenberg may have written an essay called 'Brahms the Progressive'

I always laugh when I hear that essay-title. I keep it on my shelf alongside my other favourite essays:

"J.S. Bach - The Waltz King"

and

"Stockhausen - A Lifetime Spent Writing for Military Bands".

[Despina41]

heh, Arnie had an agenda. It was hardly objective analysis.