Alexander Scriabin - Biography
Alexander Scriabin famed composer of a uniquely mystical bent was born on January 6th 1872 in Moscow and died there on April 27th 1915. His father was a lawyer and in the Russian diplomatic corps his mother was an excellent pianist who died when Scriabin was an infant. Scriabin father remarried and he was brought up by an aunt who gave him basic music instruction. His talent was recognized and he studied piano with Georgi Conus and later on studied musical theory with the well known composer Taneyev. He entered the Moscow conservatory and was top of the class as a pianist but failed at his theory studies with the composer Arensky. Upon his graduation he became a concert pianist performing his early Chopinesque piano pieces including his early Nocturnes, Waltzes, Mazurkas, and Preludes. Scriabin was a small dapper good looking man who likes his model Chopin had considerable success particularly with the female audiences. His first orchestral work was his Piano Concerto (1897) which had considerable success. He embarked on a tour of Europe and had particular success in Paris. Scriabin married in 1897 to Vera Isakovich a pianist whom he was to perform with jointly. He wrote his first purely orchestral work Reveries in 1898 the same year he became a professor at the Moscow Conservatory.
He wrote a First and Second Symphony in quick succession in 1902 and 1903 the first of which has chorus and orchestra and is more characteristic of Scriabin’s future ecstatic style He also wrote the first 3 of his 10 numbered Piano Sonatas between1892 and 1903. Scriabin received a grant from a wealthy Moscow merchant that enabled him to quit his teaching position and live abroad in Switzerland to concentrate on his composition. He soon composed his Third Symphony “The Divine Poem” a hyper romantic piece that was first performed in Paris in 1905. Scriabin left his wife to live with Tatiana Schloezer sister of a critic and supporter of Scriabin. In 1906 he toured America successfully as a soloist performing his pieces. During this period he continued to write a vast amount of solo piano music sets of pieces under the titles of Pieces,Poemes, and Preludes and also wrote a Fourth and Fifth Piano Sonatas all exuding a unique hyper romantic and sensuous quality. Scriabin was now to form a partnership with the great Russian conductor Serge Koussevitzky later to become the celebrated conductor of the Boston Symphony who at the time was a young conductor who had his own orchestra and publishing company financially supported by his wife a wealthy heiress. Scriabin during this period was to write his most famous work the Fourth Symphony ” Poem of Ecstasy”;the work is in fact an 18 minute symphonic poem for a huge orchestra and a trumpet obbligato of shattering intensity. Besides Koussevitzky Scriabin was performed by the conductor Modest Altschuler who was the conductor of the Russian Symphony Society of New York. Koussevitzky’s publishing company gave Scriabin a substantial contract that enabled him to compose without financial concerns. In 1910 Koussevitzky and Scriabin travelled with an orchestra on the Volga on a large steamship performing up and down the river in large and small towns for audiences of all social classes. Scriabin wrote his Fifth Symphony; Prometheus the Poem of Fire again not a true symphony but a Symphonic Poem for piano and orchestra of dense power. This work was the first where Scriabin tested his musical theories about the different keys of the scales representing different colors. In fact the piano in the symphony was to trigger the projection of a specific color related to keys that were to be projected onto a screen. Opinion was divided as to if this represented a great musical breakthrough or a manifestation of Scriabin descent into madness. Scriabin and Koussevitzky were to have a falling out in 1912 over finances and Scriabin having doubts about Koussevitzky’s commitment to his theories.
Scriabin was to delve further into mystical and theosophist thought and had many followers. His later piano sonatas (Six through Ten) were short in duration but demonic in intensity and were to have titles like White Mass and Black Mass. Scriabin was to die of a trivial malady, an abscess on his lip that went untreated and resulted in blood poisoning and death on April 27th 1915 at forty three. At the time of his death Scriabin was conceiving of a three part work Mysterium of Wagnerian length that would combine besides sound, dance ;color and the other senses and would be performed on the foothills of the Himalayas at a weeklong festival . All that exists were sketches for part one Universe that was stitched together by a Soviet era musicologist. Scriabin had three children with his common law wife including a daughter Marina who moved to America and became a luminary in the electronic music Avant Garde.
Scriabin is a very signifigant composer who advanced the harmonic language of music and anticipated polytonality and aspects of atonality. Scriabin has fallen in and out of fashion. Currently in the West this is a period of falling out of fashion. Scriabin is composer who can’t survive an ordinary performance it need a performer whose intensity matches the composer. Among conductors there was Leopold Stokowski who was remarkably empathetic and the firebrand Russian conductor Golovanov, recently we had fine performances by the late Yevgney Svetlanov and Riccardo Muti. From Koussevitzky all we have is a radio broadcast of Poem of Ecstasy. Among pianists no one rivals the stupendous performances of the Russian pianists Sofornitzky,Richter and Vladimir Horowitz. Among present day performers we have Vladimir Ashkenazy who is fine Scriabin interpreter both a pianist and a conductor.