Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist. Scriabin, who was influenced early in his life by the works of Frédéric Chopin, composed works that are characterised by a highly tonal idiom (these works are associated with his "first stage" of compositional output).
Background
Alexander Scriabin was born on January 6, 1872 in Moscow, Russia, a son of a lawyer and his wife who was a brilliant pianist.
His father and all of his uncles had military careers. When he was only a year old, his mother - herself a concert pianist and former pupil of Theodor Leschetizky - died of tuberculosis.
After her death, Scriabin's father completed tuition in the Turkish language in St. Petersburg, subsequently becoming a diplomat and finally leaving for Turkey, leaving the infant Alexander with his grandmother, great aunt, and aunt. Scriabin's father would later remarry, giving Scriabin a number of half-brothers and sisters. His aunt Lyubov (his father's unmarried sister) was an amateur pianist who documented Sasha's early life until the time he met his first wife. As a child, Scriabin was frequently exposed to piano playing, and anecdotal references describe him demanding that his aunt play for him.
Education
In 1882 he enlisted in the Second Moscow Cadet Corps. He ranked generally first in his class academically, but was exempt from drilling due to his physique and was given time each day to practise at the piano. Scriabin later studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Anton Arensky, Sergei Taneyev, and Vasily Safonov.
In 1892 he graduated with the Little Gold Medal in piano performance, but did not complete a composition degree because of strong differences in personality and musical opinion with Arensky (whose faculty signature is the only one absent from Scriabin's graduation certificate) and an unwillingness to compose pieces in forms that did not interest him.
Career
By 1892, when he graduated from the conservatory, Scriabin had composed the piano pieces that constitute his opuses 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7. In 1897 he married the pianist Vera Isakovich and from 1898 until 1903 taught at the Moscow Conservatory. He then devoted himself entirely to composition and in 1904 settled in Switzerland. After 1900 he was much preoccupied with mystical philosophy, and his Symphony No. 1, composed in that year, has a choral finale, to his own words, glorifying art as a form of religion. In Switzerland he completed his Symphony No. 3, first performed under Arthur Nikisch in Paris in 1905. The literary “program” of this work, devised by Tatiana Schloezer, with whom he had formed a relationship after abandoning his wife, was said to represent “the evolution of the human spirit from pantheism to unity with the universe. ” Theosophical ideas similarly provided the basis of the orchestral Poem of Ecstasy (1908) and Prometheus (1911), which called for the projection of colours onto a screen during the performance.
From 1906 to 1907 Scriabin toured the United States, where he gave concerts with Safonov and the conductor Modest Altschuler, and in 1908 he frequented theosophical circles in Brussels. In 1909 he was encouraged by the conductor Serge Koussevitzky, who both performed and published his works, to return to Russia. By then he was no longer thinking in terms of music alone; he was looking forward to an all-embracing “Mystery. ” This work was planned to open with a “liturgical act” in which music, poetry, dancing, colours, and scents were to unite to induce in the worshipers a “supreme, final ecstasy. ” He wrote the poem of the “Preliminary Action” of the “Mystery” but left only sketches for the music.
Scriabin’s reputation stems from his grandiose symphonies and his sensitive, exquisitely polished piano music. His piano works include 10 sonatas (1892-1913), an early concerto, and many preludes and other short pieces. Although Scriabin was an idolater of Frédéric Chopin in his youth, he early developed a personal style. As his thought became more and more mystical, egocentric, and ingrown, his harmonic style became ever less generally intelligible. Meaningful analysis of his work only began appearing in the 1960s, and yet his music had always attracted a devoted following among modernists.