Alexander Scriabin

Alexander Scriabin

Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (Russian: Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Скря́бин) was a Russian pianist and composer who was much influenced by Theosophy and by the Symbolist movement in the visual arts.

Theosophist Margaret Cousins, a concert pianist, wrote: "His music has constantly in it a most poignant sweet quality which seems to pierce to the holy of holies of one's being."

Personal life

Childhood and education

Alexander Scriabin was born in Moscow on December 25, 1871, according to the Julian Calendar, or January 6, 1872 in the Gregorian Calendar that is now in use. His family was aristocratic, with a strong tradition of all male members being in the military, but his father, Nikolai Alexandrovich, took a different direction, training as a lawyer and becoming a minor diplomat.

The family name derives from "skriba" or "scribe," and has been transliterated in many ways - Scriabine, de Scriabine, Skriabin, Skrjabin, Skryabin.

Nilolai Scriabin married Lyubox Petrovna Shchetinina, a concert pianist, protegée of Anton Rubinstein, and winner of the Great Gold Medal from the Petersburg Conservatory. She died of tuberculosis within months after Alexander's birth.

Young Alexander's father was mostly absent in diplomatic postings, so the boy, called "Sasha" or "Shurinka," was raised in the household of his grandmother, his great-aunt, and his father's unmarried sister Lyubov Alexandrova Scriabina. The aunt, an amateur pianist, nurtured Sasha's creativity. Even without formal training, Alexander could play complex tunes on the piano by ear. At age seven, he constructed ten toy pianos with strings, sounding boards, working pedals, and moving keys. He read adult literature, designed patterns for needlework, and wrote short plays.

Nikolai Scriabin remarried and had four more sons and a daughter, but his oldest son continued to live with his aunt Lyubov. Alexander attended the Cadet Corps school, and had a difficult time with hazing and bullying until his skill at the piano made him indispensable at social events. He began composing, and began to have formal music lessons during the summers. In 1885, he was began a five-year program of training at the prestigious Moscow Conservatory, learning theory, solfeggio, harmony, and counterpoint. In 1892 he began to sell his compositions.

As a youth, and throughout his life, Scriabin was physically small and weak; sensitive and volatile; easily bored; and fragile in health. His right hand was susceptible to strain from overworking it, and he developed an unusually strong and independent left hand technique as a result.

Marriage and parenthood

In December, 1893, Scriabin was introduced to Vera Ivanovna Isakovich (1875-1920), a talented pianist. When he was 25 years old, they married in a formal 5-day Russian Orthodox ceremony from August 15-20, 1897. The couple performed together often - individually, and in arrangements for four hands. They had four children, putting pressure on Scriabin to work at teaching in addition to his performances and composing. The family continually struggled to make ends meet.

Scriabin abandoned his family and separated from Vera in 1904. She eventually agreed to a divorce, and he married Tatiana Fyodorovna Schlözer, with whom he had three more children. They lived in various European cities, in self-imposed exile.

Later years

Scriabin visited London in 1914. He wrote on March 24 that he planned to dine with Theosophists, hosted by a man named Weed who had been a secretary of the Society for 32 years. "At his house I will meet the woman in whose arms Blavatsky died. The dinner promises me much."

It was in London that Scriabin became ill. It began with a pimple on his upper lip under his moustache. The pimple was infected with staphylococcus blood poisoning. The illness led to his death. Tatiana and the children were left with little money and Rachmaninov, among others, came to their aid.

On April 2, 1915, Scriabin performed his final recital in St. Petersburg. He died on April 27, 1915 (or April 14 by Julian Calendar). His friend Sergei Rachmaninov went on a concert tour devoted to Scriabin's music to raise funds for his family.

Musical career

Music publisher Mitrofan Belaieff was Scriabin's mentor and guide in the music world. He supported the composer financially for many years and provided the continually importuned him to complete compositions. Scriabin usually had several musical pieces in various states of incompleteness. Belaieff could be generous, miserly, petulant, and nurturing in turns to elicit work from the often lazy and distracted composer.

In the first phase of his career, his compositions were much influenced by Chopin.

Later works were increasingly atonal and dissonant. Scriabin associated colors with musical tones, characteristic of synesthesia. He developed a color-coded circle of fifths that was influenced by Theosophical thought.

Scriabin's fifth symphony, Prometheus was completed in 1910. It was scored for a large orchestra and chorus, plus a clavier a lumieres, a keyboard instrument designed to trigger lights corresponding with certain chords.

Unfortunately, the clavier a lumieres existed only in theory when its part was written by Scriabin. The first performance of Prometheus was given without it in Moscow in 1911, and it wasn't performed with lights until the New York concert in 1915. Even then the lights were just projected on a screen which is not what Scrizbin had in mind. He had wanted powerful flashing colors to fill the concert hall and dazzling, almost blinding white light at the climactic end.

At the time of his death in 1915, he was working on his most ambitious composition - the "Mysterium. His goal was no less than the spiritual growth and even enlightenment of the audience in a performance that would take place for seven days.:

For Scriabin, it was precisely the ecstatic, Dionysian powers of music that he conjured in his symphonic works like Poem of Fire (1909 -10) and Poem of Ecstacy (1917) that were of most importance. Scriabin developed a “mystic chord” of superimposed fourths and, like Wagner, believed in the “total art work.” He saw music as a means of transforming humanity by hurrying on its spiritual evolution. His last years were spent in planning a gargantuan Mystery drama, combining music, dance, theatre, poetry, ritual, and even incense in an attempt to create a synthesis of the sensual and spiritual and inaugurate a New Age. Scriabin’s “Mystery” was to be performed in a hemispherical temple in India, inducing a supreme ecstasy that would dissolve the physical plane and start a metaphysical chain reaction eventually enveloping the world. Scriabin introduced many Theosophical ideas into his compositions and also experimented with “synesthesia,” the strange experience of “hearing colors” and “seeing music,” going so far as to devise a organ that would project different colored lights that he associated hermetically with different notes and chords.

The composer was held in high esteem during his lifetime both as a pianist and for his compositions. Today his work can be viewed as a transition from the Romantic Period into the 20th century. English composer Cyril Scott, a Theosophist, offered another perspective of Scriabin's music:

Various forms of pantheism, including Eastern religions and theosophy, propose that nature has an indwelling intelligence. Scriabin's harmonic system, especially Prometheus, therefore has an almost inhuman quality about it. Scott says that Scriabin was not under the supervision and protection of a spiritual teacher and that his mysterious death from a pimple was due to his inability to handle the strain he was under from contacting the higher intelligence of nature.

Theosophical Society connections

A young friend the Viscount de Gissac asked Scriabin to lecture and write in French, but the composer declined, claiming that his knowledge of French was insufficient. Studying Theosophical literature in French improved his proficiency, so that eventually Scriabin used French notation in his musical compositions.

In Paris in early 1905, de Gissac gave Scriabin a copy of La Clef de la Théosophie, the French translation of Helena Blavatsky’s book The Key to Theosophy (1889) which Scriabin described in a letter of April/May 1905 as a remarkable book and astonishingly close to his own thinking. From that time on, more and more of Scriabin’s circle of friends were drawn from the French and Belgian branches of the Theosophical Society, most notably the painter Jean Delville with whom Scriabin became associated when he relocated to Brussels in 1908. It has been suggested that Scriabin enrolled into formal membership of its Belgian branch at this time, and that Delville may have introduced him to the Sons of the Flames of Wisdom, a secret Promethean cult within Theosophy, but solid documentary evidence for this has yet be produced. Both Leonid Sabaneev and Boris Schloezer later recalled that a French translation of Blavatsky’s book The Secret Doctrine (1888) was always on Scriabin’s work table. It was clear that Scriabin had studied La Doctrine Secrète with great care as he had annotated and underlined in pencil what he considered to be the most important passages. Scriabin also subscribed to Le Lotus Bleu, a monthly francophone theosophical journal, during the period 1904–9 inclusive; this observation can help to account for the presence of the expressive French musical directions in Le Divin Poème, Op.43 (1904). Taken altogether, it is clear that Scriabin carefully studied a very considerable amount of theosophical literature in French during 1904–1909 while he was resident outside Russia, and this would undoubtedly have improved his capacity to express his esoteric, occultist and mystical intentions for his music.

... In addition to the two French texts by Blavatsky and the monthly copies of Le Lotus Bleu mentioned above, Scriabin also had French translations of Auguste Barth’s The Religions of India and Edwin Arnold’s The Light of Asia in his bookcase. Furthermore, from 1911 onwards in Moscow Scriabin subscribed to three theosophical journals including the francophone monthly periodical Revue Théosophique Belge.

Scriabin wrote in May, 1905 to a friend that "La Clef la Théosophie is a remarkable book. You will be astonished at how close it is to my thinking." He began to blend together Theosophical concepts with the native symbolism of the Russian Silver Age artists and writers as he wrote expressive directions for works such as the Preparatory Act of the Mysterium.

[In 1906] Scriabin's conversations were full of theosophy and the personality of Blavatsky. he wanted to return to Russia where Theosophy had even more of a vogue than abroad. Even with the exposure of Blavatsky's occultism, which appeared headlined in every newspaper of the world, Scriabin was "unshaken... He attributed the exposés to personal grievances on the part of one member or other in the Theosophical movement."

James Cousins wrote of "Sacha Scriabine of Russia who died in 1915 before he could complete his ambition of setting The Secret Doctrire to music (not literally but in spirit)."

Cover by Jean Delville for Prometheus symphony

Theosophical influence in Prometheus symphony

Prometheus, "The Poem of Fire," Opus 60, was Scriabin's fifth and last symphony, written in 1909-1910. It was scored massively, with prominent piano and chorus, and was planned to be performed with a "color organ," which would project appropriate colors on a screen synchronized with the music.

Dr. James Cousins wrote an account of how this symphony written, that he heard while visiting the composer with his wife Margaret Cousins, in the suburbs of Brussels:

When Scriabine was a very young man, already noted as a composer and pianist, he went to Brussels, and there, among the younger group of artists in various mediums, he met Jean Delville. The two were attracted to one another. Scriabine noticed something in Delville that he himself lacked: Scriabine was groping towards some kind of comprehension of life. He asked Delville, in the same room where we heard the story, what was behind his attitude to life, and how he, the questioner, could reach a similar attitude. Delville produced two large volumes and put them before Scriabine. "Read these - and then set them to music," he said. Scriabine read the books - The Secret Doctrine. He went on fire with their revelation. The result was his immortal masterpiece, "Prometheus."... While Scriabine composed the Symphony, he came excitedly at intervals into Delville's drawing-room and played for the painter the musical ideas that were crowding in on him. At the same time Delville painted his wonderful picture of Prometheus falling from the sky with the gift of fire for the earth. He showed us the great canvas in his studio. It almost came to India. [i.e. to the Theosophical Society headquarters in Adyar.]

Scriabin's biographer added:

He [Scriabin] adored the cover design of his Prometheus symphony. It showed a sexless face surrounded by cosmic symbols, nebulae of clouds, spiraling comets, and was drawn by his Belgian friend, Jean Delville (b. 1867), a bachelor, professor of Fine Arts at the Royal Academy, and President of the national Federation of Artists and Sculptors. Looking at that cover of the androgyne or hermaphrodite, Scriabin said, "In those ancient races, male and female were one… the separation into poles hadn't yet taken place...

Prometheus as a plot reeks of Theosophical symbolism and is Scriabin's only composition so heavily inflated with such paraphernalia. It exhales Brussels and the dense, mystical air of that city. Delville's cover design for the score shows a lyre ("the World," symbolized by music) rising from a lotus bloom ("the Womb," mind or Asia). In the center over the Star of David is Prometheus's face ("really the ancient symbol of Lucifer," Scriabin said, encompassing all religions). Delville, and perhaps Scriabin, had joined a secret cult within Theosophy called "Sons of the Flames of Wisdom." They worshiped Prometheus, because those fires, colors, lights were metasymbols of man's highest thoughts. Fire was Prometheus's stolen gift to man, and it lay deep within hearts...

To Scriabin, Prometheus had further symbolism beyond Theosophy's haziness. Lucifer was the "Light Bringer," according to the Christian Bible, and Satan was the "Disobedient Rebel." Sabaneeff's program notes... state that "Prometheus, Satanas, and Lucifer all meet in ancient myth. They represent the active energy of the universe, its creative principle. The fire is light, life, struggle, increase, abundance, and thought. At first, this powerful force manifests itself wearily, as languid thirsting for life. Within this lassitude then appears the primordial polarity between soul and matter. Later it does battle and conquers matter - of which it itself is a mere atom - and returns to the original quiet and tranquillity ... thus completing the cycle..."

Musical compositions

Most of Scriabin's work was for piano in the usual forms - études, preludes, nocturnes, sonatas, mazurkas, etc. His orchestral works are fewer, but among the most popular. For a complete list, see List of compositions by Alexander Scriabin. Here are some favorite works:

Orchestral works

Scriabin at his last recital. By B. Kustodiev

• Symphonic Poem in D minor. 1896.
• Piano Concerto in F-sharp minor, Op. 20. 1896.
• Symphony No. 1 in E major, Op. 26.
• Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Op. 29.
• Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 43. The Divine Poem.
• The Poem of Ecstasy, Op. 54. Fourth Symphony. 1908.
• Prometheus: The Poem of Fire, Op. 60. Fifth Symphony. 1910.

Piano works

• Étude in C-sharp minor, No. 1 from Trois morceaux, Op. 2 (1887)
• 12 Études, Op. 8. 1894.
• 8 Études, Op. 42. 1903.
• Fantaisie in B minor, Op. 28.
• Impromptu à la Mazur in C major, No. 3 from Trois morceaux, Op. 2.
• Vers la flamme, Op. 72.
• 24 Preludes, Op. 11. 1896.
• Sonata-Fantaisie in G-sharp minor. 1886.
• Sonata No. 7 "White Mass", Op. 64.

Scriabin Museum

The Alexander Scriabin Memorial Museum was established on July 17, 1922 to preserve the apartment where the composer lived for his final three years, in an old mansion on Arbat Street in Moscow. The composer's prized possessions were carefully restored, including his copy of The Secret Doctrine. The museum preserves Scriabin's library, letters, sheet music, and other items.

Additional resources

The Union Index of Theosophical Periodicals lists articles about Scriabin.

• Hull, A. Eaglefield. Scriabin. London: Kegan Paul, 1927.
• Sabbagh, Peter. The Development of Harmony in Scriabin's Works. 2003.
• Swan, Alfred J. Scriabin. London: John Lane, 1923.