Alexander Scriabin

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Alexander Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist, born in Moscow in 1872 into a noble family. His mother, a concert pianist, died when he was one year old. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Anton Arensky and Sergei Taneyev, among others. He became a respected pianist, despite his small hands, which could barely span a ninth. In 1894 he made his debut in St Petersburg with his own music. That same year he signed a contract with the publisher Mitrofan Belyayev.

Music and breakthrough

His early music follows Frédéric Chopin and sounds late Romantic. He then developed, independently of Arnold Schoenberg, a highly dissonant musical language that left traditional tonality behind without being strictly atonal. It came with a philosophy of its own, with the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk and synaesthesia. Inspired by theosophy, he devised a colour wheel based on the circle of fifths that linked sounds to colours. His works include ten published piano sonatas, the Poem of Ecstasy and the Third Symphony, which was performed in Paris in 1905. In 1904 he moved to Geneva.

Influence

Scriabin was one of the most controversial composer-pianists of the early twentieth century. Tolstoy called his music the sincere expression of a genius. He was regarded as the most important Russian Symbolist composer and inspired Karol Szymanowski, among others. Since the 1970s his music has been rediscovered more and more. He died in 1915.

Listening