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 Defining Moments: Vicissitudes in
Alexander Scriabin's Twentieth-Century Reception

Lincoln Miles Ballard

A dissertation
submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

University of Washington

2010

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School of Music
 UMI Number: 3406111

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 University of Washington

Abstract

Defining Moments: Vicissitudes in Alexander Scriabin's

Twentieth-Century Reception

Lincoln Miles Ballard

Chair of the Supervisory Committee:

Assistant Professor Stephen Rumph
Music History, School of Music

Few composers have either elicited more rapturous praise or suffered harsher

denigration than Alexander Scriabin, yet no scholar has tracked fundamental shifts in his

popularity. This dissertation explores the vicissitudes of his reception in Russia and the

West and assesses the impact of these fluctuations on his canonic status. While Scriabin

ranked as a pioneering modernist from the 1910s through the mid-1920s, over the next

four decades, his music failed to find popular favor in either the Soviet Union or the

West. The 1972 centenary of his birth renewed an appreciation for Scriabin in both

regions, but by the 1980s, popular interest dwindled while scholarly interest continued to

thrive. Ultimately, conflicting images of the composer spawned by historians, performers,

and critics have left Scriabin everything but an artist of his own age. The inconstant

reception his music has met with and the exceptions it has posed to accepted Isms has

prevented the composer from maintaining a stable position in the Western canon.

Chapter One explores how Scriabin frustrated historians' expectations for Russian

music traditions and early twentieth-century style. The composer's failure to establish a

compositional school further marginalized him in the eyes of historiographers until late in

the twentieth century, when cultural historians and analysts mutually recognized Scriabin
as a representative of Russian symbolism. Chapters Two through Five compare two eras

of critical acclaim (1915-1925 and 1960-1975) with two periods of misunderstanding or

neglect (1925-1960 and 1975-2000) in order to assess the social, political, cultural, and

aesthetic factors that shaped archetypes of the composer and dictated his canonic status.

Primary texts consist of Western and Soviet journals, newspaper articles, memoirs,

monographs, and performance or recording reviews. Vital secondary materials include

period studies, historical surveys, and scholarly essays that evaluate Scriabin's significance

in twentieth-century music. This dissertation synthesizes a wealth of newly consulted and

recently published sources on Scriabin and overturns several persistent myths about his

reception. The appendix offers translations of seven primary source articles by Soviet

authors of the 1920s-1940s.

 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page

List of Figures iii

List of Musical Examples iv
Glossary v
Introduction 1

Chapter One: Reexamining Scriabin's Reception Through the Lens of Historiography 9

The Modernist Fallout 12

Stranded Without a School 16
The Onus of Nationalism 20
Alternative Schools and Isms 26
Expressionism 26
Wagnerism 30
Impressionism 31
Symbolism 33

Chapter Two: Scriabin's Early Posthumous Reception and the Afterlife of Russian
Silver Age Aesthetics 38

Scriabin's Enduring Afterlife 42

Post-Revolutionary Torchbearers 49
Ivanov and Russian Symbolism 51
Among the Bolsheviks: Lunacharsky and Lourie 57
Inevitable Decline 69

Chapter Three: Scriabin's Eclipse Under the RAPM and Socialist Realism:
1925-1955 76

Lunacharsky's Fall and the Rise of the Proletariat 77

The Iron Grip Tightens in Conservatories and Journals: 1928-1932 86
Scriabin's Fate is Sealed: Zhdanovshchina 92
A British Excursion 98
Sabaneev and Schloezer - The Rift Widens 103

Chapter Four: A Russian Mystic in the Age of Aquarius: A Case Study in

Composer Revivals 112

De-Stalinization and Rehabilitation 118

The Socialist Agenda 122
On the Western Front: Early Scriabinists in 1920s America 126

l
 The Centenary Arrives: On the Trail oiVoeme de I'extase 138
Scriabin Meets American Psychedelica 141
The Centenary Dust Settles 149

Chapter Five: The Post-Revival Transformation: From Arch-Romantic to

Proto-Serialist 152

The Death of the Evangelical Avant-Garde 155

Analysis in Performance: Scriabin <r/^Boulez 164
Post-Revival Analysis: Agendas and Limitations 169
The Outpost of Formalism 174
At the Dawn of a New Millennium 186

Epilogue 189

Bibliography

Books and Dissertations 191

Articles in Newspapers, Books, and Journals 203

Appendix: Translations of Primary Source Materials

Klementi Korchmarev, "Skriabin v nashi dni" (1924) 226

Nikolai Malkov, "O Skriabine: k 10-letiiu konchiny" (1930) 231
Semen Adol'fovich Gres, "Skriabin" (1930) 233
Nikolai Malkov, "Nuzhen li nam Skriabin?" (1930) 236
Aleksandr Struve, "Skriabinskaia godovshchina"(1930) 238
Boris Shteinpress, "Protiv zashchitnikov dekadansa v muzyke" (1948) 240
Shteinpress, Excerpts from "Raspad garmonii v muzyke modernizma" (1948) 247
Nikolai Shebuyev', Essay from commemorative postcard (1915) 252

11
 List of Figures

Chapter Two:

Figure 2.2 - Commemorative postcard (detail of inner panel) 72

Chapter Four:

Figure 4.1 - Hologram cover of Clavier Magazine, January 1972 145

Figure 4.2 "First Flower Child" decal issued with Hilde Somer Plays Scriabin 146

Appendix:

Figure 6.1 Commemorative postcard: Inner panels 256

Figure 6.2 Commemorative postcard: Outer covers 257

ill
 List of Musical Examples

Chapter Two:

Figure 2.1 - Scriabin, Poeme de I'extase (1908), mm. 594-606 68

Chapter Three:

Figure 3.1 - Scriabin, Piano Sonata No. 6 (1911-1912), mm. 244-245 83

Chapter Five:

Figure 5.1 - Scriabin, Prelude Op. 59/2 (1910) 175-177

Figure 5.2 - Root Progressions in Scriabin's Prelude Op. 59/2 (after Baker) 179

Figure 5.3 - Dernova's "Tritone Link" 182

Figure 5.4 - Root Progressions in Scriabin's Prelude Op. 59/2 (after Guenther) 184

Appendix:

Excerpts from Shebuyev's essay on Poeme de I'extase 254-255

IV
 Glossary:
On Russian Dates and Transliteration

Scholars of Russian history must contend with two different dating systems long in

existence. The "Old Style" Julian calendar, founded in 46 B.C.E. by Julius Caesar,

remained active until February 1918. The Russian Orthodox Church continues to use this

dating system. In 1582 A.D., Pope Gregory I established the "New Style" (Gregorian)

calendar, which is most commonly employed in Western surveys of Russian history.

Lenin adopted the Gregorian calendar after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution to align Russia

more closely with the West. This system added ten days to the previous calendar; by

1871, the Julian calendar fell twelve days behind the "New Style," by March 1, 1900 it fell

thirteen days behind, and by Feb 28, 2100 it will lag by fourteen days. According to the

Julian calendar, Scriabin was born on 25 December 1871 and died on 14 April 1915; with

the Gregorian system, his dates are 6 January 1872 27 April 1915. Further references to

dates in this dissertation utilize the Gregorian calendar.

Regarding transliteration, I have utilized the American Library Association Library

of Congress's Romani^ation Tables: Transliteration Schemes for Non-Roman Scripts, ed. Randall

Barry (Washington: Library of Congress, 1991). This system preserves a close phonetic

correspondence between the original Cyrillic and transliterated English, but in certain

cases common usage has prompted the acceptance of anglicized spellings of names (e.g.,

Scriabin instead of Skryabin or Tchaikovsky rather than Chaikovsky). Names may appear

in multiple spellings on the same page, however, in order to transliterate or quote material

accurately from the original texts. In my rendering of all foreign names and abbreviations,

consistency remains the guiding principle.

v
 Acknowledgements

Among journalists an old adage cautions, "you're only as good as your sources."

When sources conflict, however, one consults their mentors and colleagues. Sincere

gratitude is extended to those whose readership and feedback immeasurably enriched

this manuscript. My advisor, Professor of Music History Stephen Rumph, honed my

ideas and offered unwavering support for my research. His career serves as an enviable

model for any aspiring scholar to emulate. Especially beneficial to my Russian research

was consultation with James West, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, whose

expertise aided my understanding of Russian politics, language, and culture. George

Bozarth, Professor of Music History, also served on my reading committee and offered

valuable criticism on matters of style and content. Appreciation further extends to

Professor of French and Italian Studies Albert J. Sbragia for serving as my Graduate

School Representative. Among non-committee readers who offered insightful comments

on earlier drafts, thanks especially extends to Professor of Music History Larry Starr,

Ryan Banagale, Rachel Mundy, David Paul, and Emily Richmond Pollock.

Ample teaching opportunities at the University of Washington helped sharpen

my research skills and served as a constant reminder of the purpose of the dissertation

to earn the degree that would allow me to teach at the collegiate level. Attending the

University of Washington led to encounters with Slavic Languages and Literature faculty

Claudia Jensen and Michael Biggins, who directed me to key sources in the university

library's extensive Russian holdings. The Interlibrary Loan staff at the University of

Washington procured many rare publications and provided outstanding customer service

on dozens of transactions. Outside of Seattle, Edward Kasinec at the New York Public
vi
Library for the Performing Arts and Sara Valez at the Rodgers and Hammerstein

Archives of Recorded Sound scoured their archives for tidbits on Scriabin, while Simon

Morrison at Princeton University and Levon Hakopian from the Moscow Institute of

the Arts and University of California, Berkeley, supplied information about Nikolai

Shebuyev', a little-known critic and contemporary of Scriabin. Viktor Witwicki assisted

me with translations of seven Soviet-era articles that illuminate the darkest hours of

Scriabin's Soviet reception, and Alsu Shakirova verified that my transliterations

throughout the dissertation faithfully adhered to the system prescribed by the Library of

Congress. Translations of these seven articles, along with a translation of Shebuyev's

essay from a commemorative postcard circa 1915, appear in the appendix.

Finally, my friends and family have been steadfast in their support throughout

my graduate studies, and among them, Lisa Tsai proved especially encouraging during

the writing of this dissertation. Thanks again to everyone else who supported me

throughout this process in ways both great and small.

vil
 1

INTRODUCTION

Alexander Scriabin's reception ranks among the most dazzling and the most

deplorable of twentieth-century composers. Although Scriabin was regarded as the

preeminent Russian composer from the 1910s to the mid-1920s, his music fell into

disrepute from the 1930s through the 1960s due to restrictive arts policies in the Soviet

Union and an anti-romantic sentiment in the West. By the early 1970s, however,

centenary celebrations of his birth restored his celebrity in both regions. Yet only a few

years later, even that fame abated. Scriabin's mercurial reception has prevented his

works from securing a place in the Western canon, and while critics and journalists have

speculated on the vicissitudes of his reception, few scholars have explored the topic.

This study provides partial reparation for that lacuna by tracking the sanctions for and

backlashes against his music through the century as revealed in newly translated primary

sources, scholarly studies, and other materials that have only recentiy come to light.

Reception history is a burgeoning field in musicology. While the 1980 edition of

The New Grope Dictionary of Music and Musicians lacked any reference to the term, Jim

Samson contributed an entry for the 2001 version. Musicologists may be increasingly

embracing reception studies, but literary scholars boast greater experience in the field.1

Among them, Hans Robert Jauss has been influential. His writings distinguish two key

concepts that are indispensable for reception historians: Wirkung (effect) and Reception

Informative introductions to reception studies include Dahlhaus' "Problems in Reception History" in

Foundations of Music History, trans. J. B. Robinson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Mark
Everist, "Reception Theories, Canonic Discourses, and Musical Value," in Rethinking Music (Oxford:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1999), 378-402; and Samson's subject entry in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians. For literary examples, see Susan R. Suleiman, "Introduction: Varieties of Audience-Oriented
Criticism," in The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press,
1980), 3-45; and Robert Holub, Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction (London: Metheun, 1984), 53-146.
 2

(reception). Although Jauss devised these terms for literary scholarship, they prove

equally relevant for musicological discourse. Wirkung concerns the historical text and

the presentation of its constituent elements. A reception history of an opera, for

instance, might examine the language (s) in which its libretto was presented, staging and

scoring issues, and other interpretive decisions. Reception, on the other hand, deals with

reader response, or as Jauss put it, the "horizon of expectations."2 This approach

considers a work's performance history and popular and scholarly assessments of the

cultural artifact. Agencies of reception, then, play pivotal roles in shaping value judge-

ments of music, and these collective assessments dictate a composer's canonic status.

This dissertation focuses on Reception more than Wirkung for several reasons.

Due to the lack of research on Scriabin's reception, it establishes overdue groundwork

on the topic. Concentrating on Reception also maintains manageability in terms of the

project's scope. Admittedly, downplaying the role of Wirkung minimizes an element

that such scholars as Leon Botstein have argued is the sina qua non for reception studies,

namely reference to the scores.3 While considering the musical text from which critical

opinions are formed is important, the task of consulting the scores remains in the hands

of the reader. Many factors coalesced to shape Scriabin's reception, and these can vary

in persuasion and impact depending on the era, region, or reception agent. Tracking

the archetypes formulated throughout the century, though, lends more insights into his

posthumous reception than a study of Wirkung might reveal. In short, reconstructing

See Timothy Bahti's translation of Jauss' speech in Toward an Aesthetic of"Reception,Theory and History
of Literature 2 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 3-45.
"Music in Reception: The Perils of Method in Reception History," MusicalQuarterly 89/1 (June 2006):
1-16. Botstein bemoaned the tendency to "bypass musical texts or fail to use them except to confirm
generalizations . . . reception history must not be limited to published accounts of performances" (p. 5).
 3

the "horizon of expectations" from a particular historical era elucidates the aesthetic

codes and values that characterized the defining moments of Scriabin's reception.

Sources consulted for this study cover a wide range of materials, from scholarly

essays to journalistic reports in the popular press. Daniel Bosshard's recently published

thematic catalogue on Scriabin served as an invaluable resource in locating many rare

documents; its extensive bibliography led to a wealth of sources not cited on Internet

databases.4 Other important texts included biographies that feature concert reviews or

critical opinions of Scriabin's music from throughout the century, historical surveys of

twentieth-century music, peer-reviewed and popular journals, monographs, and

dissertations that assess Scriabin's position in twentieth-century music.

The appendix offers translations of six articles, plus excerpts from a seventh, that

provide first-hand accounts of the context and parlance of Soviet criticism. These

essays appeared in Russian arts journals from the 1920s to the 1940s, many of which

survive only on microfilm due to their limited original circulation and duration.

Chapter Three addresses the charges levelled at Scriabin by the authors of those Russian

texts, and my translations allow the reader to consult the primary sources for further

context. Ideally, future historians can gain their own insights from these rare

documents. The final translation is an essay by Moscow critic Nikolai Shebuyev' that

was printed on a commemorative postcard (ca. 1915) discussed in Chapter Two; the

essay and the illustrations testify to the divided opinions of Scriabin upon his death.

Bosshard, Thematisch-chronologisches Versgichnis der musickalischen Werke von Alexander Skrjabin (Mainz:
Ediziun Trais Giats Ardez, 2003). Eagerly anticipated is Ellon Carpenter's Alexander Scriabin: A Guide to
Research (New York: Routledge), part of the Garland sourcebook series on twentieth-century composers.
The advertised publication date of 2001 is incorrect; as of December 2009 the text has not yet appeared
in print.
 4

This dissertation considers the disparate images of Scriabin that arose throughout

the twentieth century from two perspectives: how historians eager to situate Scriabin

into conventional Isms have regarded his resistance to classification as evidence of his

historical marginality, but also how shifting archetypes of the composer lend insights

into the aesthetic codes and values of select historical eras. While the former approach

explores Scriabin's canonic exclusion with an eye toward historiography (Chapter One),

the latter highlights eras when a majority held uniform opinions of his music, from

adulation to condemnation (Chapters Two through Five). This methodology deviates

from earlier reception history studies, which gauged the accuracy of reader responses

based on the assumed standards of a particular genre or composer.5

Chapter One investigates modernism's role in Scriabin's decline during the 1920s

as well as the historiographical assumptions that led to his exclusion from the canon.

Encyclopaedia entries routinely classify the composer as a rogue member of the Russian

Nationalist school, but these assessments include such protracted apologia as to

compromise their utility. Disinterested in folk songs and nationalistic anthems, Scriabin

thwarted historians' expectations of Russian style, prompting them to seek other

categories in which to situate his output. While historians sought to contextualize his

activities in relation to other early twentieth-century composers, their eagerness to

subsume his music into an established Ism led to several problematic categorizations

that blurred the composer's identity and diminished his historical value. Scriabin's

Dahlhaus, Foundations of Music History, 154. Friedhelm Krummacher criticized Dahlhaus's views on
reception as relativist; their positions were debated in Krummacher, "Rezeptiongeschicte als Problem der
Musikwissenschaft," Jahrbuch des Staatlichen Instituts fur Muskkforschung Preufiischer Ku/turbesit^ (1979/1980),
154-170; and Dahlhaus, "Zwischen Relativismus und Dogmatismus: Anmerkungen zur Rezeption-
geschicte," jahrbuch des Staatlichen Institutsfur Muskkforscbung Preuftischer Kulturbesits^ (1981/1982), 139-142.
 5

stylistic heterodoxy prompted many critics and historians to disassociate him from

Russian traditions and the Western canon. Recent studies by such scholars as Richard

Taruskin and Simon Morrison, however, have catalysed Scriabin's role as an exponent

of Russian symbolism, seeming to satisfy troublesome taxonomic issues by situating the

composer in a less common Ism.6

Chapter Two shatters the longstanding myth that Scriabin's music was ignored

after his death in 1915 by adducing his enduring popularity into the 1920s. Such star

performers as Rachmaninoff and Koussevitzky championed Scriabin's music at home

and abroad into the post-Revolutionary era. Russian symbolist poet Viacheslav Ivanov

also tirelessly promoted Scriabin's posthumous legacy, translating Silver Age ideals for

the masses and sustaining the composer's presence in the public eye. Scriabin further

benefited from official support. After the October Revolution, Lenin's Commissariat

for Public Education, Anatoli Lunacharsky, frequendy programmed and lectured on

Scriabin's music for Bolshevik festivals, emphasizing parallels between the composer's

quest to enlighten the masses and Marxist-Leninist ideals. Arthur Lourie, head of the

State music division (MUZO), also promoted the composer's music, but his personal

agenda contrasted with the social obligations sensed by Lunacharsky and Ivanov. By

1923, though, Scriabin's popularity dwindled simultaneously in the USSR and the West.

Chapter Three explores Scriabin's eclipse after Lunacharsky lost political clout

in the mid-1920s. Coupled with the rise of Socialist Realism and such proletarian music

organizations as the RAPM, an invidious turn of opinion set in against Scriabin. Critics

Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); and Morrison,
Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
 6

and the public alike condemned Scriabin as a decadent representative of the bourgeoisie

and subversive to the proletarian cause. The apogee of this development came with the

Zhdanovshchina inquests of 1948, which enacted an ideological crackdown against

formalism (which was defined as the elevating of technique over content). Proletarian

critic Boris Shteinpress singled out Scriabin's music as a negative influence, but State

officials surprisingly exonerated the composer as a luminary of Russia's past. Scriabin's

reputation, though, suffered greater damage still. Conflicting images of the composer

propagated by two critics who knew him in life, Leonid Sabaneev and Boris Schloezer,

drove the wedge between rival factions even deeper. While Sabaneev toed the Party

line in stressing the delusional and erotic aspects of Scriabin's creativity, Schloezer

sanctified the spiritual mysticism of Scriabin's late music. A similar reaction against

Scriabin's self-indulgence prevailed in England and America, revealing striking parallels

between Soviet and Western views of Scriabin, notwithstanding the political persecution

that his music endured in the USSR.

After over four decades of neglect, the pendulum swung back in Scriabin's favor.

Chapter Four examines the 1972 centenary revival of Scriabin's birth, which ushered in

a resurgence of interest equal to the popularity the composer enjoyed during his

lifetime. Ethnomusicologist Tamara Livingston has proposed a theory for

conceptualizing music revivals by arguing that revivalists recover an idealized past in

hopes that the values and beliefs of that era can benefit the contemporary age.

Scriabin's reclamation produced profoundly different results in the Soviet Union than in

America. While Soviet officials rehabilitated the composer as a proto-socialist in order

to project a modern cultural sensibility, grass-roots revivalists in the West depicted

 7

Scriabin as a proto-hippie and emphasized his relevance for the American counter-

culture. A fascinating parallel to this renewed appreciation for the spiritual aspects of

Scriabin's music is provided by such early enthusiasts as Djane Herz and Katherine

Ruth Heyman, who established salons in Chicago and New York in the 1920s that

served as key hubs for Scriabin enthusiasts.

Chapter Five explores the post-revival period (1975-2000), when Scriabin's

popularity diminished even as academic interest in his music flourished. Scholars,

however, treated history and analysis as discrete disciplines with little to no overlap,

fostering blinkered views of the composer's output. While most historians regarded

Scriabin as a romantic, formalist analysts such as James Baker argued for the

composer's role as an early atonalist. Baker and other theorists sought to reveal the

composer's proto-serialist methods by applying Schenkerian analysis or Fortean pitch-

class theory to his late music, and by the 1990s, this analytical view of Scriabin as a

progressive dictated performance practice. Such modernist performers as Pierre

Boulez and Robert Taub delivered sober readings of Scriabin's works that projected the

same calculated reserve attributed to them by formalist analysts. Conflicting readings of

Scriabin's Prelude Op. 59, no. 2 by two post-revival analysts will demonstrate both sides

of the debate over whether or not Scriabin's late works abandoned tonality.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, scholars have established Scriabin's role

as a paragon of Russian Silver Age ideals. Interdisciplinary approaches adopted by

Richard Taruskin, Simon Morrison, and Susanna Garcia have lent new insights into the

composer's creative ideology and musical language, bridging the gap between history

and analysis. Surely a study of one of the most pluralistic composers of the twentieth
 8

century demands such integrated methods. Scriabin's case presents the reception

historian with a host of factors to consider when tracking its trajectory, including

Western and Soviet assumptions of Russian style, periodization issues, and extramusical

factors such as reactions to his philosophical ideas and shifts in political power.

Ultimately, gaining a better appreciation for how this multitude of factors shaped the

composer's reception throughout the twentieth century allows us to understand better

what Scriabin's music means to us today.

 9

CHAPTER ONE:

Reexamining Scriabin's Reception Through the Lens of Historiography

Few stranger cases exist in music history than that of Alexander Scriabin. Although

his music enjoyed international acclaim at home and abroad at several points during the

twentieth century, Scriabin has struggled to maintain a secure identity due to the

competing agendas of critics, theorists, performers, and historians, who have tailored

him to suit the values of their own ages. Archetypes of the composer have ranged from

a pioneering avant-gardist in the 1910s to a decadent romantic in the 1930s, and to a

proto-serialist in the 1980s, leaving Scriabin everything but an artist of his own age.

Scriabin's constant reinvention throughout the twentieth century ultimately fragmented

his image and compromised his standing in the Western canon.

Although Scriabin's contemporaries jealously imitated his music during his lifetime,

this admiration turned to active resentment during the 1930-1950s, which eventually

gave way to a revival of his music during the early 1970s. Indeed, nearly every mention

of his reception notes that no composer has elicited more rapturous praise in life nor

suffered harsher denigration after death.1 Granted, musical styles fall in and out of

fashion, but what other factors might account for Scriabin's turbulent reception? Several

extramusical issues polarized listeners throughout the twentieth century, including the

degree to which his art either conformed to or rebelled against the aesthetic and artistic

norms of his era; his controversial philosophical convictions; the problem of assigning

him to a compositional school or Ism; and Scriabin's allegiance to his Russian origins.

Jonathan Powell's 2001 Grope entry introduced him as "One of die most extraordinary figures musical
culture has ever witnessed, Skryabin has remained for a century a figure of currish idolatry, reactionary yet
modernist disapproval, analytical fascination and, finally, aesthetic re-evaluation and renewal." See Powell,
"Skryabin, Aleksandr Nikolayevich," Grove Musk Online. Oxford Musk Online (accessed 14 September 2009).
 10

These issues particularly hindered Scriabin's popularity after the onset of

modernism. The objectivity and rationality preached by modernists fostered a concern

with order and coherence in periodization. Grouping together composers of a particular

sub-period based on their stylistic affinities created a convenient historical narrative, but

this convenience sacrificed issues of cultural context and interpretive criticism.

Modernist critiques hardened into orthodoxy that beguiled later scholars such as James

Baker, who saw Scriabin during the mid-1980s as "an eccentric visionary whose mission

led him so far afield that he lost touch with conventional musical structures as they were

evolving."2 Much as Baker and his cohorts depicted Scriabin as a rogue figure, the

composer's regard for art as a vehicle for transcendence matched that of the symbolist

poets of his generation. Although these esoteric ideas attracted younger admirers,

modernists and conservatives recoiled from Scriabin's philosophy. By the 1930s, most

critics and historians dismissed his music along with his philosophy, even as a handful of

fervent supporters continued to support the composer.3

Many historians interpret modernism as a stylistic shift that precipitated Scriabin's

decline, but that explanation proves incomplete. A host of socio-cultural, economic, and

political issues also had an impact on his reception, but as these influences belong to

their respective eras and locales, they merit their own discussions in Chapters Two

through Five. Equally crucial to the current academic and critical opinion of Scriabin,

James Baker, The Music of Alexander Scriabin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), vii.
Among the most dedicated Scriabinists were Leonid Sabaneev (1881-1968) and Boris Schloezer (1881-
1969), who remained in daily contact with the composer during his final years. Their writings include
numerous articles as well as Sabaneev's Vospominaniia o Skriabine [Reminiscences of Scriabin] (Moscow:
MuzykaPnii gosudarstvennovo; Second ed., State Music Publishers, 1996); and Schloezer's A. Skriabin:
Uchnost', Misteriia (Berlin: Grani, 1923); reprinted as Scriabin: Artist and Mystic, trans. Nicholas Slonimsky
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
 11

though, are the entrenched biases of twentieth-century historiography, specifically

toward the hegemonic status of Austro-German music. Historians have encouraged a

troublesome tendency to pigeonhole the music of other nations into the default category

of "nationalism." Scriabin's music has not fit easily with nationalism or any other bona

fide stylistic category, prompting his exclusion from the canon. Like Tchaikovsky,

another composer who defies the nationalist paradigm, Scriabin's stylistic heterodoxy

confounded modernist critics eager to establish national lineages in music history.

Critics' consternation over the exceptions that Scriabin posed to the Russian nationalist

model led them to cast about for other categories with equally unsatisfactory results.

This chapter explores the historiographical biases that have marooned Scriabin in

the eyes of twentieth-century critics and historians. I will assess how modernist dogma

depicted the composer as a non-conformist, and explore historians' misguided attempts

to situate his music into a traditional Ism. As we shall see, these issues of stylistic

taxonomy have played a pivotal role in his reception. Recendy proposed alternatives,

however, are expanding historians' interpretive frameworks to make room for such

figures as Scriabin. His case does much to expose the underlying assumptions of the

historiographical enterprise, suggesting that his historical significance lies in the very

singularity that many critics and historians have found so difficult to accept and

assimilate.
 12

T h e Modernist Fallout

Received wisdom holds that die onset of modernism hastened Scriabin's decline

in the 1920s, as his music came to be associated with the outdated romantic style. In

1936, critic Paul Rosenfeld articulated this popular view of Scriabin's fall from grace:

T h e complete eclipse Scriabin's fame has suffered these latter years among
'advanced musicians' . . . by no means honorable to the musical profession or
advantageous t o musical culture, was largely the snobbish concomitant of one of
those changes in musical fashion with which every student of musical history is
familiar. 4

While historians have suggested different points for the onset of modernism, most

would concede its arrival by 1920. In 1921, however, British critic Arthur Eaglefield-

Hull cited as c o m m o n knowledge Scriabin's reputation as a leading modernist, notwith-

standing the relative nature of the term. 5 Eaglefield-Hull and other enthusiasts may have

hailed Scriabin as a progressive, but as modernism solidified into a movement, its

adherents increasingly rejected the composer's style as anathema to the new aesthetic. In

1921 composer Arthur Bliss (1891-1975) grumbled, "Give me such works as Le Sacre du

Printemps, L'Hzstoire du soldat, the Sea Symphony and Savitri . . . you can have all your Strauss

Domestic and A-lpine Symphonies, your Skryabin poems of earth, fire, and water, your

Schreker, your Bruckner and your Mahler." 6 Writing in 1924 from Paris, Scriabin's

brother-in-law Boris de Schloezer lamented that Scriabin's music found " n o alliance with

the spirit of post-war E u r o p e where one perceives the need of calm, stability, a desire for

Rosenfeld, Discoveries of a Music Critic (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1936), 159.
Eaglefield-Hull explained, "Few will deny to Alexander Scriabin the designation of Modernist: many
may bestow on him die somewhat dubious appellation of Ultra-Modernist. It matters not. Modernity is
no new thing. In its best sense, it is nothing more than 'present-dayism,' and viewed in this light, it is as
old as the hills." A. Great Russian Tone Poet: Scriabin (London: Kegan Paul, 1921), 262.
Bliss, quoted in Gerald Abraham, A. Hundred Years ofMusic (London: Duckworth, 1974), 271-272; and
Schloezer, "Scriabine," Modern Music: The league of Composers'Review 1/3 (November 1924): 15.
 13

order, a fear of experiments in every field, in politics, literature, poetry, and music."

How did Scriabin make the transition from pioneering modernist to outdated

romantic? Certainly shifting tastes, political restructuring, and other events conditioned

his reception. Modernist critiques also had an insidious effect on Scriabin's reputation

from the 1920s through the end of the century. In musical terms, modernists regarded

him as stylistically unorthodox and thus of negligible significance, a point to which we

will return in the next section. Scriabin's extramusical interests, however, also riled

modernists, who concluded that if his philosophical reasoning was flawed, then his

music must suffer from the same faults. In 1926, composer Alexander Brent-Smith

blundy stated, "it is because he offered muddle-headed reasoning seriously that the value

of his later work is being suspected." Scriabin's case became a cautionary tale of a

composer whose dilettantish theorizing diminished his artistic value. "The awful

warning from his failure," Brent-Smith admonished, "should be seriously considered by

all who are interested in the future of music."7

Modernism's baleful influence also led critics of the 1930s and 1940s to dismiss

Scriabin as a symbol of romantic excess. Several prominent figures divulged their

opinions of Scriabin in monographs. Franco-Greco musicologist Michel Calvocoressi

loathed the composer's "music of colossal self-aggrandizement," while the "opulent

vulgarity" of Poeme de I'extase struck composer Constant Lambert as "angry waves beating

vainly at the breakwater of our intelligence."8 In 1941, musicologist Paul Henry Lang

7
Brent-Smith, "Some Reflections on the Work of Scriabin [Pt. I\" MusicalTimes 67/1001 (1 July 1926):
593. The second part of his article appeared in The Musical Times 6771002 (1 August 1926): 692-694.
Calvocoressi, Musk and Ballet: Recollections of M. D. Calvocoressi (London: Faber and Faber, 1934), 246,
248; and Lambert, Music Hoi A Study ofMusic in Decline (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934), 309.
 14

echoed the modernist bromides, remarking that Scriabin's "whole art, nay, whole life,

was a mere experiment, a supernatural dream, and whose mind, possessed by demonic

forces, penetrated deeper and deeper into the mire of mystical speculations, halluci-

nations, and dementia." 9 In a mid-century Musical Times article, English critic Rollo

Myers pinpointed issues of canonic status in his observation that, "Scriabin's hysterical,

almost maniacal outpourings offend our twentieth-century canons of taste, and we are

right to question the propriety of trying, as he did, to mix music and metaphysics."10

After 1950, modernists' spite for Scriabin's philosophy triggered a dialectical

rupture between cultural studies and analyses of his music. Cultural historians depicted

Scriabin as an exemplar of the Silver Age by citing affinities between his artistic code and

that of the Russian symbolist poets. Scholars, though, seldom linked their observations

with musical examples, thus producing filtered accounts not unlike formalist reductions

that focus on a work's harmonic organization to the exclusion of other relevant stylistic

elements. While historians explored Scriabin's cultural background, analysts dissected

his music on entirely different terms. By the late 1970s, formalist analysis, with its

alluring pretense to objectivity, became the ascendant approach to Scriabin's late music.

Schenkerian analysts and Fortean theorists seemed poised to penetrate Scriabin's hazy

philosophy and decipher his notoriously inscrutable harmonic code. Analysts, though,

9
Lang, Music in Western Civilisation (New York: W. W. Norton, 1941), 1025.
10
Myers, "Scriabin: A Reassessment," The Musical Times 98/1367 (January 1957): 35. Critic and
historian of twentieth-century music, Myers (1892-1985) worked for the Times and Daily Telegraph from
1920-1934. Later he was the editor of The Chesterian (1947), and he authored books on Satie and Debussy.
Robert Morgan argued that Scriabin's reliance on altered dominants sacrificed structural integrity for
surface ornamentation. See "Secret Languages: The Roots of Musical Modernism," Critical Inquiry 10
(1984): 454. Recent studies by Richard Taruskin and Susanna Garcia have demonstrated die benefit of
interdisciplinary and hermeneutic approaches to Scriabin's works. See Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 308-359; and Susanna Garcia, "Scriabin's Symbolist Plot
Archetype in the Late Piano Sonatas," Nineteenth-Century Music 23/3 (Spring 2000): 273-300.
 15

struggled with the exceptions that the composer's music posed to a proper Ursatz

model. Resistance of Scriabin's music to this kind of analysis demonstrates one of the

common criticisms of these techniques their basis in Austro-German repertoire.12

Modernists' contempt for Scriabin's philosophy led them to discount his historical

value after mid-century. In a 1960 essay, Joseph Kerman drolly observed, "Scriabin,

who would have added Indian mysticism, color, and scent to the already bulging Gesamt

of Wagnerian orthodoxy, came to nothing."13 Amidst Scriabin's 1972 centenary, Hugh

Macdonald insisted that Scriabin's "quasi-religious convictions . . . must be eliminated

from any possibility of serious consideration, now or even in the future," for "it would

be a pity if appreciation of the music required us to follow Scriabin into his world of

cosmic 'hocus pocus.'" 14 Even Carl Dahlhaus, whose pluralistic approach typically lent

due weight to cultural issues, failed to consider Scriabin's cultural influences and back-

ground and in his critique of Scriabin's "hackneyed sonorities" and modification of

"banal" triads in the Seventh and Ninth Piano Sonatas.15 Such resistance to or disregard

for Scriabin's philosophical convictions indicates how deeply entrenched modernist

critiques remained throughout the twentieth century. The next section returns to the

issue of Scriabin's stylistic heterodoxy, which further hindered his canonic status.

See Charles Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (New York: Norton, 1971), 33-36; Rosen,
"Art Has its Reasons," New York Review of Books (17 June 1971), 32-38; Eugene Narmour, Beyond Schenkerism:
The Needfor Alternatives in Music Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977); and Roger Sessions,
"Heinrich Schenker's Contribution (1935)" in Roger Sessions on Music: Collected Essays (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1977).
Kerman, "Wagner: Thoughts in Season," The Hudson Review 13/3 (Autumn 1960): 338.
Macdonald, '"Words and Music by A. Skryabin,'" Musical Times 113 (1972): 22; and Skryabin (London:
Oxford University Press, 1978), 14, 10.
Dahlhaus, "Structure and Expression in die Music of Scriabin," in Schoenberg and the New Music, trans.
Derrick Puffet and Alfred Clayton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 201-209. Dahlhaus also
articulated this view in Nineteenth-Century Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).
 16

Stranded Without a School

Besides Scriabin's philosophical preoccupations, his other fault in the eyes of

modernists was his failure to establish a compositional school or system. Modernists

preached an idea of progress enacted by "great" composers whose pupils carry on their

traditions, a mold to which Scriabin did not conform. Descriptive designations of

artistic periods became established concepts only during the late nineteenth century, and

the pluralism of twentieth-century music only heightened historians' concerns with style

taxonomy.16 As a so-called transitional composer wedged between romanticism and

modernism, Scriabin's ambiguous historical position caused even greater damage.

Ironically, Scriabin's far-reaching influence during his lifetime led Russian critics

to attribute to him a school of his own. Viacheslav Karatygin observed in 1914:

Of all the composers mentioned, not one has so far established a school.
Skriabin represents a relative exception. Over the last few years a fairly
significant number of beginning composers have emerged in Petrograd and
Moscow who try to compose in imitation of Skriabin. Khvoshchinsky (Second
Symphony), Dobroveyn (piano pieces), L. Sabaneev, and the Kreyn brothers
have to be put in that category . . . The compositions of all the other Skriabinists
make a pretty sad impression, and they do not get beyond purely superficial
imitation of Skriabin's methods.17

Four years later, Asaf yev concurred that these disciples never surpassed mere imitation

because Scriabin's singularity "does not even allow a school."18 Indeed, this represented

the majority opinion throughout the twentieth century. Although Scriabin attracted a

See Glenn Stanley, "Historiography," in Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online,
http://www.oxfordmusicoiiHne.com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/516
74 (accessed 3 September 2009).
17
Karatygin, in Campbell, Russians on Russian Music, 1880-1917: An Anthology (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003), 232.
18
Asafyev, "Pathways Into the Future" (1918), reprinted in Campbell, Russians on Russian Music, 250.
Asafyev further remarked, "In any case, Skriabin's flight towards the unknown and his distinctive
objectivism [!] undoubtedly seems more valuable for Russian music and more life-creating than die cold,
passionless objectivism sundered from life of Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov . . ."
 17

cadre of followers that might warrant the label of a compositional school, but critics

argued that the inability of those composers to develop Scriabin's style nullified his

historical significance. But what is the basis for this epistemological assumption?

Taking a cue from late nineteenth-century repertoire, modernists granted historio-

graphical precedence to Austro-German (followed by Italian and French) music, thereby

preserving a closed system of masterworks. The bias of this approach was not lost on

critics. In a landmark review of Robert Morgan's survey of twentieth-century music,

Christopher Williams coined the term "techno-essentialism" to describe how historio-

graphers have valued composers more for their "accrual of technical innovations along a

smooth, linear course" than for their cultivation of personalized styles.19 Williams

decried the prioritizing of "precompositional method over compositional result,

technical progress over stylistic evolution, absolute music over dramatic or multimedia

works, and pitch structure over other dimensions of musical texture." In formalist

analyses, he observed, "proof of a unified set of principles is accorded higher value than

the illumination of artistic subtleties in individual works." Consider the preface to

Morgan's survey, which conceded that figures earn recognition for their "contributions

to particular stylistic directions and technical innovations rather than as individual

personalities."20 Composers who fail to conform to this model are either appropriated

into an Ism or marginalized as insignificant (in Scriabin's case, both occurred). Williams

offered a pointed assessment of this troublesome historiographical trend:

Williams, "Of Canons and Context: Toward a Historiography of Twentieth-Century Music,"

Repercussions 2/1 (Spring 1993): 42.
Morgan, Twentieth-Century Music: A History of Musical Style in Modern'Europeand America (New York:
Norton, 1991), xv.
 18

The main appeal of a seemingly objective concept of progress lies in its reduction
of the particularized concerns of context and style (both of which can diminish
the elegance of comprehensive, essentializing models) to irrelevant subjective
surface phenomena. [. . .] To composers like Milton Babbitt, George Perle,
Charles Wuorinen, and their colleagues, the twelve-tone techniques of
Schoenberg and especially Webern, the rhythmic experiments of Stravinsky, and
the symmetrical structures of Bartok all seemed to support their ideal of an anti-
subjective music, in which all dimensions of a musical utterance could be
subsumed into a rigorous precompositional system.21

By these lights, Scriabin should have been lauded for his experimentation with octatonic

scales and proto-serialist techniques, at least according to formalist analyses of his late

works. Critics argued, however, that the composer's harmonic language, identifiable to a

fault, had exhausted the limits of that style, leaving no future to develop.

It seems as if the Great Man theory advanced during the nineteenth century

expanded to include Great Groups. By basing canonic standards on techno-essentialist

criteria, modernists instituted a self-fulfilling prophecy that led critics and historians to

derogate composers who fail to conform to the mold as "experimental" or

"transitional." Critic Gerald Abraham insisted that, "all language and all modification of

[progress] is produced by the mass of cultivated people, not by individuals." While

Scriabin chose a solitary path, he opined, "the rest of the musical world kept to the high

road, or at least, wandered well within sight of it, contributing to the mass advance."23

The composer's failure to establish a bona fide school led Abraham to dismiss Scriabin's

harmonic achievements as "a mere side-track in the history of music as a whole."

21
Williams, "Of Canons and Context," 38, 41.
In 1967 Dahlhaus observed, "European music history since the Renaissance has advanced under the
banner of . . . 'Greatness in Music.'" A better approach, he suggested, was to treat individual pieces "as
fragments of social reality, as a participating element within a social process or state." Foundations of Music
History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 8-12.
23
Abraham, A Hundred Years of Music (Chicago: Aldine, 1964), 225; and idem, This Modern Stuff. A Fairly
T/aine and Easie'Introduction to Contemporary Music (London: D. Archer, 1933), 46.
 19

Scriabin's reputation has suffered from depictions of him as a transitionalist as

well as an artistic recluse. Indeed, images of the composer as a dissident of the Russian

Nationalist school have persisted since his lifetime. Consider this 1915 estimate:

A strange man was Scriabin! No composer of our day held a more isolated
position. In his later works he went solely his own way and the strangest part of
his career as a composer is the fact that he was not in the slightest degree
influenced by the Russian composers who preceded him, Glinka, Rimsky-
Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Borodin, or Tschaikowsky. [. . .] He stood on an island,
as it were, quite alone. He threw all classical traditions to the wind, and his
harmonic system in his later symphonic works had nothing at all to do with the
great symphonic epoch that ended with Brahms.24

Market-driven publications later in the century especially depicted the composer as a

solitary figure. In the liner notes to a recent recording of Scriabin's Divine Poem and Poem

of Ecstasy, London critic Ates Orga observed, "Scriabin, a contemporary of Rasputin, was

a loner, emotionally, temperamentally and stylistically removed from the last Tsarists to

whose number he belonged historically."25

Dismissing Scriabin's significance entirely, however, became more problematic

after the composer's 1972 centenary, which prompted a critical revaluation of his

prominence in early twentieth-century music. Critics and historians felt compelled to

assign Scriabin a place among existing stylistic categories, despite his stylistic heterodoxy.

As we shall see, classifying his output within the circumscribed standards of techno-

essentialism would prompt more questions than answers.

Anonymous, "What Germany Thinks of the Late Scriabine," Musical Courier (9 June 1915): 32.
Orga, in Scriabin, Symphony No. 3/Poem of Ecstasy, Moscow Symphony Orchestra, Igor Golovschin,
conductor (Naxos 8.553582,1997).
 20

The Onus of Nationalism

The same critical assumptions that led historians to exclude Scriabin from comp-

ositional schools have also shaped traditional notions regarding nationalism. Composers

whose works are considered outside the mainstream are assumed to draw inspiration

from either religion or folklore, and historians have routinely consigned this problematic

lot to nationalism. Granted, nineteenth-century composers from Russia, Scandinavia,

and other so-called peripheral nations exploited their regional idiosyncrasies in order to

distinguish themselves from Western Europeans. Historian Marina Frolova-Walker has

argued that this pursuit of nation-building hardened into orthodoxy in Russia through

writings by critics Vladimir Stasov and Hermann Laroche. 6 Such meager tokens as the

frequency of folk and chant melodies, however, came to be regarded as a measure of a

work's national allegiance and even its artistic authenticity. The epistemological lapses of

this approach have been challenged in recent years, but throughout the twentieth century

its biases strongly informed historians' estimates of Scriabin.

Nowhere was this viewpoint perpetuated so egregiously as in Russian music. As

Stravinsky bemoaned in Poetics of Music, "Why do we always hear Russian music spoken

in terms of its Russianness rather than simply in terms of music?" Seventy years later,

Frolova-Walker, Russian Music and NationalismfromGlinka to Stalin (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2007), 108-109. Cf. her "On Ruslan and Russianness," Cambridge Opera Journal 9/\ (March 1997): 21-45.
This section focuses on the Western view of Russian music history as it pertains to Scriabin's
reception. Important sources include Taruskin, "Some Thoughts on the History and Historiography of
Russian Music," The Journal ofMusicology 3/4 (Autumn 1984): 321-339; Edward C. Thaden, "The Beginnings
of Romantic Nationalism in Russia," American Slavic and Hast'European Review Yb/A (December 1954): 500-
521; David Brown, "Balakirev, Tchaikovsky, and Nationalism," Music and Letters 42/3 (July 1961): 227-241;
and Howard F. Stein, "Russian Nationalism and the Divided Soul of the Westerners and Slavophiles," Ethos
4 / 4 (Winter 1976): 403-438.
Stravinsky, Poetics ofMusic: In the Form ofSix Lessons, trans. Arthur Knodel and Ingolf Dahl (Cambridge:
Harvard Univ. Press, 1998), 93. This quote originated in his 1939 Charles Eliot Norton Lecture. Admit-
tedly, Stravinsky uttered d m remark post-World War I, when he sermonized on the virtues of I'artpour I'art.
 21

Stravinsky's concern remains topical. Like the Austro-German hegemony that shaped

canonic standards, this critical assumption has compelled twentieth-century historians to

emphasize commonalities among composers from a given region in order to construct a

tidy historical narrative. The nationalist construct as forged in Glinka and the Mighty

Five, however, limited historians' appreciation for the range of styles in Russian music.

Taruskin articulated the preconceptions of the nationalist paradigm in Russian music:

A Russian composer in the art music tradition is assumed (or rather, doomed) to
create, because he is Russian, in the manner of a peasant singer not by effort or
art but by instinct. [. . .] While one can affect admiration, even a sort of envy, for
such an artist on the romantic or neoprimitivist assumption that what is
unmediated by civilization is imbued with spontaneous authenticity, such
admiration is laced with condescension. Mr. Natural, with his biologically
inherited attitudes, can have only a group identity. Stripped of that identity, he is
stripped of all authenticity.29

Regardless of the disparate training and personalities of its members, the composers

working in Russia circa 1850-1917 have been referred to in coundess textbooks and

encyclopedias as the Russian Nationalist School. Taruskin argued that Western historians

held an advantage in correcting this myth in Russian historiography since they remained

unencumbered by the political and sociological dogma shouldered by Russian scholars.

Western scholars have increasingly followed Taruskin's lead in rethinking dominant

paradigms about Russian music, but change has been gradual. Frolova-Walker's recently

published study of nationalism in Russian music, for example, also tackles the nationalist

myth, but Scriabin's conspicuous absence from her discussion suggests that the comp-

oser's insufficient ties to nationalism made his music a negligible issue for her.

Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, 47. Taruskin's views on nationalism in Russian music also appear
in his 2001 Grove subject entry on nationalism, volume 3 of his Oxford History of Western Music (Oxford,
New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); and the recentiy published collection of essays, On Russian
Music (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009).
 22

No Russian composer has been faulted more for anti-nationalism than Scriabin,

especially in his homeland. In 1909, only a year after Beliaev published the score of

Poeme de I'extase, critic Yulii (Joel) Engel' (1868-1927), the so-called "father of modern

Jewish music," fulminated, "His music contains not even a vestige of so-called 'Russian

style' . . . When listening to [a Scriabin symphony] one is just as entitled to suspect that it

carries the stamp 'Made in Germany' as 'Made in Russia,' or for that matter any other

stamp."30 Likewise, in 1914, Viacheslav Karatygin's memorial tribute to Anatolii Liadov

importunately observed Scriabin's tendency towards "denationalization."31 Russian-

born critic German Lovtsky similarly denounced Scriabin for his insufficient Russianness

in the 1921 issue of Sovremennye ^apiski {Contemporary Notes). Lovsky's reductive logic

exemplifies the inveterate reversion to the nationalist paradigm:

There was not in him even an imitation of nationalism, as was the case with
Tchaikovsky, and he stood apart - and probably felt himself so among the
composers of the purely nationalist Russian school who were grouped around
M.P. Bielaeff [sic]. The Russian folk-songs, that inexhaustible treasury of great
national spirit, did not exercise upon Scriabine [sic] even an indirect influence.
The Russian nature was alien to him; he never attempted to paint it in sounds.
What remains of the national in Scriabine then? Only the circumstance that he
was born in Russia.

Scriabin's erstwhile classmate Rachmaninoff similarly scoffed in a 1919 interview that,

"Scriabin is quite un-Russian"; his late works "belong to a musical 'No-man's-land,' and

while they have added notably to his reputation for eccentricity, they have not enhanced

his repute for true musical constructiveness."33 Stravinsky also considered Scriabin to be

Engel', "The Music of Skryabin," in Campbell, ed., Russians on Russian Music, 1880-1917, 200.
Karatygin, "In Memory of Anatole Lyadov," in Campbell, ed., Russians on Russian Music, 162.
Anon., "Scriabine The Man and Musician," The American Review of Reviews 64/6 (Dec. 1921): 657.
Lovtsky (1871-1957) was a composer and critic who wrote on folk songs, Wagner, and Rimsky-Korsakov.
Rachmaninoff, "National and Radical Impressions in the Music of To-day and Yesterday," The Etude
37/10 (October 1919): 615.
 23

a renegade artist "without a passport." Even Nicholas Slonimsky, w h o painstakingly

translated Schloezer's monograph on the composer, asserted, "Scriabin's music stands

outside of Russian national culture, and is the product of a purely musical development

of the modern times." 34 In Stalinist-era Russia, an insufficient national character even

became equated with political and moral turpitude, as witnessed by Faubion Bowers'

report that in 1940, Soviet authorities accused Scriabin of being "totally un-Russian in his

themes and more anti-people than anything in the whole of Russian music." 35

Although Western critics and historians were not confined by the same ideo-

logical constraints as Russian critics and composers, they perpetuated the nationalist

myth, whether out of ignorance or lazy recycling. British biographer Alfred Swan sniffed

that Scriabin "could scarcely b e called a Russian composer at all" because "strangely,

there are n o typical Russian idiomatic expressions anywhere, either from folk-song or

from chant . . ." Gerald Abraham similarly considered Scriabin's music "outside the

main current of Russian art." 36 Russian music historian Richard Leonard cast some of

the most parochial aspersions:

Scriabin is an anomaly as a Russian composer. H e represents an extreme even

for the Moscow group, being so completely Western that all traces of his Russian
origin are lost [. . .] Scriabin is hardly a Russian composer at all, so strongly is his
music turned away from nationalism and toward the West. H e had little affinity
for the nationalist movement, ignored almost totally the use of folk song, and
was at the opposite pole aesthetically from the concept of realism in art. 37

Leonard's readiness to dismiss Scriabin as adrift from both Western and Russian mores

Slonimsky, Russian and Soviet Music and Composers, Vol. 2, ed. Electra Yourke (New York: Routledge,
2004), 13.
Quoted in Bowers, The New Scriabin: Enigma and Answers, 14.
Swan, Russian Music and its Sources in Chant and Yolk-Song (New York: Norton, 1973), 152, 170; and
Abraham, Studies in Russian Music (London: W. Reeves, 1936), 2.
37
Leonard, A History of Russian Music (New York: Macmillan, 1957), 225, 219.
 24

demonstrates how some Western historians have gauged Scriabin's Russianness based on

his failure to use folk tunes or church chants. That such scholars as Abraham and Swan

devoted so much of their energies to biographies and critical studies of Scriabin and still

regarded the composer as alien to Russian music traditions reveals how deeply

entrenched nationalist assumptions had become.

While other Russian composers, such as Tchaikovsky, also came under fire for

their cosmopolitan styles, peace offerings such as Evgenii Onegin (with libretto based on

Pushkin) or his Symphony No. 2 ("Little Russian") quelled most pundits.38 Admittedly,

Scriabin's disinterest in opera, the most important genre in Russian music, distinguished

him from his compatriots. Scholars have cited other stylistic traits, however, such as

sequential repetition, octatonicism, and a maximalist approach to composition, that mark

Scriabin as distinctly Russian.39 Musicologist Anatoli Leikin identified several Russian

qualities in Scriabin's music, such as the bytovoi romans (domestic romance), bell sounds,

and supernatural themes. Leiken pointed out prevalent nationalist misconceptions:

The music of Scriabin is usually considered even less Russian than that of
Tchaikovsky because the latter, at least occasionally, borrowed some peasant
tunes. Scriabin never deigned to do so. Nevertheless, Scriabin's earlier works
amply display the typical Russian plagality and a strong affinity with the urban
romance. His later compositions lose their connection with Russian romance-
like vocalism, a fact that has provided additional ammunition to those who have
argued for Scriabin's lack of Russian character.

In her study of Russian folk-song appropriations, Nina Bachinskaia ranked Tchaikovsky second only
to Rimsky-Korsakov in quotations. Narodnye pesni v tvorchestve russkikh kompo^itorov (Moscow: Muzgiz, 1962).
Schloezer stressed Scriabin's "tendency to pursue his path to the end of his resources, to draw from his
ideas and convictions all consequences, not only theoretical but practical as well, no matter how extravagant
they might appear." Schloezer, Artist and Mystic, 232. Taruskin similarly emphasized Scriabin's habit of
patterned repetition or "drobnost"; it is "the chief way in which Scriabin reveals himself a Russian music-
maker." See his review of Schloezer and Baker in Music Theory Spectrum 10 (Spring 1988): 166.
Leikin, "From Paganism to Orthodoxy to Theosophy: Reflections of Other Worlds in the Piano Music
of Rachmaninov and Scriabin," in Voicing the Ineffable: Musical Representation of Religious Experience, ed. Siglund
Bruhn (Hillsdale, New York: Pendragon Press, 2002), 38.
 25

Charges of Scriabin's lack of Russianness have not been amended with time. As

late as 1991, Robert Morgan seemed puzzled that, "Curiously, Skryabin was not himself

nationalist in orientation." In his 1994 study of underground Soviet composers, Larry

Sitsky contended, "The problem with Scriabin was that he was Russian not musically,

but mystically . . . He was seemingly never interested in Russian folk music . . ."42 The

idea that Scriabin was insufficiently Russian based on a lack of folk tunes in his works is

a jarring observation in an otherwise penetrating discussion of Scriabin's influence in

early twentieth-century music. Even Grout's venerated text adduced the lack of folklore

as a crucial point, considering Scriabin (in a section on nationalism) "an unclassifiable

Russian composer . . . whose music had no connection with the nationalist movement." 43

Not all Russians, however, clung to narrow views of Scriabin's anti-nationalism.

As a student, Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter had studied Scriabin's music as a part of

his Conservatory curriculum. In 1965 he explained, "In Russia [Scriabin] is part of the

mainstream of musical life . . . our heritage. We grow up with him, are nurtured by him,

nourished by him. [Russians] absorb him, as soon as we are born." 44 Richter understood

that the issue of Russianness went deeper than Orthodox chant melodies and folk tunes,

and that nationalism was a historical fallacy that only served those who created it.

So why bother assigning Scriabin to nationalism if his music does not belong? As

we shall see, in light of the complications in assigning Scriabin a place among the Russian

nationalists, historians scrambled to find other categories in which to place his output.

Morgan, Twentieth-Century Music, 55.

Sitsky, Music of the Repressed Russian Avant-Garde, 1900-1929 (Westport, Conn: Greenwood, 1994), x.
43
Donald Grout, A History of Western Music, Third Shorter Edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981),
410.
Faubion Bowers, "Richter on Scriabin," Saturday Review 48/24 (12 June 1965): 58.
 26

Alternative Schools and Isms

Critics who realized the errors of considering Scriabin as a nationalist artist turned

to other Isms in search of more satisfactory assignments. Like nationalism, though,

these alternative groups still prioritized stylistic conformity and regionally. This section

examines four Isms to which historians have assigned Scriabin's music expressionism,

Wagnerism, impressionism, and symbolism and which are tied to German and French

traditions. Although these arguments have produced some fascinating congruencies,

ultimately each proposal accounts for only a fragment of his multidimensional creativity.

Expressionism

Arguments for Scriabin as an expressionist present some striking parallels, but also

ring hollow on certain counts. Scriabin's glorification of the individual and quest to

synthesize the arts parallels the Second Viennese School, but the Russian composer's

aspiration to deliver humanity from its earthly confines adopts a more eschatological

character than the expressionists' existential commentary on the grim reality of modern

life. Scriabin's sense of self-affirmation and eternal optimism also counters the

emotional abandon and macabre pessimism of many Second Viennese School works.

Climaxes in Scriabin's late Piano Sonatas may conjure up a sense of maddening vertigo,

but nothing in his oeuvre comes close to the shattered sense of self-identity depicted in

such expressionist works as Pierrot lunaire (1912) or Wo^eck (1925).

Expressionism is traditionally defined as an aesthetic outlook that sublimates the negative aspects of
contemporary life by squarely addressing die unpleasant emotions instead of suppressing them. Although
typically associated with the horrors of war, the expressionist style of such works as Schoenberg's
Ewartung (1909) and Berg's Wo^geck (1925) reflects the composer's personal disillusionment with die loss
of identity and compassion in twentieth-century life.
 27

American musicologists John and Dorothy Crawford argued in a 1993 study that

Scriabin's "unity in multiplicity . . . condensation of forms, rejection of tonality, and use

of mystic musical symbols" earmarked him as a prototypical expressionist.46 Their quest

to track the unifying elements of a given piece is a familiar modernist preoccupation, and

their qualifying criteria recall the generic expectations encountered in the nationalist

debate. The Crawfords equated Scriabin's desire to restore music's ancient magical

powers with the redemptive ideals expressed in Schoenberg's Die Jakobsleiter and

Webern's Tot. But rather than depict Scriabin as a founding expressionist, the Crawfords

emphasized his liberating influence on Schoenberg and his pupils, notwithstanding their

ideological differences: "Like the expressionists [Scriabin] turned away from the concept

of art-for-art's sake, though his ideals of destruction and recreation through art lack the

ethical component present in much expressionist thought." 47 While the Crawfords

admitted that Scriabin's "refined and decadent sensuality" patently contradicted the

realist element in Viennese expressionism, they explained that Scriabin and Schoenberg

still shared a view of art as a life-altering force rather than mere entertainment.

The Crawfords were not alone in their estimation of Scriabin as an expressionist.

Twentieth-century music historian Rollo Myers drew comparisons between Scriabin and

Schoenberg, asserting that the former was "really the first of the 'Expressionists.'"

Myers cited as common goals "an ultra-subjective, even introspective approach to art in

which the nature of the inner experience determines to a large extent the objective form

Crawfords, Expressionism in Twentieth-Century Music (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1993), 56-57.
Ibid., 57-58, 62. The Crawfords cited two quotes as evidence: "the growth of human consciousness
is the growth of the consciousness of geniuses" (Scriabin), and "the laws of the nature of a man of genius
are the laws of the humanity of the future" (Schoenberg).
 28

in which the work will be cast, and also the appropriate technique."48 These equivocal

prescriptions, however, could describe any composer from Haydn to Stockhausen.

Moreover, Myers failed to mention that expressionist artists' tendency to depict a

personal perspective through exaggeration and distortion directly opposed Scriabin's

desire to surmount his individual will to tap into a higher consciousness. Scriabin

believed this spiritual transcendence was necessary to construct a new reality that would

transcend the established order rather than reinterpreting existing conditions.

Boris Schloezer offered a few thoughts on the proposed affinities between Scriabin

and Schoenberg. He recognized both composers' goal to represent the transcendence of

consciousness by abandoning the conventions of tonality, but Schloezer regarded their

aesthetic orientations as diametrically opposed, observing that Scriabin's philosophical

beliefs "represent the complete antithesis of the Viennese composer's expressionism."49

Insofar as compositional practices are concerned, Schoenberg envisioned himself as an

inheritor of Austro-German traditions, and his respect for musical laws led him to

reorder the chromatic scale as the next logical step in Western music. Scriabin, however,

accepted the tempered scale only as "a last resort, an imperfect means of realizing

musical ideas that actually belong to the ultra-chromatic plan."50 By "ultra-chromatic"

Schloezer meant a cosmic or divine goal that surpassed the expressionists' avowedly

humanist orientation. While Schloezer upheld the now-discarded theory that Scriabin

based his harmonic vocabulary on the overtone series (in order to approximate musica

Myers, "Scriabin: A Reassessment," The Musical Times 98/1367 (January 1957): 17.
Schloezer, "Scriabine," 17.
Ibid. Scriabin remarked to Sabaneev, "A triad is the most material sound, while these harmonies (and
he played some of his new sonorities) have a certain astral meaning, they produce an aura, which is the next,
highest stratum." Sabaneev, Vospominaniia o Skriabine (Moscow: Klassika-XXI, 2000), 118.
 29

mundand), he nonetheless accurately distinguished between Schoenberg's acceptance of

musical laws (despite his desire to bend them) and Scriabin's rejection of those laws as an

inferior means of expressing his creative ideas.

Despite attempts to link these composers as part of the same stylistic tradition,

affinities between them noted by historians are not entirely unfounded. Scriabin and

Schoenberg both rejected tonality and regarded this breakthrough as a representation of

spiritual transcendence. While Schoenberg thought of this transcendence in program-

matic or symbolic terms, for Scriabin it was an actual liturgy meant to induce meta-

physical transfigurement. Both composers also developed pan-chromatic approaches in

response to the dissolution of tonality. While some historians have hailed Scriabin as an

innovator in this respect, Schoenberg's twelve-tone system has been more highly valued

by scholars and the public due to its endorsement by such composers as Babbitt, Boulez,

and Stravinsky. Schoenberg, however, discovered this technique by exploring the

octatonic scale, a core collection in Scriabin's late music. Taruskin observed that

The partitioning of the complete chromatic aggregate into mutually exclusive

harmonically symmetrical (or inversionally invariant) registral segments, one of
them octatonic is already highly reminiscent of the twelve-tone constructions in
the almost contemporaneous sketches for Scriabin's A.cte prealable, which one
hastens to point out not only could Schoenberg not have known at the time,
but he could never have learned about during his lifetime.51

It seems that both composers arrived at similar conclusions with little knowledge of the

other's working habits and orientation. Thus, certain conceptual affinities do exist, not

to mention parallels between such unfinished magna opera as Schoenberg's Die Jakobsleiter

and Scriabin's Mysterium. But, sonically, these composers' works occupy separate realms.

Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, 353.

 30

Wagnerism

In addition to comparisons of Scriabin with the expressionists, historians and

critics placed him in the Wagner camp. While historians seldom consider Wagernism a

viable Ism on par with neo-classicism or primitivisrn (aside from opera), Wagner's

influence on Scriabin cannot be denied. Historian David Ewen grouped Scriabin and

Strauss among the Wagnerites, arguing that Scriabin was "hypnotized by the wizard

Wagner" and that Parsifal inspired the Mysterium?2 Schloezer also admitted that Wagner

was "the only composer capable of moving Scriabin deeply," but he further argued that

the composer knew little of Wagner's music and had "never heard Tristan und Isolde or

Parsifal."Si Although Scriabin initially harbored mixed feelings about Wagner's music

(arguing that it "lacked form"), his appreciation grew and he eventually sought to surpass

Wagner's concept of a religious art. Scriabin may even have borrowed from Wagner.

Scholars have suggested that the Tristan und Isolde prelude served as a model for

Scriabin's Third Symphony, the "Divine Poem" (Bo^hestvennaiapoema).S4 The openings of

both works feature rising melodies with unexpected chromatic resolutions. As with the

other Isms, though, labeling Scriabin a Wagnerite masks the differences between these

two composers in terms of their sound worlds and creative ideologies.

Parallels between Scriabin and Wagner, however, cannot be denied. Both were

notorious egocentrics who took as their divine missions a synthesis of the arts through a

Ewen, David Ewen Introduces Modern Music: A History and Appreciation from Wagner to the Avant-Garde
(Philadelphia: Chilton Book Co, 1969), 39.
Schloezer, Scriabin: Artist and Mystic, 94.
See Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, 325-332 for Scriabin's harmonic and debts to Wagner.
Simon Morrison noted that Scriabin "derived his theories about synthetic art from Ivanov's writings
on Dionysus and Apollo, Solovyov's ideas about spiritual communion, and his own sketchy knowledge of
pagan ritual and Eastern religious doctrines." See Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement, 236 n26.
 31

Gesamtkunstwerk. Both composers' harmonic languages feature dominant prolongations

(symbolizing erotic desire for Wagner and the struggle between spirit and matter for

Scriabin), and both men utilized a meta-language of symbolic motifs and ancient myths

to tap into the collective consciousness of their audiences. Scriabin distinguished himself

as a piano virtuoso while Wagner established himself an innovator for the orchestra.

Both composers adopted a similar maximalist approach to the traditions of romanticism

that exhausted the conventions of late nineteenth-century style.56

Impressionism

Scriabin's former amanuensis Leonid Sabaneev asserted that from 1902 to 1905,

impressionism exerted a considerable influence on Scriabin, who heard Pelleas et Melisande

in 1907 and witnessed Debussy conducting LaMer'm 1913 (Scriabin owned a copy of

the latter score). The Muscovite, though, rebuffed Debussy's music as par terre passive

and grounded.57 Like Sabaneev, composer Marion Bauer and historian Ethyl Peyser

classified Scriabin as a "mystic impressionist . . . Scriabin had come into contact with

French impressionism and was stirred by the idea of new harmonic combinations . . . his

mystic chord is the next step in tone evolution after Debussy's whole-tone scale."58

Grout also argued that Scriabin's music recalled the "mood-evoking methods of

impressionism," but acknowledged that the composer developed "a complex harmonic

Taruskin also envisioned Scriabin as furthering Wagner's legacy; see Defining Russia Musically, 320-324.
Sabaneev, Modern Russian Composers (New York: International Press, 1927), 50. Lest he overstate his
case, Sabaneev cautiously admitted, "it is possible that in die general musical air of Europe at that time,
there were floating ideas of these complex harmonic combinations."
58
Bauer and Peyser, Music Through the Ages: A Narrativefor Student and~Layman (New York: G. P. Putnam's
Sons, 1937), 486-487.
 32

vocabulary peculiar to himself."59 Journalist Robert Evett's centennial estimate similarly

relegated Scriabin to the impressionist camp:

Scriabin himself was far too much the egomaniac, and far too deeply committed
to his own inner vision and his own technical preoccupations, to have been fully
aware of the French influence on his writing. However, all of his later music is a
facet of Impressionism, important beyond its own merits for what it shows about
the extent of diversity possible within a style family.60

Scriabin, however, rejected the passive nature of impressionism. His exploration

of the interpretive and philosophical meanings that could be expressed through music as

well as color, poetry, and dance contradicts Debussy's desire to bask in sonorities for the

sake of the sounds themselves rather than impart a specific meaning to his music.61

While Debussy's opinion of Scriabin was never documented, Scriabin admonished that

Debussy "shouldn't have stolen from our Russian music."62 Perhaps the real issue is that

the similarities that critics have perceived between Scriabin and the impressionists are

due to Russian music's influence on the French. Whole-tone and octatonic collections

can be traced to such precursors as Glinka's Kuslan and Uudmila and Rimsky-Korsakov's

Sadko and Snow Maiden. Discerning which group influenced the other lies beyond the

scope of this chapter, but stylistic overlappings between Debussy and Scriabin noted by

critics suggest parallel, yet independent reactions to the dissolution of tonality.

Comparisons between Debussy and Scriabin, then, are not wholly unfounded.

Their pianistic styles derived from Chopin and Liszt, and both composers introduced

iv
Grout, A History of Western Music, Fifth Ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 672.
60
Evett, "The Man with the Astral Body," Atlantic Monthly 228/4 (October 1971): 129.
Simon Trezise described the importance of the visceral element in Debussy's music, observing that,
"Debussy's view of music as something to be felt, not analysed, and his rejection of accepted rules of
composition in favour of losing oneself in moments of sound disable the normal modes of 'interpretation.'
The Cambridge Companion to Debussy (New York, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 121.
Schloezer, Scriabin: Artist and Mystic, 321.
 33

novel sonorities and techniques for the instrument. Each cultivated the whole-tone

scale, from which Scriabin's mystic chord (0, 2, 4, 6, 9, 10) varies by only one pitch.

Debussy and Scriabin also favored static progressions that seem to suspend time through

the use of dominant prolongations, oddly accented rhythms, and modal scales. The

evocative and sensual soundscapes in Prelude a lapres-midi dunjaune (1894) and Voluptes

(Mvt. 3) from Scriabin's Symphony No. 3 (1904) aptly illustrate this semblance. These and

other passages show both men thinking in terms of harmonic blocks in an attempt to

evoke (or invoke, in Scriabin's later works) otherworldly beings and places. They also

preferred short forms and genres and peppered their scores with poetic expression

markings, often in French. Differences between these composers, however, are just as

salient. While Debussy's music languishes in somnolent daydreams, Scriabin's works

overcome their languorous introductions with nervous thrashings that soar to ecstatic

finales. Moreover, Debussy's harmonic extensions serve as coloristic effects, whereas

Scriabin imagined his harmonies as representations of the cosmological schemes of his

creative imagination.63

Symbolism

A final Ism that scholars have considered for Scriabin's music is symbolism. Just

as French symbolist poets Mallarme and Verlaine influenced Debussy, Russian symbolist

poets Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900) and his pupil Viacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949) had a

decisive impact on Scriabin's creative thinking. Russian symbolism ranked as one of the

Scriabin commented to Sabaneev, "How can you express mysticism with major and minor? How
can you convey the dissolution of matter, or luminosity? Above all, minor keys must disappear from
music, because art must be a festival. Minor is a whine, I can't stand whining . . . minor is undertone.. I
deal in owrtones." Quoted in Bowers, Scriabin: A Biography, 2:107.
 34

early twentieth century's leading intellectual movements, and although few noteworthy

composers emerged from that era, scholars have regarded Scriabin as chief among them.

Scriabin's contemporaries well recognized his affinities with the symbolist poets.

In his Reminiscences, Sabaneev contended that Scriabin "was none other than a symbolist

in music, and all those premises which are now considered as traditional regarding

Symbolists in poetry and literature are completely and even more categorically applicable

to him."63 Scholezer also observed their mutual regard for art as a "demiurgic act" and

"superior mode of knowledge."64 Eager to portray the composer as an original thinker,

Schloezer maintained that Scriabin arrived at a symbolist view of art well before meeting

Ivanov and the others symbolists of his generation. Although Schloezer insisted that

Scriabin "owed them nothing," he could not deny the remarkably similar aesthetic code

among them. Even Stravinsky characterized Scriabin as a "pseudo-esoteric symbolist."'

Throughout the century, historians continued to highlight Scriabin's kinship with

the symbolists, especially after his 1972 centenary, which prompted a critical revaluation

of his music and legacy." Scriabin's works in the symbolist tradition were suddenly on

par with those of Mallarme. Historian Louis Marvick argued that Scriabin and Mallarme

both pursued a symbolist interpretation of the apocalypse in their unfinished Mysterium

and le Uvre, respectively. Marvick argued that apocalyptic symbolism ranked among the

63
Quoted in Marina Kostalevsky, "Ivanov on Skrjabin," Russian Literature 44 (1998): 318.
Scholezer, Scriabin: Artist and Mystic, 314.
65
Vera Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents (London: Hutchinson, 1979), 605.
6
This literature includes Martin Cooper, "Aleksandr Skryabin and the Russian Renaissance," Studi
musicali 1 (1972): 327-356; Malcolm Brown, "Skriabin and Russian 'Mystic' Symbolism," Nineteenth-Century
Music?) (1979): 42-51; Ralph Matlaw, "Scriabin and Russian Symbolism," Comparative Literature 31 (1979): 1-
23; Ye. L. Krzhimovskaia, "Skriabin i russkii simvolizm," Sovetskaia mu^yka 2 (1985): 82-86; and Maria
Carlson, "Fashionable Occultism: The World of Russian Composer Aleksandr Scriabin," reprinted in The
Journal of the Scriabin Society ofAmerica 12/1 (Winter 2007-2008): 54-63.
 35

most important movements of the era and should be regarded "not as a vain reaction to

the nineteenth-century expressions of the positivist tradition, but as the first truly

modern aesthetic - a synthesis in the dialectic of intellectual history."68 Musicologist

Daniel Albright found a synthetic quality to Scriabin's admixture of expressionism and

symbolism, both of which offer glimpses into a higher reality through sensory over-

stimulation. Indeed, he deemed Scriabin's Prometheus and Mysterium the "culmination of

Symbolist pan-sensual fury."' Historian Victoria Adamenko also drew a correlation

between the mytho-poetic concerns of Scriabin and the symbolists in their concomitant

desire to restore the "collective memory of mankind" to its "mythic function."70

While most writers have defended Scriabin's role as a symbolist by compiling

like-minded quotes between the composer and contemporary poets and philosophers,

musicologist Simon Morrison has elucidated the composer's efforts to translate

symbolist tenets into music, as well as provided a contemporary understanding of

symbolism. Morrison identified Scriabin as "the composer most enamored with 'mystic'

Symbolism," referring to the poets of Ivanov's generation.71 Their mutual enthusiasm

for collective creation and theurgy, which Morrison defined as "the ability to turn artistic

creation into religious creation," made them kindred artistic spirits. Although Scriabin

never completed the Mysterium or its prototype, the Predvaritel'noe deistvie {Preliminary Act),

Morrison argued that this project highlighted the inherent paradox of symbolist art: in

Marvick, "Two Versions of the Symbolist Apocalypse: Mallarme's Lit/re and Scriabin's Mysterium,"
Criticism 28/3 (Summer 1986): 302. Powell's 2001 Grove entry also assigned Scriabin a place in the symbolist
pantheon alongside Mallarme in their celebration of the creative act as self-identification with the divine.
Albright, Modernism and Music (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2004), 233.
Victoria Adamkenko, Neo-Mythoiogism in Music: From Scriabin and Schoenberg to Schnittke and Crumb
(Hillsdale, New York: Pendragon Press, 2007), 10.
Quotes in this paragraph from Morrison, Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement, 10, 8, 201, 215.
 36

order to be a truly collective creation, a symbolist mystery play cannot be conceived by a

single author. Once Scriabin realized that his vision of transcendental art could not be

attained under the present conditions, Morrison argued that Scriabin "relinquished his

role as a composer to become a metaphysical philosopher of symbolist art."

For all of the congruencies in regarding Scriabin as a symbolist, even this assign-

ment poses problems. With the exception of Debussy and Bartok, Scriabin remains the

only notable symbolist composer, explaining why most historiographers fail to consider

symbolism a viable category for music. Even symbolists themselves rarely thought of

music in this capacity. Maes argued that "For the symbolists, 'music' was more a poetic

picture of theurgy than a reference to a concrete form of art, and few were interested in

Scriabin's attempt to translate symbolist ideas into music."72 Bely's contempt for the

composer demonstrates that the symbolists hardly embraced Scriabin's ideas wholesale.73

Poetry reigned as the supreme symbolist art form because it conveys nuances of imagery

and allusion that music can only suggest. Despite Scriabin's attempts to master

symbolist verse as well as music, his poetic technique never surpassed an amateur level.

Marvick noted that music's inability to indicate clearly a point of view also distinguishes

it from symbolist poetry, and as a composer, Marvick argued, Scriabin's approach to

writing poetry was fundamentally flawed.74

Maes, A History of Russian Music, 210.

Bely met Scriabin at the home of Margarita Morozova, the composer's patron. Amused at Scriabin's
fastidious appearance and mannerisms, Bely had little desire to cultivate his company. He later remarked,
"All the while the little white fingers of his pale little hand kept jabbing out chords of some kind in the air:
his pinkies took the 'Kant' note, his middle finger would trace the 'Culture' theme, and all at once
whoops! - a leap of the index finger over a whole row of keys to the one marked 'Blavatsky.'" Me^hdu dvukh
revolutsii (Leningrad: State Publishers, 1934), 348-349. Quoted in Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, 317.
Marvick, Waking the Face the No One Is: A Study in the Musical Context of Symbolist Poetics (New York:
Rodopi, 2004), 83.
 37

* * * *

The schools and Isms explored above reveal a great deal about how critics and

historians have compared Scriabin's art to that of his artistic contemporaries, but these

assignments tell us less about the music's intrinsic qualities. Therein lies the difficulty in

consigning Scriabin to conventional stylistic categories. While symbolism seems to

present a satisfactory solution to the problem of determining Scriabin's role in history,

the composer's position in the Western canon has improved only marginally since the

post-revival period. For better or for worse, however, his reception has provided a

barometer for the shifting values and tastes of generations of critics, historians, and

audiences. Indeed, the wide range of responses throughout the century to issues of

Scriabin's "Russianness," philosophical convictions, and stylistic heterodoxy reflect the

evolving values of Western and Russian culture and society. The following chapters will

explore four distinct phases that comprised the defining moments of his posthumous

reception.
 38
CHAPTER TWO:
Scriabin's Early Posthumous Reception and
the Afterlife of Russian Silver Age Aesthetics

He dared to melt the metal of melodies Stop, passerby! Within these walls
And wanted to pour them into new forms; Scriabin lived and found his resting place
He constantly sought to live and live, Stern stone in letters few has told you all
In order to create a monument through his The seed is sown. In our primeval depths
accomplishment, A star is lit. Now go your way.
But fate judges. The work will not be finished! - V. Ivanov (1916)
The molten metal cools idly:
No one, no one can set it in motion . . . - V. Briusov (1915)

Witness two elegies on Scriabin by symbolist poets Valerii Briusov and Viacheslav

Ivanov. Their words, a few of the many responses to the composer's sudden death in

April 1915, convey the overwhelming admiration for, yet disagreement over, this man and

his music. While Briusov lamented Scriabin's failure to achieve his artistic goals, Ivanov

marveled at the composer's enduring accomplishments.2 These opposing points of view,

even in shows of sympathy, attest to the divisive reactions that Scriabin's music elicited

during his lifetime. Upon the composer's death, his fate remained uncertain.

Received wisdom holds that Scriabin's popularity did not survive his death. Typical

is critic Charles Stuart's remark that, "Overnight the balloon deflated. Scriabin dropped

from the programmes and from our minds." Historian Boris Schwarz similarly asserted

that, "Whatever influence Scriabin exerted on Russian music, it evaporated rather soon."

Even the most important English-language Scriabin biographer Faubion Bowers averred

Briusov, "Na smert' A. N. Skriabina," Sobranie socbinenii 2, 200-201; cited in Morrison, Russian Opera and
the Symbolist Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 235n; and Ivanov, "Ko dniu otkrytiia
pamiatnoi doski na dome Skriabina," Mu^yka 254 (11 March 1916), reprinted in Taruskin, Defining Russia
Musically (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 308.
For more on Ivanov's "Pamiati Skriabina" and Briusov's "Na smert' A. N. Skriabina," see Michael
Wachtel, "The 'Responsive Poetics' of Vyacheslav Ivanov," Russian Literature 44/3 (1 Oct. 1998): 309-312.
Stuart, "Fifty Years of Music Criticism," Tempo 19 (Spring 1951): 14; and Schwarz, Music and Musical Life
in Soviet Russia, 1917-1970 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), 62.
 39
that, "After the October Revolution of 1917, a reaction set in against Scriabin."4 To be

sure, the composer's death cost his music its premier interpreter, but the claim that his

works disappeared entirely from the repertoire deserves reconsideration. While Scriabin's

reception has been fodder for popular writers, scholarship on the subject has been slow in

coming. Even by 1954, composer and critic Terence White Gervais admitted in his Grove

entry on the composer that, "To discuss Skriabin's work is difficult at the present time,

for very few have any detailed (or even general) knowledge of it." 5 Granted, ample

scholarship has emerged since that era, and musicologist Jonathan Powell's 2001 Grove

entry on Scriabin acknowledged his prominence in the early Soviet years.6 Still, no scholar

has fully explored this forgotten era in the composer's posthumous reception.

Popular writers, especially of newspaper articles and program or liner notes, have

drawn the sharpest lines between Scriabin's fame in life and rejection after death. These

commentators have advanced a view of the composer as an egomaniac who distanced

himself from his contemporaries. During Scriabin's 1972 centenary revival, New York

Times critic Harold Schonberg upheld this image of the isolated genius: "When he died, in

1915, he bestrode a no-man's land, living in a world of his own devising." Sounding the

familiar knell, Schonberg informed his readers that by the late 1910s, "Scriabin was little

heard," a casualty of "the anti-romanticism that set in soon after his death."7

Bowers, Scriabin: A Biography, Second ed. (NY: Dover, 1996), 1:86. Also Andrew Huth: "After his
sudden death in 1915 his achievements were largely ignored." Scriabin: The Symphonies, Vladimir Ashkenazy,
cond. (Decca 289 460 299-2,1995), 4. Stuart, "Fifty Years of Music Criticism" Tempo 19 (Spring 1951): 14.
Gervais, "Skriabin, Alexander Nikolayevitch," in Grove's Dictionary, vol. 7, ed. Eric Blom (London:
Macmfllan, 1954), 831.
Jonathan Powell, "Skryabin, Aleksandr Nikolayevich," in Grope Music Online, Oxford Music Online
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/25946
(accessed 2 July 2009).
Schonberg, "Scriabin: His Message is Just Beginning to be Clear," New York Times (16 January 1972):
D13.
 40

It seems unlikely that Scriabin's music would vanish so quickly given his p r o m -

inence during the 1910s. A n extensive concert tour of the Russian provinces in 1910

earned the composer m o r e supporters in his homeland, while concerts in L o n d o n during

the spring of 1914 drew high praise from British critics. 8 Scriabin's death sealed his

celebrity status. Poetry and reminiscences clogged newspapers and periodicals for

months, while memorial concerts by Rachmaninoff and Koussevitzky venerated the

composer annually for years. Scriabin's music, then, did prosper in the turbulent years of

social and political transition surrounding the 1917 Bolshevik takeover. Powell confirmed

that, "During the early Soviet era Skryabin was regarded as the composer w h o m o s t

convincingly represented the revolutionary character of the era and thus appealed n o t

only to musicians b u t also to die fledgling authorities and the newly widened concert-

going public." 9 British audiences ranked as Scriabin's second largest band of supporters

thanks to such performers as Edward Mitchell and musicologist Arthur Eaglefield-Hull.

Richard Taruskin and Simon Morrison have explored Scriabin's reputation during

his final years of life, and Larry Sitsky has documented his influence on the subsequent

generation of Russian composers, b u t the odd tale of Scriabin's sustained popularity after

his death has been conspicuously overlooked. 10 This chapter will explore this forgotten

golden age in Scriabin's reception by tracking notable performances and critical opinions

In 1910 Koussevitzky underwrote a concert tour down the Volga from Tver to Astrakhan; Scriabin
delivered nineteen concerts in eleven cities. German journalist Ellen von Tiderbohl covered the tour and
published a set of articles in 1926. See "A Musical Journey Down the Volga," Etude (December 1926): 905-
906; and "Memories of Scriabin's Volga Tour (1910) [Pts. I & II]," Monthly Musical Record (1 May and 1 June
1926): 137-138; 168-169. For a review of Scriabin's London tour, see anon., "Scriabin's First Appearance in
London," London Times (26 Jan. 1914), E6. Also see Faubion Bowers, Scriabin: A Biography, 2:2Vi-2(A.
Powell, "Skryabin, Aleksandr Nikolayevich," Grove Music Online (accessed 2 July 2009).
Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 308-359; Morrison,
Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 185-241; and Sitsky,
Music of the RepressedRussian Avant-Garde, 1900-1929 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994).
 41
of his music from 1915 to around 1925. While Stuart and other critics have assumed that

Scriabin's association with the intelligentsia made him outdated during the Soviet era, his

popularity actually endured through its association with the Russian Silver Age: a

renaissance in art, literature, and music that flourished from roughly 1890 to 1917. Of

paramount importance were the supporters who translated these pre-Revolutionary ideals

for the proletarian masses, securing the composer's favorable reception among the

Bolsheviks.

Yet one question lingers: how did this misapprehension about Scriabin's early

posthumous reception arise? As we have seen, a lack of information hindered a compre-

hensive understanding of the composer's background and creative ideology until well past

mid-century. Moreover, historians have traditionally drawn a sharp boundary at the 1917

Revolution, limiting an appreciation for the pre-Revolutionary currents that carried over

into the 1920s. To gain a contemporary understanding of Scriabin's popularity, let us

begin at his death, which marked the apex of his critical reception in the first half of the

twentieth century.
Scriabin's Enduring Afterlife

Such an enormous crowd gathered for Scriabin's funeral on April 29, 1915 that

tickets were issued to control the droves of mourners. As his coffin was carried through

the streets, a group of youths linked hands and chanted the Russian anthem for the dead,

ending with "Eternal memory to him!"11 Scriabin's former amanuensis Leonid Sabaneev

lamented, "Our sun had gone out. Without warning, we, the satellites, were left suddenly

with no planet to orbit." Rachmaninoff served as a pallbearer and recollected:

I am still conscious of the deep and soul-stirring impression I received at Scriabin's

funeral. All the literary, musical, and artistic celebrities of Moscow were assembled
there, and filled not only the little church situated opposite Scriabin's flat, but the
whole vast square in front of it. The Archbishop of Moscow gave a beautiful
address extolling the divine will to freedom, which attracted general notice. The
Synodical Choir sang with an almost unearthly beauty, for [Nikolai] Danilin was
well aware of the public that would attend the funeral: the cream of the Moscow
musical world was united there. 13

The moving scene prompted Rachmaninoff to honor the late composer with an all-

Scriabin series across Russia. Notably, this marked his first performances playing works

by other composers, bolstering his own career and keeping Scriabin's music in circulation.

Yet Rachmaninoff s tribute polarized critics and audiences. He recalled:

All these concerts were crowded out and, to my intense joy, proved tremendously
successful. This, however, was not the opinion of a few Moscow critics who
considered themselves Scriabin's musical disciples. They abused me publicly and
decided that my playing lacked "the sacred consecration" which could only be
expressed by a chosen few, to whom I certainly did not belong.14

So formidable was Scriabin's reputation that Moscow critics denounced Rachmaninoff s

Bowers, Scriabin: A Biography, 2:280. For more on Scriabin's funeral, see Ellen von Tidebohl, "A
Further Note on Alexandre Nikolaewitsh Scriabin," The Monthly Musical Record 45/534 (1 June 1915): 154;
and idem, "Scriabin's Funeral," Metronome 32/12 (December 1916): 22.
Quoted in Bowers, Scriabin: A Biography, 2:280.
Dolly Rutherford, ed., Rachmaninoffs Recollections, as Told to Oskar von Riesemann (New York: Macmillan,
1934), 180-181.
Quoted in Bowers, Scriabin: A Biography, 2:280.
 43
well-intentioned tribute. Rachmaninoff was astonished when these unnamed critics asked

him to serve on a Scriabin memorial committee. He politely declined, noting, "I would

myself decide the manner in which I would commemorate the deceased composer."15

Rachmaninoff s all-Scriabin tour began in Petrograd on 26 September 1916 with the

F#-minor Piano Concerto, Op. 20 under Alexander Siloti. He played the work again that

year in Koussevitzky's own Scriabin memorial series. A famous performance of

Scriabin's solo works on November 18 outraged critics and peers. Among the attendees

was Sergei Prokofiev, whose own youthful enthusiasm for Scriabin led him to dedicate his

Dreams, Op. 6 (1910) to the elder composer.16 Rachmaninoff's approach to these works,

Prokofiev explained, met with acrimony because he failed to capture the music's proper

spirit, tarnishing the composer's memory. Prokofiev recalled that

among other works he played the Fifth Sonata. Now when Scriabin played this
sonata it all somehow took wings, but with Rachmaninoff all its notes stood very
clearly and firmly on the ground. Among the Scriabinites in the audiences there
was a disturbance: someone was holding [Ivan Alekseevich] Alchevsky, the tenor,
by the tails of his coat, while he shouted, "Wait, I'll go and have it out with him!"17

Although Rachmaninoff s technique was impeccable, he was not immune to this type of

criticism. Prokofiev found it difficult to congratulate Rachmaninoff afterward, remarking,

"And yet, Sergei Vasil'evich, you played very well." Rachmaninoff sharply retorted, "And

you probably thought I'd play badly?" The heated exchange ended their once cordial

relations. In R/tsskaia mu^ykal'naia ga^eta, critic Grigorii Prokofiev sympathized with

disappointed listeners and offered this evaluation of Rachmaninoff s performance:

Riesemann, Rachmaninoff's Recollections, 181-182.

In a letter of 22 July 1909 to Father Sergei Glagolev, Prokofiev enthused, "If you could only imagine
how interesting Scriabin's late works are his sonatas, The Divine Poem, Ecstasy . . ." Rudakova and
Kandinsky, Scriabin: His Life and Times (Neptune City, NJ: Paganiniana Publications, 1984), 124.
Sergei Bertensson and Jay Leyda, Rachmaninoff: A. Lifetime in Music (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2001), 196. Cf. Max Harrison, Rachmaninoff: Life, Works, Recordings (NY: Continuum, 2005), 199-200.
 44
in his approach to Scriabin's works, he did not (or did not wish to) grasp the basic
nature of this music the unprecedented emotional saturation of Scriabin's creative
power . . . As if seeking a logic in Scriabin's harmonic structure, Rachmaninoff
artificially condensed the tempi. This showed the harmonic line with extraordinary
clarity, but the vital spirit was gone! [. . .] You should have seen the disappointment
with which the admirers of Scriabin's later piano works looked at each other as they
heard the innocuous and prosaic interpretation of the Satanic Poem, or the
academically chilled treatment of the Second and Fifth sonatas.18

Such criticism emanated not only from the composer's hometown of Moscow, but also

from Petrograd, where critics were equally offended by this sacrilege of their beloved

Scriabin. Conductor Mateusz Glinskii contended that, "The supersensual melody of

Scriabin was brought back to earth, saturated in Rachmaninoff s own melodic style."19

Despite these critics, some listeners appreciated Rachmaninoff s sober approach to

Scriabin's music. Polish musicologist and conductor Joseph Yasser (1893-1981) attended

these concerts and argued that Rachmaninoff transformed Scriabin "with justice, into a

fundamentally Russian composer with all the characteristics of the Moscow school trained

in the tradition of Tchaikovsky."20 Nearly forty years later, Soviet-era musicologist Lev

Danilevich defended Rachmaninoff for illustrating the realist aspect of Scriabin's music in

these performances.21 Critics' high standards, however, did not curb Scriabin tributes.

Another performer who championed Scriabin into the 1920s was Serge Koussevitzky.

In 1915 he conducted the complete orchestral works (with Rachmaninoff as soloist in the

Concerto) and organized recitals by Moscow Conservatory students and professors.

Although financial quarrels had strained his relations with Scriabin, Koussevitzky

overcame his bitterness and promoted his music long after their friendship had ruptured.

Quoted in Bertensson and Layda, Rachmaninoff: A Ufetime in Music, 196.

19
Ibid., 197. Glinskii also wrote Aleksandr Skriabin (Warsaw: Pisarzy i Krytykow Muzycznych, 1934).
20
Ibid., 196,197.
21
See Lev Danilevich, Skriabin (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe muzykal'noe izdatel'stvo, 1953), 132.
 45
In 1920, he observed the fifth anniversary of Scriabin's death with five orchestral concerts

in Moscow; conductor Emil Cooper responded in Petrograd with his own series. In 1921

and 1925 Koussevitzky repeated his Scriabin programs in London, where they were well

received.22 So strong was Scriabin's presence that for the 1922-1923 Moscow Philharm-

onic season, only works by Beethoven and Tchaikovsky enjoyed more performances."3

Support for Scriabin also remained steadfast in England after his death. Critic

Edwin Evans voiced the "personal loss by all those who are sympathetic to contemporary

musical development" of "one of the recognised figure-heads of the modern musical

world."24 The composer remained a British favorite thanks to such enthusiasts as Arthur

Eaglefield-Hull, editor of The Monthly Musical Record and author of a biography, A. Great

Russian Tone Poet: Scriabin (1921). Eagle field-Hull published numerous articles on Scriabin

and made no attempt to temper his unabashed reverence for the composer's music. He

opened his effusive "Survey of the Pianoforte Works of Scriabin" by asserting that

No revolution in musical art perhaps in the whole history of the arts in general
is more striking than that effected by Alexander Scriabin, the great musical genius
of the Russia of to-day. His innovations were so many-sided, so far-reaching, and
so completely revolutionary, that I cannot hope to do any sort of justice to them in
a single article . . . 2S

Anonymous, "Scriabin and Stravinsky: Permanence in Music," London Times (11 June 1921), 8A; and
"Scriabin Memorial Concert," London Times (16 May 1925), 12A.
Boris Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917-1970, 62.
24
Evans, "Scriabin," The Fortnightly Review 103/582 (June 1915): 1071, 1072; and idem, "Death of M.
Scriabin: A Fascinating Personality in Music," London Times (28 April 1915), 7B. Edwin Evans (1874-1945)
was a music critic and author of Tchaikovsky, an early biography in the Master Musicians series (1906).
Eaglefield-Hull's Scriabin articles include "A Survey of the Pianoforte Works of Scriabin," The Musical
Quarterly 2/4 (October 1916): 601, 614; "The Five Symphonies of Scriabin," The Monthly Musical Record (1
February 1916): 36; "The Pianoforte Sonatas of Scriabin [Pt. I]," The Musical Times 57/885 (1 November
1916): 492-495; [Pt. II] The Musical Times 57/886 (1 December 1916): 539-542; and "Scriabin's Derivation of
Harmony versus Empirical Methods," Proceedings of the Musical Association 43 rd Session (December 1916): 17-
28. Five years later upon the publication of his Scriabin monograph, his enthusiasm clearly had not waned:
"surely the sum-total of Scriabin's work has brought about an artistic revolution unparalleled in the whole
history of the arts." A. Great Russian Tone-Poet: Scriabin (London: Kegan Paul, 1921), vii. Eaglefield-Hull also
featured Scriabin as the second of "Three Musical Innovators" in The Bookman (September 1921): 262-264.
 46
Equally committed to Scriabin's cause in England were Alfred Swan and Rosa

Newmarch. Swan published a 1923 biography that enthused, "Let us rejoice in the

heritage left to us by this Messiah among men."26 Fifty years later his support remained

unwavering: "all of us who have been drawn into [Scriabin's] orbit feel grateful for such a

great and privileged experience."27 Newmarch, an expert on Russian music and culture,

identified Scriabin as "undoubtedly the most discussed of all the contemporary

representatives of the musical art in Russia."28 With Scriabin's consent, she wrote the

program notes for the 14 March 1914 performance of"Prometheus,which had caused a

sensation the year before when Sir Henry J. Wood performed it twice on the same

program. Newmarch also published on Scriabin's music and background, and authored

an obituary and the 1937 Grove entry.30

Scriabin benefited from such outstanding British performers as pianist Edward

Mitchell, who lionized his piano music post-World War I. Mitchell played from memory

the composer's complete solo works and published a brief guide, Scriabin: The Great Tone

Poet (1927).31 Gervais' 1956 Grove entry on Scriabin hailed the pianist as a "disciple of the

composer" who delivered "surprisingly effective" renditions of his music.32 Mitchell's

Scriabin performances polarized critics and audiences, sparking "curiosity on the part of

Swan, Scriabin (London: William Clowes & Sons, 1923), 111.

Swan, Russian Music and its Sources in Chant and Folk-Song (New York: Norton, 1973), 171.
Newmarch, "Scryabin and Contemporary Russian Music," The Russian Review 2/1 (1913): 158.
The concert occurred on 1 February 1913. Not everyone agreed on the effectiveness of uiis strategy.
Eaglefield-Hull grumbled, "surely some less brutal policy dian die plan of playing die work twice over at
one concert could have been found. Who would want to hear, say, the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven
dirough twice running?'' "The Five Symphonies of Scriabin," Monthly Musical Record (1 Feb. 1916): 36.
30
Newmarch, "'Prometheus': Poem of Fire," The Musical Times 55/854 (1 April 1914): 227-231;
"Alexander Scriabin," The Musical Times (1 June 1915): 329-330; and "Scriabin, Alexander Nicholaevich," in
Grove's Dictionary ofMusic and Musicians, Vol. 4, ed. H. C. Colles (New York: Macmillan, 1937), 702-703.
Mitchell, Scriabin: The Great Russian Tone Poet (London: Hawkes & Sons, 1927).
Gervais, "Skriabin, Alexander Nikolayevitch," in Grove's Dictionary, Vol. 7, 832.
 47
many, antagonism on the part of some, and genuine enthusiasm on the part of others."

Mitchell suspected that many "thought they ought to like this music merely because it was

new.'" 3 Eyewitness accounts, however, attest to the British public's genuine enthusiasm

for Scriabin's music, even such a late work as Prometheus. Critic E. A. Baughan cautioned

future historians about Scriabin's English reception:

These facts are set down here as material for the future historian, so that he shall
not write of Scriabin as having been cast out by the London public. Nor should
the historian place too much reliance on the statements in the public prints that
the composer of 'Prometheus' was honoured by the public because the public
likes a sensation.34

Critic M. Montagu-Nathan contradicted Baughan by arguing, "The attitude of the British

public towards Skryabin cannot, on the whole, be considered as having been friendly."35

Yet as we have seen, primary sources suggest otherwise. The English musical public's

embrace of Scriabin is all the more remarkable considering their brief exposure to only a

smattering of early works by the time Prometheus premiered in that country in 1913.36

American audiences similarly appreciated what little they knew of the composer's

music by the early 1920s. In 1921, an anonymous New York critic deemed him "one of

the foremost modern Russian composers," while critic Lawrence Gilman hailed Scriabin

as "one of the most fashionable of modern composers." Summing up the composer's

Mitchell, Scriabin: The Great Russian Tone Poet, 2.

34
Baughan, "On the Modern Language of Music," The Musical Times 55/854 (1 April 1914): 231.
Baughan (1865-1938) was a film and music critic for the London Daily News.
Contemporary Russian Composers (NY: Frederick Stokes, 1917), 37. He predicted that Scriabin's music
"will probably not have a very long life." See Percy Scholes, Crotchets (London: John Lane, 1924), 132.
Eaglefield-Hull bemoaned, "What would have been the fate of Beethoven's works in England had we
been introduced to the Ninth Symphony and die later quartets, with no other preparation dian perhaps the
knowledge of a few of the undistinctive works of a precocious childhood . . . Yet this is exacdy die way
Scriabin has been forced on us." "The Five Symphonies of Scriabin," 36.
Anonymous, "Scriabin The Man and Musician," American Review of Reviews 64/6 (December 1921):
657. Gilman, "Music of the Month: A Mystical Tone Poet," North American Review 155 (June 1922): 838-
844. Gilman (1878-1939) was music critic for Harper's Weekly (1901-1913), the North American Review (1913-
1923), and the New York Herald Tribune, a post he held until his deadi.
 48
American stature during the early 1920s, one unnamed critic noted, "Among European

modernists, [Scriabin's] ghost disputes with the living Stravinsky the distinction of being

the musical idol of the younger set."38 Critic Paul Rosenfeld was particularly fond of

Scriabin's music and in 1917 published a glowing account of his creative evolution in

Seven Arts, a journal he edited from 1916 to 1918. He later expanded his article with

greater encomium for a 1920 book, Musical Portraits. In his final Scriabin essay (1936),

Rosenfeld reaffirmed his appreciation for the composer's music, but lamented that

"Scriabin's glory remains fairly complete in its eclipse."39 Among other American critics,

W. J. Turner also touted Scriabin's music in the popular press: "No one since Bach not

even Wagner - has succeeded in building up such a magnificent fabric of sound."40 Critics

either commented on or contributed to the surfeit of enthusiasm towards the composer.

By 1926 Robert Hull could well write, "For the moment [Scriabin's] writings are out of

fashion, the almost inevitable result after an overdose in the last few years."41

Clearly Scriabin's music did not disappear with the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution or

even World War I. Aside from the dedication of performers and praise of critics, what

else accounted for the composer's incandescent afterlife? Let us begin in the early post-

Revolutionary years, when enlightened Bolshevik officials who oversaw this historic

transition sought to forge a balance between the old and new regimes.

38
Carol Oja, Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s (NY: Oxford University Press, 2000), 51-52.
39
See Rosenfeld, "Scriabine," Seven Arts 2 (August 1917): 638-645; Musical Portraits (New York: Harcourt,
Brace & Co. 1920; Second ed., 1968), 177-189; "Scriabin and Mrs. Grundy," The New Republic 79/1018 (6
June 1934): 104; and "Scriabin Again," in Discoveries of a Music Critic (NY: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1936), 158.
40
Turner, "Music: Stravinsky and Scriabin," The New Statesman 14/346 (22 November 1919): 220-221; and
"Promeuieus," The New Statesman 16/414 (19 March 1921): 705. Reprinted in Music and life (London:
Meuthen & Co., 1921), 51-55. Walter James Turner (1889-1946) held posts as music critic of The New
Statesman, drama critic of the London Mercury, and literary editor of the Spectator.
41
Hull, "Scriabin: A Comment," The Musical'Times 67/'1005 (1 November 1926): 994.
 49
Post-Revolutionary Torchbearers

The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution initiated a pronounced shift in social, cultural, and

political affairs across the newly formed Soviet Union. The violent seizure of power

prompted an exodus of Russia's musical beau monde, including Rachmaninoff,

Stravinsky, Medtner, and Horowitz. The Bolsheviks wrested administrative and economic

control over musical affairs by nationalizing the conservatories, publishing houses, and

theaters. Those who remained enjoyed a period of tolerance designed to earn the respect

and trust of the remaining intelligentsia who historian Francis Maes pointed out, "did not

bother to disguise their distaste for Bolshevik vulgarity and brutality."42 Although native

artists enjoyed considerable creative latitude during those years, material scarcity, hunger,

and emotional distress beset the daily lives of Russians, leading them to embrace music

with a feverish intensity. Arthur Lourie noted that, "There was no bread, and art took its

place. At no time and in no place have I seen people, not listening to, but devouring

music with such trembling eagerness, such feeling as in Russia during those years."43

Thus in many respects, the charged atmosphere of pre-Revolutionary times

continued unabated, and Scriabin's hyperemotional scores provided the public with music

that matched the mood. In 1922 the Bolshevik journal l^vestiia published an editorial on

various composers' suitability for modern proletarian audiences. The article caused such

a stir that the London Times reprinted it in extenso:

Maes, A History of Russian Musk: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1996), 237.
Amy Nelson, Music for the Revolution: Musicians and Power in Early Soviet Russia (University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 13. A famous anecdote supports the view that music was above
political concerns in Revolutionary Russia. Chaliapin proudly recalled how the sounds of cannon fire only
momentarily disrupted his performance of Verdi's Don Carlos on the evening of October 25, 1917 as the
Bolsheviks stormed the Tsar's Winter Palace. See Nelson, Musicfor the Revolution: Musicians and Power in Early
Soviet Russia (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 13-14.
 50
For the bourgeoisie music serves as a recreation, a balsam for the soul, a narcotic for
overstrained nerves . . . for us music is more: it is a means of agitation, a necessity
for the workman . . . Unfortunately we have no proletarian music, but still, there is
music for the proletariat . . . Haydn reflects the feudal age. Glinka is the spiritual
interpreter of our former nobility and land-owners. Rimsky-Korsakov,
Mussorgsky, and Borodin are pan-Slavonic. Wagner is a retrograde, and his music
is only externally revolutionary. But we need the cheerful Mozart, the heroic
Beethoven, the titan calling to battle: we greet the genial Scriabin.44

The article sparked considerable debate over the Bolsheviks' double standard. A London

Times correspondent patently objected to this list of approved composers, offhandedly

remarking that Scriabin "is hardly genial, and he too was, according to Bolshevist ideas,

sunk in superstition - that is to say, profoundly religious and humanitarian."45

Despite this seemingly irreconcilable convergence of Silver Age and Soviet

aesthetics, Scriabin's music earned the Party's approval, ensuring his success during the

early post-Revolutionary period. As we shall see, influential intellectuals who remained in

Russia after the Revolution joined forces with enlightened apparatchiks to usher Silver

Age ideals into the post-Revolutionary period.

Anonymous, "Through Bolshevist Ears," London Times (10 October 1922), 11C. For a response to the
original article, see A. K., "The 'Genial' Scriabin," The Musical Times 63/957 (1 November 1922): 803.
Anonymous, "Bolshevism and Music," London Times (12 October 1922), 13E.
 51
Ivanov and Russian Symbolism

Acclaimed poet and philosopher Viacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949) ranks as a figure-

head of Russian symbolism and a tireless promoter of Scriabin's legacy. The two artists

enjoyed a kinship during the last two years of the composer's life based on their mutual

fascination with Wagner, the Dionysian/Apollonian duality, the commingling of spiritual

love with eroticism and sex, and ancient theater.46 Ivanov affectionately described their

camaraderie as a "profound and luminous event in my spiritual development."47 After the

composer's death in 1915, Ivanov evinced his devotion by founding a memorial society,

"Venok Skriabina," and delivering dozens of lectures before concerts and at Scriabin

Society meetings during the years 1915-1919. He further served on a committee that

edited and published the text of I'Acteprealabk, the score of which Scriabin left unfinished.

Ivanov's writings on Scriabin include five essays and nine poems, and these vivid

texts illustrate how audiences were urged to see the composer through the poet's vision.48

He contended that Scriabin's late opera had surpassed the limits of traditional art to

achieve a religious art imbued with universal significance. Ivanov rejected Sabaneev's

depiction of the composer as delusional or an egomaniac, citing Scriabin's Mysterium (see

Chapter One) as a prime example of this quality. He averred that Scriabin's glimpse into

the future had sown the seeds for a sacramental rite. Slavic historian Robert Bird has

See Ralph Matlaw, "Scriabin and Russian Symbolism," 5.

Translated in Matlaw, ibid., 5. Cf. Ivanov, Svet vechernii (London: Clarendon Press, 1962), 193.
Ivanov's writings on Scriabin include: "Vzgliad Skriabina na iskusstvo" (Scriabin's View of Art, 1915);
"Natsional'noe i vselenskoe v tvorchestve Skriabina" (The National and Universal in Scriabin's Creative
Work, 1915); "Skriabin i dukh revoliutsii" (Scriabin and the Spirit of Revolution, 1917); "Skriabin" (1919);
and "Rech', posviashchennaia pamiati A. N. Skriabina na vechere v Bol'shom Zale konservatorii," (A
Speech in Memoriam of A. N. Scriabin for an Evening at the Grand Hall of the Conservatory, 1920). All of
these essays appear with commentary in Irina Myl'nikova, ed. Pamiatniki kul'tury: Novye otkritiia (Leningrad:
Nauka, 1985).
 52
interpreted Ivanov's poem "Chelovek" (Man, 1915-1919) as a veiled defense of the

Mysterium. Amidst Russia's darkest hours, the poem's protagonist upliftingly recalls the

Mysterium as the promise of a bright future.49 Moscow University professor and Bolsh-

evist Nikolai Ustrialov bemoaned the dense language and complex structure of "Chelo-

vek," prompting Ivanov to leap to the defense of the poem as well as its inspiration:

In life there is an inner morphological law which is often inaccessible to

nonartists. Due to this law Scriabin, for example, must be innovative, while in the
opinion of outsiders, it is not that he must be but that he wants to be; what to him
is necessity to them seems caprice.

Acutely aware of the barrier between the artist and his audience, Ivanov vowed to

translate Scriabin's message for the common people. To those unfamiliar with the

composer's tongue, he explained that "a new voice, whose tones the ordinary ear had not

yet learned to hear, had begun to speak," in the words of historian Patricia Mueller-

Vollmer.51 Speaking to a laborers' group in 1919, Ivanov identified the composer as a

beacon during the years of revolution: "modern Russian art has been conditioned by a

presentiment of the revolution. This can hardly be doubted, at least for those who

understand Scriabin's music." 2 Ivanov's sermons proved persuasive. Following one of

his pre-concert lectures, esteemed St. Petersburg critic Viacheslav Karatygin remarked,

"How could we expect that a pronouncement about a musician made by a person who

has litde to do with music would be nearly the most significant and meaningful thing that

has been said or written so far about the creator of the Poem ofEcstasy and Prometheus?"53

See Robert Bird, The Russian Prospero: The Creative Universe of Viacheslav Ivanov (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 2006), 113.
Quoted in Bird, The Russian Prospero, 114.
Mueller-Vollmer, in Cultura e Memoria I: Atti del ter%o simposio Internationale dedicate a Vjaceslav Ivanov, ed.
Fausto Malcovati (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1988), 195,198.
Ivanov, "Zerkalo iskusstva," Vestnik teatra 4 (11 Feb. 1919): 2. Quoted in Bird, Russian Prospero, 114.
53
Karatygin, "Lektsiia-konsert pamiati A. N. Skriabina," Rech' (1915), 4.
 53
Ivanov's image of Scriabin as an artist-hero strongly reflects his symbolist beliefs,

and a brief discussion of his credo will clarify the qualities he stressed in his promotion of

the composer. Music occupied a primary role in Ivanov's ideology, as he linked it to the

origins of language and religion and believed it to be infused with dynamism. Ivanov

equated this living force with a Dionysian quality, and argued that any genuine effort to

communicate with the "more real" divine (a realibus ad realiord) stemmed from an upsurge

of will channeled through music. Ivanov asserted that western culture was on the cusp of

a spiritual, historical, and even cosmic transition that would usher in collective unity, or

sobornost'. As the symbolist composer par excellence, Scriabin seemed preordained to super-

vise this next evolutionary phase. Scriabin's harmonic innovations and multimedia

conceptions signified for Ivanov the dionysian quality that could vouchsafe a vision of the

divine to the masses.54 Mueller-Vollmer observed, "Ivanov links apollonian music with

the last stages of the historical epoch of individualism, whereas he connects dionysian

music with the future organic age and the spiritual harmony that will pervade it."55

In his role as a Dionysian artist, Scriabin exemplified the traits that Ivanov prized

most in his theories about art's social function. Ivanov postulated that true art provides a

universal medium of communication by establishing a spiritual bond between the artist

and his audience, thus connecting each individual to the larger cosmic scheme. Slavic

scholar James West described Ivanov's vision of the ideal relationship between the artist

and his or her audience:

See Victoria Adamenko, Neo-Mythologism in Music (Hillsdale, New York: Pendragon Press, 2007). Also
see Rolf-Dieter Kluge, "Vjacheslav Ivanovs Beitrag zu einer symbolistischen Theorie der Literatur und
Kunst als Schliissel zum Verstandis seiner Aufsatze iiber Aleksandr Skrjabin," in Vjacheslav Ivanov: Russischer
Dichter-europdischer Kulturphilosoph. Beitrage dis IV. Internationalen Vjacheslav Ivanov Symposiums, Heidelberg, 4-10
September 1989, ed. Wilfried Pottholf (Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag C. Winter, 1993), 240-249.
Mueller-Vollmer, "Ivanov on Skrjabin," in Cultura e Memoria, ed. Malcovati, 193.
 54
The artist perceives the "more real" behind the objects of reality, and "ascends" in
search of it; he "descends" from his vision of the higher reality, in order to
express it in terms of the lower reality, the material world. His art in turn leads
the spectator from the material reality of his surroundings to the reality of the
external values a realibus ad realiora?6

In other words, art should transform society by spiritually elevating humanity. Such a

populist viewpoint was a common conviction among the so-called "second generation"

of symbolists from Ivanov's era. In striving to achieve this collective identity through art,

Ivanov reacted against the nineteenth-century glorification of the artist as an individual

with wholly unique experiences. He argued that the artist should not revel in

individuality, but serve as a divine vessel who enlightens audiences through art. Ivanov's

view of art as a celebration further reflects his Dionysian predilections:

Painting craves frescoes, architecture craves public gatherings-places, music calls

for the chorus and the drama, the drama for music; the theatre strives to unite in
one "action" the whole crowd gathered for the celebration. [. . .] Thus art looks
towards the sources of the soul of the people.57

A closer examination of Ivanov's essays on Scriabin will illustrate his depiction of

the composer as an artist-hero charged with the task of transfiguring humanity. He read

"Scriabin's View of Art" at Scriabin Society meeting in Petrograd on 11 December 1915,

in Moscow on 13 February 1916, and in Kiev in April 1916. In 1919, Ivanov compiled

this essay along with "The National and Universal in Scriabin's Creative Work" and

"Scriabin" into an edition to be published through Alkonost and dedicated to the comp-

oser's son Julian, who drowned that year at age eleven. Regrettably, Ivanov abandoned

the project, although the lectures were still read on numerous occasions. "Scriabin's View

West, Russian Symbolism: A Study of Vyacheslav Ivanov and the Russian Symbolist Aesthetic (London: Metheun
and Co., 1970), 170.
57
Ivanov, Po %ye%danr. stat'i i afori^my (By the Stars: Essays and Aphorisms) (St. Petersburg: Ory, 1909), 244.
Quoted in West, Russian Symbolism: A Study of Vyacheslav Ivanov and the Russian Symbolist Aesthetic, 71.
 55
of Art" (1915) traces the historical evolution of art towards humanism and identifies

Scriabin as a "living torch" chosen to "ignite the Phoenix fire of humanity" and reorient

art back towards its religious function. Ivanov adopted reverential tones in his emphasis

on the spiritual quality of Scriabin's music:

All of Scriabin's creative work became a general integration, the gathering of

dispersed components into the single whole. [. . .] Everything was to be borne by
the chorus, which was to divide up and merge together in manifold ways . . . it
was to be a many-faced chorus but filled with a single collective consciousness
and inspiration. It was not a chorus of performers but the sacramental chorus of
those who perform liturgical service.58

After likening Scriabin's music to a religious experience, Ivanov posits that this synthetic

quality endowed his art with a universal significance that can be difficult for the

uninitiated to comprehend or even recognize, like "the flight of an arrow that has been

shot right over the visible horizon and disappears so far away that we are powerless either

to encompass or to measure with our eye the distance that has buried it." This supra-

national quality distinguished Scriabin from such forebears as the Mighty Five, whose

nationalistic works displayed individual talent and local color, but lacked universal

significance. Ivanov impelled listeners to behold Scriabin's accomplishments, urging that,

"Instead of measuring expanses transcendent to us, let us admire the powerful muscles of

a giant archer who was able to pull so taut the string of his bow."59

Ivanov's 1915 essay "The National and Universal in Scriabin's Creative Work"

further establishes the composer's position within Russian musical traditions and his

historical significance as a revolutionary artist. Ivanov insisted that, "Scriabin's aspirations

represent the moment of universal self-determination on the part of the national Russian

Quoted in Bird, The Russian Prospero, 213, 211, 226.

Ibid, 213.
 56
soul." This transcendent quality marked the composer as a "national genius" who could

impart esoteric knowledge to the masses. Mueller-Vollner noted that the national genius

"spiritually unites his nation (even when it does not recognize him or scorns him), and

enjoys a profound sensitivity to all the emotional and intellectual currents that are alive in

his people, including that of which they are not yet conscious." Scriabin's early death

validated his role as an artist-hero. Ivanov explained, "He presented Fate with the bold

demand: 'Either the cleansing renewal of the world will occur right now or else there is no

place for me in the world.' To which Fate responded: 'Die and renew yourself.'" With his

self-sacrifice, Scriabin became "a new fixed star in the heaven of our achieved glories."61

After 1920, Ivanov maintained his vigilant campaign to preserve and promote Silver

Age ideals after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, but he faced mounting challenges under

the new regime. Fortunately, he secured prestigious posts in the State theatre and literary

departments during 1919-1920. At the theatre department Ivanov reworked his Scriabin

essays and addressed them to the revolutionary masses. 62 By 1920 Ivanov earned

permission to leave the Soviet Union, eventually settling in Rome. Although he never

returned to the Soviet Union, his establishment of Silver Age ideals in the new socio-

political climate did not disappear in his absence, as like-minded Soviet officials continued

his efforts.

Quoted in Marina Kostalevsky, "The Birth of Poetry from the Spirit of Criticism: Ivanov on Skrjabin,"
Russian Literature 44/'3 (1 October 1998): 323.
Ivanov, in Bird, Selected Essays, 220; and Ivanov, quoted in Mueller-Vollmer, "Ivanov on Skrjabin," in
Cultura e Memoria, ed. Malcovati, 199.
See Bird, The Russian Prospero, 32.
 57
Among the bolsheviks: Lunacharsky and Laurie

While the 1920s signaled a new era for Soviet politics, Russia's pre-Revolutionary

heritage was rescued from oblivion by the first People's Commissariat of Education

(Narodnyi komissariat prosveshcheniia or NARKOMPROS), Anatoli Lunacharsky (1875-

1933). During his tenure, 1918-1929, Lunacharsky promoted pre-Revolutionary music to

expose the masses to a culture that had been exclusive to the bourgeoisie. Historian Isaac

Deutscher remarked that Lunacharsky "combined in himself the qualities of the guardian

of the heritage and those of the innovator."63 Lunacharsky considered art for the people

as revolutionary, due to its ability to capture the collective imagination of common

people. Lenin agreed that art must be accessible to the people, but as a self-confessed

philistine, he accepted Scriabin purely on political grounds. Although the Commissar

incorporated religious philosophy into his political platform, he valued revolutionary

music for its experimental form and content rather than its ability to enlighten spiritually.

Timothy O'Connor, Sheila Fitzpatrick, and others have documented Lunacharsky's

achievements, but the Commissar's adaptation of Silver Age values for the new political

climate and his penchant for Scriabin's music has received less attention.64 Lunacharsky

co-opted the symbolist ideal of communal art, but in service of populism rather than the

spiritual transfiguration that Ivanov and Scriabin had envisioned. The Commissar argued

that the culture and society of the future rested on the foundation of the past, and his

championing of Scriabin is only one example of his philanthropy towards Silver Age

Deutscher, introduction in Lunacharsky,'RevolutionarySilhouettes, trans. Michael Glenny (New York: Hill

andWang, 1967),18.
Principal sources consulted for this section include O'Connor, The Politics of Soviet Culture: Anatoli
Eunacharskii (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983); Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment: Soviet
Organisation of Education and the Arts under Eunacharsky (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); and
A. L. Tait, Eunacharsky: Poet of the Revolution (1875-1907) (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1984).
 58
figures. Lunacharsky granted privileged status to pre-Revolutionary artists, even arranging

for Koussevitzky and symbolist poet Konstantin Bal'mont to travel abroad on the State

payroll. In 1920, Lunacharsky expedited Ivanov's emigration from the Soviet Union and

secured employment for his daughter. The Commissar secured Ivanov a professorship at

Azerbaijan State University in Baku and arranged for his ill family members to convalesce

at a State sanatorium in Kislovodsk. Lunacharsky also secured State funds to preserve

and convert Scriabin's final residence into a State museum, still in operation today.66

Lunacharsky could not know how closely his own vision of transcendence through

pre-Revolutionary art accorded with Ivanov's view. The Commissar envisioned a Utopian

ideal of collective humanity through a "religion of socialism"; just as humanity could

connect with the divine, the bourgeoisie would unite with the proletariat.67 For

Lunacharsky, music offered the vehicle to this goal: "No other art form except music is

able to express with such infinite diversity what appears to be the genuine essence of the

world."68 He even incorporated religious metaphors in his public addresses in order to

speak the language of the people. Quoting Ivanov's teacher and the patriarch of Russian

symbolism, Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900), Lunacharsky believed that art's purpose was

to "incarnate in sense images that higher meaning of life which the philosopher expresses

in concepts, which is preached by the moralist, and realized by the historical personage."69

Fitzpa trick, The Commissariat ofEnlightenment, 131. Cf. Bird, The Russian Prospero, 34.
After a fire nearly destroyed the composer's final residence in 1919, Lunacharsky allocated State funds
to restore the apartment to its original condition; the Society of Friends of Scriabin also provided financial
assistance. See Sina Lichtman, "A Visit to die Scriabin Museum," Singing and Playing 3 (August 1928): 8-9.
Delos Banning McKown noted diat Lunacharsky identified socialist realities with Christian symbols,
classified Marxism as a religion, and elevated Marx to the rank of a Hebrew prophet. See The Classical
Marxist Critiques of Religion: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Kautskj (Phe Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975), 118-119.
Lunacharsky, trans. Don Wetzel, "On Scriabin," journal of the Scriabin Society 8/1 (Winter 2003-04): 43.
Quoted in Victor Terras, Belinskij and Russian Uterary Criticism: The Heritage of Organic Aesthetics (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1974), 268.
 59
Historian George Kline clarified that, "Lunacharsky preached not the ideal in man, with

the ethical culturalists, or the ideal above man, with the theists, but the ideal ahead of man

in history."70 By fusing Silver Age idealism with modern political sensibility, Lunacharsky

reconciled the cultural heritage of the past with contemporary proletarian dogma.

Scriabin's music and philosophy apdy illustrated Lunacharsky's vision of the collect-

ive ideal. A persuasive orator well versed in classical music, Lunacharsky often compared

socio-political issues to representations of struggle or triumph in symphonic works. He

preferred program music because it depicted a specific idea: "The true work of art," he

insisted, "is a philosophy in images."71 He valued Scriabin's music, then, because it

exceeded a mere "tonal goal" by weaving a narrative of "precise content." Artwork that

conveyed a humanitarian ideal (ideal'nost) was more important to Lunacharsky than toeing

the Party line.72 "In Scriabin," Lunacharsky urged, "there was a powerful tendency

toward the societal, the national, and even the cosmic; in this he belonged to the people

that went through the great revolution of 1905 and was on its way to the greatest of all

revolutions." 73 This revolutionary quality manifested itself in the ecstatic climaxes of such

works as Poeme de I'extase and Prometheus. Lunacharsky pressed audiences to recognize a

correlation between the composer's music and their own turbulent times: "He would

have recognized the greatness of our days," Lunacharsky insisted; "Scriabin, despite his

individualism, passed from the representation of passion to the representation of the

Revolution . . . He was its musical prophet, and therein lies his social significance."74

Kline, Religious and Anti-Religious Thought in Russia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 106.
Quoted in Terras, Belinskij and Russian Uterary Criticism: The Heritage of Organic Aesthetics, 268.
Terras, Belinskij and Russian Literary Criticism, 268.
Lunacharsky, quoted in Rudakova and Kandinsky, Scriabin: His Life and Times, 125.
Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 62; and Lunacharsky, trans. Wetzel, "On Scriabin," 43.
 60
Lunacharsky ensured that performances of Scriabin's music at Bolshevik festivals

closely aligned with socialist ideals. A NARKOMPROS concert of 6 November 1918

attended by Lenin honored the first anniversary of the October Revolution by performing

Prometheus.15 Another 1918 concert at the Bolshoi featured Prometheus as well as the

Popular Assembly scene from Rimsky-Korsakov's The Maid of Pskov and Aleksandr

Gorsky's ballet Stenka Ra^zri); accounts noted that the program was "unified by the theme

of rebellion, of the people rising up in the name of reason, light, and liberty."76 On 8 May

1921, Lunacharsky delivered a lecture for a Bolshoi concert commemorating the sixth

anniversary of the composer's death. His speech affords a keen understanding of the

image that he projected of Scriabin.77 The Commissar regarded him as a "prophet and

herald who stands at the doors of a genuine 'Mysterium,' one to which the whole history

of mankind has been only a prelude."78 Adopting reverential tones, Lunacharsky assured

audiences that Scriabin "teaches us not to fear suffering, not to fear death, but to believe

in the triumphant life of the spirit." Even adaptations of Scriabin's music ably served as

communist propaganda. Historian James Von Geldern maintained that "sovietization was

consummated" in Andrey Vinogradov's Golden King, a "synthetic production" concerning

capitalism and labor, and set to themes from Prometheus. Playwright Valentin Smyshliaev

produced a version of Vinogradov's play in which Prometheus symbolized the

"proletariat, bound to the rock of capitalism." The Red Army instigates a revolution by

Rudakova and Kandinsky, Scriabin: His Ufe and Times, 119.

76
Von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals, 1917-1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 76-77.
Lunacharsky, trans. Don Louis Wetzel, "On Scriabin." Lunacharsky's speech appeared on 20 May
1921 in the journal Kultura teatra and was reprinted in 1958 in the State publication, V mire musyki (In the
World of Music), a collection of Lunacharsky's writings on music. Remaining quotes in this paragraph are
from this source. Wetzel has translated many primary sources relating to Scriabin, including several larger
writings currently in manuscript or review. See his personal website at http://www.donlouiswetzel.com.
78
Wetzel, "On Scriabin," 43.
 61
79
freeing him from his chains. Such explicit comparisons of Scriabin's music with

communist values demonstrated his official approval by Soviet administrators.

A final shared vision between Lunacharsky and Ivanov is their mutual regard for

Scriabin as an artist-hero. Historian Howard Holter argued that Lunacharsky's onto-

logical view of history reserved a place for the artist-hero who "possesses special faculties

that enable him to penetrate more deeply than others into human existence. An artist

may or may not possess political or social awareness, but in spite of himself he plays a

part in the development of political ideas."80 The Commissar painted a saintly image of

Scriabin, appealing to listeners "to touch, as one would a precious stone or sacred token,

that which he did give to us." Lunacharsky and Ivanov also concluded that the artist-hero

needed a facilitator to attune conditions for his reception, and they eagerly seized upon

this role. Ivanov and Lunacharsky, however, remained divided on one key issue of

Scriabin's mythical status as an artist-hero: the composer's premature death. As we have

seen, Ivanov regarded Scriabin's death as a necessary sacrifice that allowed his mythical

legacy to endure. The Commissar, however, lamented the composer's early death as a

senseless tragedy: "The person, whom we objectively recognize as a genius and the hope

of Russian music and who considers himself the creator, ruler, and redeemer of the

world, perishes because of an incidental trifle in the most pathetic way."81 Affinities

between Lunacharsky and Ivanov in their championing of Scriabin's legacy, however,

ensured a measure of continuity between their assertions of his significance.

/y
Quoted in Geldern, bolshevik Festivals, 1917-1920, 144.
Holter, "The Legacy of Lunacharsky and Artistic Freedom in the USSR," Slavic Review 29/2 (June
1970): 274.
Lunacharsky, translated in Wetzel, "On Scriabin," 43.
 62
Lunacharsky's direct involvement of modernist artists in political affairs ranks as his

chief accomplishment in NARKOMPROS, and in 1918 he selected Arthur Lourie (1892-

1966) to supervise the music division, MUZO, after Koussevitzky had declined. Lourie

retained this prestigious post until 1921. A pianist-composer whose early works bear

imprints of Scriabin's style,82 Lourie held liberal opinions of modern music, politics, and

culture, and complemented Lunacharsky's campaign to preserve Silver Age music. In

1927 Sabaneev described him as "an exquisite aesthete, a highly cultured and extremely

clever man" who "did a great deal to preserve a number of musical treasures, which

possibly would have perished in the storms of the revolution." Sabaneev recorded that,

Due to the good fortune that the first music 'rninister' of Soviet Russia was Arthur
Lourie, an ultra-modernist and follower of Stravinsky and Schoenberg, the modern
school of thought predominated in musical bureaucratic circles . . . promotional
propaganda was organized for the modernists; their works were published by the
State, an act that doubdessly represented a positive aspect of this period.83

With Lunacharsky and Lourie in NARKOMPROS, modern music, especially

Scriabin, flourished. In the ongoing effort to educate the masses in cultural matters,

Lunacharsky instituted weekly "people's concerts" in Petrograd and in 1918 he elected

Lourie as its program director, a task Lourie frequendy executed without consulting his

colleagues. A headstrong gadfly determined to champion modern music at any cost,

Lourie heavily programmed compositions by Scriabin, Ravel, and Debussy. While head

Critic Otto von Riesemann characterized Lourie's piano music as "lisping and stammering in Scriabin's
manner." Quoted in Carl Engel, "Views and Reviews," The Musical Times 10/4 (October 1924): 627. For
more on Lourie's background and compositional style, see Larry Sitsky, Music of the Repressed Avant-Garde,
1900-1929 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994), 87-90.
Sabaneev, "Die Musik und die musikalischen Kreise Russlands in der Nachkriegszeit," Musikbldtter des
Anbruch 7 (1925): 106; quoted in Anna Ferenc, "Music in the Socialist State" in Neil Edmunds, ed., Soviet
Music and Society under-Lenin and Stalin: The Baton and the Sickle (New York: Roudedge, 2004), 9. Other music
specialists affiliated with NARKOMPROS included composers Vladimir Shcherbachev and Miaskovski;
musicologists Asafyev, Pavel Mann, and Nadezhda Briusova; critics Vladimir Derzhanovskii and
Viacheslav Karatygin; pianists Konstantin Eiges and Konstantin Igmnov; and violinist Lev Tseidin. See
Ferenc, 9-10.
 63
of MUZO, Lourie nationali2ed several musical institutions and promoted new music,

especially his own. A decade before Lourie published his landmark biography, Sergei

Koussevityky and His Epoch (1931), he published a booklet entitled Skriabin i msskaia muvgka

that originated as a pre-concert speech delivered the previous year at a fifth anniversary

concert in memory of Scriabin's death. In it he recorded that

the Music Section arranged a grand cycle of his works, extended over a whole
week. All the orchestral compositions were given under Koussevitzky, and the
pianoforte pieces were played by the best Russian soloists. The cycle was
prefaced by a solemn gathering, at which speeches in honour of Scriabin's
memory were made by poets and musicians.84

In 1919-1920, Lourie also established the Assotsiatsiia sovremennoi muyyki (Association for

Contemporary Music or ASM), which sponsored a chamber music series and "musical

exhibitions" featuring his newest works alongside those of Scriabin and Debussy.85 His

reluctance to program anything but avant-garde music drew censure from union leaders

and Conservatory professors, who by 1921 started scrutinizing MUZO's practices.86

As a fellow composer, Lourie appreciated Scriabin's symphonic gifts, a talent that

distinguished the elder composer from his nationalist forebears, whose art Lourie believed

was provincial. In his mind, "as far as the Russian symphonic music of that period is

concerned, only two men count Tchaikovsky and Scriabin." He regarded Scriabin as a

musical descendant of Tchaikovsky, as both artists' music vividly portrayed the

impassioned Russian spirit. Lourie argued that despite their divergent temperaments,

Lourie, reprinted in Sergei Koussevitzky and His Epoch, 165.

Amy Nelson, Musicfor the Revolution: Musicians and Power in Early Soviet Russia, 48.
Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov and Aleksandr Gol'denvieser of the Moscow Conservatory voiced concerns
over Lourie's "meddlesome" behavior and slandering of die professional standards and bourgeois ideology
of State-employed orchestral musicians. In the fall of 1920, Rabis and the Workers' and Peasants'
Inspectorate both launched critical inquiries into MUZO's questionable practices, which hastened die end
of Lourie's political career. See Amy Nelson, Musicfor the Revolution, 38-39.
Lourie, Sergei Koussevitzky and His Epoch (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1931), 120.
 64
Tchaikovsky and Scriabin similarly incorporated Western influences, yet also exemplified

Russian traditions by representing the values of the intelligentsia. Like Tchaikovsky,

Scriabin had sacrificed his individual desires in order to create a universal art that carried a

redemptive message to the masses. Echoing Ivanov's hierophantic pronouncements,

Lourie maintained that, "Scriabin was one of the last of those artists for whom the spirit

of the music was the spirit of humanistic culture."88

Like Lunacharsky and Ivanov, Lourie recognized Scriabin as a national genius due

to his synthetic approach to art. Lourie contended that Scriabin had freed Russian music

from its nationalistic confines, but rather than stressing its universalism through national-

istic means, Lourie emphasized that "Scriabin was the first Russian musician who took as

the basis for his work exclusively Western musical culture in its contemporary

manifestation. This reflects the novelty of his position as a Russian musician . . . Scriabin

healed a decaying Western European music by infusing into it the fresh blood of the

enormous, spontaneous temperament of a Russian musician."89 Although Lourie perhaps

unconditionally accepted Scriabin's stylistic eclecticism, such contemporaries as Stravinsky

held the opposite view and characterized Scriabin's creative direction as an "ideological,

psychological, and sociological disorder." Accusing Scriabin of rootless cosmopolitanism,

Stravinsky wondered in his 1939-1940 Charles Eliot Norton lectures (first published in

1947 as Poetics ofMusic), "frankly, is it possible to connect a musician like Scriabin with any

tradition whatsoever? Where does he come from? And who are his forebears?"90

Ibid., 131. Lourie figuratively described the Bolshevik Revolution as an inevitable "historical process
[that] in its entirety was 'music' It was the agitated element, dark and turgid, which cast up on the shores of
life that which was hidden in the abyss of its chaos let loose." Sergei Koussevitsfzy and His Epoch, 74.
Lourie, "Alexander Scriabin and Russian Music," trans. Don Louis Wetzel, journal of the Scriabin Society
of America 10/1 (Winter 2005-2006): 60.
90
Poetics ofMusic, trans. Arthur Knodel and Ingolf Dahl (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 98.
 65
Lourie regarded Scriabin as an artist w h o served as the voice of the people because

his music especially his restless rhythms captured the turbulent spirit of his era. In a

speech for the fifth anniversary of Scriabin's death, Lourie echoed Ivanov's description of

the composer as a mythical figure whose significance had yet to b e fully understood:

T h e rebelliousness of Scriabin and his audacious idea, which lighted up his work
with Luciferian fire and inflamed his life, will perhaps in the future serve as a
threshold and key to understanding our own days . . . the symphonies of Scriabin
are prophetic harbingers of music, the sound of which has filled all our lives. 91

Lourie had n o political axe to grind and served as a translator of the composer's

mystical vision for the masses. H e argued that the dramatic tension between themes and

motives in Scriabin's works symbolized a convergence of dualistic forces towards "a

national collective action." Lourie argued that Scriabin's significance lay in his aspiration

to synthesize the arts, not through his "unsuccessful" attempts to create a

Gesamtkunstwerk, but through the meterless tempo rubato that distinguished his performance

style. In his speech Lourie explained, "The thesis for [Scriabin] presented itself as a more

external perception of the world of ideas, of feeling and form, an immediate sensation of

life. The antithesis he conceived as an overcoming of his individual 'Too human.' The

synthesis appeared as a form, an embodiment of the whole." 9 2 T h r o u g h this synthetic

approach, Lourie argued, Scriabin surpassed the achievements of his forebears and

championed a cause more worthy than mere nationalistic art. Surprisingly, Lourie placed

little emphasis on the composer's philosophical programs and argued that the

"spontaneous, emotional influence of Scriabin o n a crowd of listeners" could be sensed at

a visceral level.

Lourie, "Alexander Scriabin and Russian Music," trans. Wetzel, 64. Cf. Henri Davenson, "Arthur
Lourie (1892-1966)," Perspectives ofNew Musical 2 (Spring-Summer 1967): 166-169.
Lourie, "Alexander Scriabin and Russian Music," trans. Wetzel, 63.
 66

While it is unlikely that everyday listeners recognized the historical and philoso-

phical qualities that Lourie and other apparatchiks emphasized in Scriabin, contemporary

accounts support Lourie's claim. Russian-born conductor Albert Coates (1882-1953), a

friend and early champion of Scriabin, adopted Poeme de I'extase as his piece de resistance,

launching his recording career with the work and bolstering its popularity through

numerous rousing live performances.93 In 1919, Coates offered an anecdote of his

concert experiences in Russia to Musical America. He noted that Scriabin's core admirers

were not the educated music elite of olden days, but "a new and entirely democratic

public consisting of work-people, peasants, soldiers and sailors":

Their special favorite, strange as it may seem, is Scriabin, and after a performance
of this composer's Poeme d'Extase that I was conducting, the public, which
consisted almost entirely of the "People," shouted themselves hoarse with
enthusiasm. This so astonished me (I had never dreamed that they would
understand it) that I turned to a sailor who was yelling fit to burst his lungs and
asked him what he liked so much about the work. "Ah," he said, "I'm of course
not wise enough to understand it, but it makes me feel like a young horse. I
should love to kick out, and then run around a field for an hour." After this
performance I was continually receiving requests work-people used to stop me
in the streets to get up another concert and conduct Poeme d'Extase, they wanted
so much to hear it.94

Although Coates' euphoric account must be taken with some caution, it nevertheless

presents a striking picture of how Scriabin's music resonated with the spirit of the times.

Musicologist Herbert Antcliffe corroborated Coates' testimony in his observation a few

years later that, "The music of Scriabin offends the listener whose small or great technical

knowledge makes him analyze rather than feel the music. It delights the crowd which

knows not how to analyze but which does feel its deep impelling emotion."95

See Adrian Boult, My Own Trumpet (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1973), 83.
Reprinted in Bowers, The New Scriabin (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973), 7.
Antcliffe, "The Significance of Scriabin," The MusicalQuarterly 10/3 (July 1924): 333.
 67
While Lourie's efforts to promote modern music helped to sustain Scriabin's

presence, his cavalier approach to MUZO's affairs drew persistent complaints and in

1921 his post was reassigned to loyal Party member Boris Krasin. Lourie's frustration

with the increasing emphasis on utilitarian art led him to travel to Berlin in January 1921,

where he befriended Busoni; later in Paris he encountered Stravinsky and endorsed his

music. Like Sabaneev, though, Lourie's move abroad earned him the stigma of persona non

grata/"' Yet despite his brief tenure, Lourie admirably promoted Scriabin's music, and he

and Lunacharsky both recognized that the composer's ecstatic scores spoke to a nation

that looked anxiously to its past for signs of its future.

* * * *

From Scriabin's death in 1915 through the mid-1920s, his music enjoyed a measure

of popularity unmatched until his centennial revival in the early 1970s. This

interpretation of his early posthumous reception shatters the myth that his music was

silenced with his death. His art and ideas survived because Russian citizens looked to

their past to construct the cultural and political platforms of the newly formed Soviet

Union. While the new political vanguard under Lunacharsky endorsed Scriabin as a

beacon of enlightenment, Silver Age artists such as Ivanov remained in the Soviet Union

after the Revolution and promoted Scriabin as a national genius and musical voice of the

people. Although Scriabin's esoteric philosophy and harmonic innovations proved too

elusive for musical laymen, his music left a deep impression on contemporary listeners.

Ferenc, Early Soviet Music under~Leninand Stalin, 10. Later assessments typically note that, "a lot of harm
was done by the activities of the formalist [and] subsequent emigre A. Lourie." Cf. A. D. Alekseev, et a/.,
ed. htoriia russkoi sovetskoi mu^jiki, Vol. I (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe muzykal'noe lzdatel'stvo, 1956), 30n.
 68
A common goal among these supporters was a collective identity through music.

Contemporary accounts suggest that climaxes in Scriabin's scores symbolized this trans-

cendence, instilling a sense of optimism in audiences to triumph over adversity. Consider

Extase's final bars, which crest to an exuberant C major resolution after six hundred bars

of suggestive motives, hovering whole-tone passages, and churning rhythms (see Fig. 2.1):

Figure 2.1. Scriabin, Poeme de I'extase (1908), mm. 594-606.

 69
A final affinity between these post-Revolutionary torchbearers was their idealistic

attitude towards music. Ivanov argued that Scriabin's creative output indicated the future

of music and humanity. Pragmatic Bolsheviks such as Lunacharsky also acknowledged

Scriabin's cultural and historical value and regarded his music as a Rosetta Stone for

uniting and educating the masses. Other devotees such as Lourie believed that Scriabin's

music enriched the cultural stock of Russian art music. Although each of these figures

adopted different approaches that served his own agenda, they all believed that Scriabin's

music could benefit the aesthetic, social, and spiritual lives of its listeners.

Inevitable Decline

While Scriabin's music enjoyed fame for nearly a decade after his death, a decline

was unavoidable. Key supporters left Russia by the mid-1920s, including Ivanov, who

setded in Rome in 1924 and remained there until his death in 1949. Lunacharsky's clout

dwindled after Stalin came to power in 1924, and though Lunacharsky represented the

USSR in the 1930 League of Nations, his health had deteriorated by the end of the 1920s.

Like Scriabin, Lunacharsky's achievements were ignored after his tenure, but the 1960s

brought a Lunacharsky revival, with streets and organizations renamed in his honor. Like-

wise, musical institutions or tekhnikums were named after Scriabin after the Revolution

(Kabalevsky graduated from one), but by mid-century these schools became defunct.

Scriabin's fame declined simultaneously across Europe and in America. In 1923,

critic Nikolai Zhiliaev compared Prokofiev's "healthy, somewhat rude masculinity" to

 70
Scriabin's decadent over-refinement in K novym beregam (To New Shores), reporting, "In

Russia, the dominating influence until recently exerted by Scriabin now seems to shift

towards Prokofiev."97 In 1927 Sabaneev reported a "definite turn away from Skryabin" in

the USSR by the mid-1920s. Parisian audiences had expressed "hostile indifference" as

early as 1924 when Boris Schloezer reported, "Scriabin appears old-fashioned, a demode

anarchist. His supreme fever is out of season in Europe today." Schloezer surmised that

Scriabin's mystical religiosity had offended the tempered tastes of French audiences." In

Germany, one critic contended that Scriabin had "never secured a foothold with his later

symphonic works," although his earlier works had been well received in recitals delivered

by the composer's ex-wife, Vera Isakovich (1875-1920).10

Over a decade of violent controversy elapsed before critics and the public were

capable of passive indifference towards Scriabin. A recently discovered commemorative

postcard (ca. 1915) bears witness to the divisive reactions that his music garnered during

this era. One of a set devoted to such Russian luminaries as Chekhov and Tolstoy, the

postcard features an essay by Moscow-based critic Nikolai Shebuyev' that illustrates the

generational divide.101 Convinced that the composer's imagination had overtaken his

Viktor Beliaev, "Sergei Prokofiev," K novym beregam 2 (May 1923): 19.

Sabaneev, Modern Russian Composers (New York: International Publishers, 1927), 52, 40.
Schloe2er, "Scriabine," Modern Music: League of Composers' Review 1/3 (November 1924): 15; and
"Alexander Scriabin," The Sackbut (November 1926): 92-94. In 1922, Franco-Greco musicologist Michel
Calvocoressi noted that the French concertgoing public "expect from music nothing but the shallower
kinds of emotions . . ." Composers who attempted to engage the audience with profound sentiments met
with acrimony. He listed Brahms, Bruckner, Wolf, Mahler, Strauss, and Tchaikovsky as most guilty of this
transgression and surmised, "I shall be great surprised if Scriabin ever is [taken seriously]." "There and
Here: A Retrospect and Comparisons," The Musical Times 63/948 (February 1922): 95.
Anonymous, "What Germany Thinks of the Late Scriabine," Musical Courier 70/23 (9 June 1915): 32.
Quotes are from the unpublished postcard; the full text appears in the appendix. Nikolai Georgievich
Shebuyev' (1874-1937) [penname Shigaleyev] was a music journalist, political cartoonist, literary and art
critic who wrote for Obo^renie teatrov and Russkoe slovo. His writings on Scriabin include "V pechati" [In the
Press], Obosrenie teatrov 2628 (1921): 6; and "Moskovskaia pechat' o Skriabine" [The Moscow Press on
Scriabin], Obo^renie teatrov 2628 (1921): 7. Aside from Scriabin, Shebuyev' also wrote articles on Rimsky-
 71
rational thought, Shebuyev' lamented that while listening to such works as Poeme de I'extase,

"all the time, Anderson's fairytale The Emperor's New Clothes keeps coming to mind."

Although the critic greatly admired Scriabin's earlier works and "dreadfully desire [d] to

understand and to love him like our young people" - who hailed Scriabin as an "aposde

of a new art" Shebuyev' could not appreciate the composer's mature style.

The essay and the iconography on the postcard attest to the divisive opinions that

Scriabin's music and ideas incited. "There are two Scriabins," Shebuyev' wrote, "a delicate

aristocrat, even a bit of a salon jeweler" and the "mystical antichrist who instead of music

gives the propaganda of some unintelligible theories." Ironically, the metaphysical ideals

that attracted the younger generation tended to repel traditionalists such as Shebuyev'.

The critic argued that Scriabin had vitiated music by interjecting a philosophical program:

"To force music to serve theosophy means to turn pure art into applied art," he

grumbled; "To trample music under theosophy's feet is to degrade it." One remarkable

illustration depicts the composer aloft on angel's wings, his head tossed back in the throes

of ecstasy with a jousting lance in one hand (held as a scepter) and a conductor's baton in

the other. In the background, stars (suggesting divine or cosmic attunement) swirl around

while windmills churn in the distance (a quixotic nod towards his questionable mental

faculties). The illustration captures the conflicting archetypes of Scriabin in one

composite image a snapshot of the composer through the eyes of his contemporaries

(see Figure 2.1). While Shebuyev' and other traditionalists objected to Scriabin's mingling

of music and metaphysics, negative criticism of this sort often generated as much

Korsakov, Stravinsky, Diaghilev, ballerina Tamara Karsavina, and other Russian artists. My thanks to
Levon Hakopian at the University of California at Berkeley and Simon Morrison at Princeton for supplying
information on Shebuyev'.
 72
attention as did laudatory reviews, piquing popular interest in the composer's music and

ideas.

Figure 2.2. Commemorative postcard (ca.1915), detail of inner panel.

Outside of the Soviet Union, disenchantment set in by the mid-1920s. Scriabin's

popularity faltered in England as early as 1923. An anonymous reviewer of Swan's

biography reported, "There is a decided slump in Scriabin just now . . . How far he has

declined in popularity matters less than the fact that he has declined." Seeking to explain

this downturn, the critic argued that Scriabin's "early works obviously derive from

Chopin, and his later ones . . . are either invertebrate, or harmonically monotonous, or

they attempt to express ideas for which music is an inadequate medium."102 The writer's

final point about program music echoes in composer Alexander Brent-Smith's modernist

Review of Scriabin by Alfred Swan, The Musical Times (1 June 1923): 405. Cf. H. C. Colles, "London
Critic Finds Scriabin 'Cloying,'" New York Times (30 September 1923), R3.
 73
backlash in a 1926 article: "it is because Scriabin offered muddle-headed reasoning

seriously that the value of his later work is being suspected." He dismissed Scriabin's few

"splendid phrases" as "merely the accidents of circumstance" and scoffed at Prometheus'

multimedia prescriptions, insisting that with this composition, the composer's "mind had

latterly become, musically-speaking, unhinged."103 Critics Ernest Fennel and Robert Hull

debated Brent-Smith's points in later issues of The Musical Times, but Scriabin's stock was

clearly falling.104

Although Scriabin's halcyon days had passed, even the eminent critic Edwin Evans

still balked at appraising his legacy, arguing that such assessments were complicated by

what may be described as the Scriabin legend that is to say, the somewhat hasty
definitions with which his most recent activities have been labeled. Only when all
side-issues, from "futurism" to theosophy, have been dealt with will it be possible
to place his music in the right perspective.105

Sorting out these issues would prove more challenging than Evans imagined. He and

other British critics, though, agreed that Scriabin fell short of realizing his potential. Critic

John Shedlock reminded readers, "it must not be forgotten how late in his life [Scriabin]

began to seriously work out his ideas respecting music as part, and an important one, of

an ethical scheme. [. . . ] With some great composers individuality is not fully developed

until a late period."106 Shedlock believed Scriabin died before cultivating that individuality.

103
"Some Reflections on the Work of Scriabin [Pt. I]," The Musical Times 67/1001 (1 July 1926): 593.
104
Fennel, "A Word for Scriabin," The Musical Times 67/1003 (1 Sept. 1926): 833; and Hull, "Scriabin: A
Comment," The Musical'Times 67/'1005 (1 November 1926): 993-994. A Cambrensis representative similarly
protested, "The fact that Scriabin's [Poeme de I'extase] is associated with a so-called theosophical 'programme'
may have given rise to an impression that it is a work of religious character. This, however, is very far from
being the case. It is thoroughly morbid, erotic, and sensational in the worst sense of these terms."
"Scriabin's Music and the Three Choirs Festival," The Musical Times 63/948 (1 February 1922): 124.
Evans, "Scriabin," The Fortnightly Review, 1071.
106
J. S. S., "Alexandre Scriabin: 1871-1915," The Monthly Musical Record 45/'534 (1 June 1915): 153. John
South Shedlock (1843-1919) authored a definitive English translation of Beethoven's letters and a study of
the piano sonata. He regularly contributed articles and reviews to The Musical World.
 74
By 1927, Scriabin's star had set in London. Edward Mitchell reported that, "the

curious and the hypocritical have gone, and there remain only those who admire, and

those who dislike, the latter, where such music as Scriabin's is concerned, being in the

majority."107 Scriabin became an easy target for such detractors as Cecil Gray, who never

masked his disdain for the composer. Mocking Earnest Newman's rapturous reviews,

Gray carped, "That such works as the Divine Poem, the Poem of Ecstasy, and Prometheus

should have succeeded in imposing themselves in the public and maintaining their hold

on it for so long, is one of the most inexplicable aberrations in the chequered history of

art." Gray added that, "Fortunately the spell has already been broken to a certain extent

within the last year or so; once that has happened, the end is sure to arrive quickly."108

In America, even such star performers as Koussevitzky and Stokowski could not

salvage Scriabin's reputation. Koussevitzky left Russia in 1920 and in 1924 was appointed

principal conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.109 He chose Poeme de I'extase to

cap his debut program, but after the 1920s Scriabin's presence abated, with just eight

performances of the orchestral works after 1930. Koussevitzky explained, "The public

does not like him, and leading an orchestra is a matter of pleasing the public."110 His

animosity towards Scriabin, however, undoubtedly colored his program selections.111 His

Mitchell, Scriabin: The Great Russian Tone Poet, 2.

Gray, Survey of Contemporary Music (London: Oxford University Press, 1927), 157. Ralph Wood took
Gray and other anti-Scriabinists to task in "Skryabin and His Critics," Monthly Musical Record (November-
December 1956): 222-225.
Koussevitzky conducted Extase with the BSO a total of eleven times (premiering it on 21 October
1910), the Divine Poem four times, and Prometheus three times. For performance dates, see H. Earle Johnson,
Symphony Hall: Boston (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1950), 383.
Quoted in Faubion Bowers, "Keynote Address at The Scriabin Museum, Moscow (January 7, 1992),"
Journal of the Scriabin Society of America 1/1 (Winter 1996-1997): 8.
Pianist Mark Weinbaum recalled a colorful exchange from the 1940s that illustrates Koussevitzky's
lingering hostility towards Scriabin. After an exceptional performance, a young admirer congratulated the
conductor and remarked, '"What a pity, Dr. Koussevitzky, that you never play Scriabin.' Instantly the
conductor's face turned red. His eyes flashed as he shouted: 'Who are you to tell me what and whom to
 75
silver anniversary program mirrored his 1924 debut, sans Extase. When asked about the

alteration, Koussevitzky replied that the public deemed Scriabin outdated and he no

longer identified with the work. Stokowski faced similar opposition in Philadelphia. He

noted in 1922, "It is useless to speak to many people of Scriabin's Poeme d'Extase . . . as

they dismiss this remarkable work with a contemptuous muttering of 'decadent' or

'immoral'"; "on the contrary," he countered, "It is one of the most highly organized and

complex pieces of orchestral polyphony which exists." Yet the public did not agree. In

February 1919, Stokowski's performance of Extase was "generously applauded," yet the

next night, a bulk of the audience left the hall before the first bar of the work, prompting

Stokowski to address the remaining audience members after the performance. He did not

mince his words: "Whenever we present music of a novel sort to audiences in this city the

people here fail to give us a chance to do any justice to the music. It is impossible for any

orchestra to do its best work in such an atmosphere of hostility."112

Scriabin's music elicited divisive opinions, but his sustained popularity demon-

strates that his music did not disappear in 1915. These dissenting voices, however, would

represent the majority opinion by the late 1920s. As we shall see, rapidly changing

political conditions in the Soviet Union during the 1930s altered the ideological climate

that had been sympathetic to Scriabin's case. The full measure of this changed environ-

ment on Scriabin's reception at home and abroad will be discussed in Chapter Three.

play!' There was a hush in the room. Taken aback the young man tried to apologize. But that was of no
use. Finally he fled under a torrent of unintelligible shouts." See Weinbaum, "S. A. Koussevitzky," Russian
Review 16/4 (Oct. 1957): 64-65. For both sides of the Scriabin/Koussevitzky debate, see Faubion Bowers
and Diana Cavallo, "A 60-Year-Old Controversy Flares up Again," High Fidelity Magazine (June 1969): 54-61.
"Stokowski Rebukes Audience," Musical America (22 February 1919); the "useless" quote originally
appeared in the journal Arts and'Decoration (November 1922) and was quoted in Oliver Daniel, Stokowski: A
Counterpoint of View (New York: Dodd & Mead, 1982), 225.
 76

CHAPTER THREE:
Scriabin's Eclipse Under the RAPM and Socialist Realism: 1925-1955

While such supporters as Lunacharsky and Ivanov ensured Scriabin's favorable

reception for nearly a decade after the Bolshevik Revolution, by 1925 the composer's

status had declined due to cultural and political shifts in the Soviet Union. While Scriabin's

lagging popularity in the West merits some discussion, this chapter focuses on his Soviet

reception since it evolved most radically. The composer's once omnipresent influence in

Russia vanished after the 1920s, leading to his lowest standing in the century. His music,

however, was neglected more than vilified. One astonishing fact to emerge from this era is

not the aspersions cast upon Scriabin during the 1948 political inquests against the arts

(Zhdanovshchind), but rather his exoneration by the State against accusations of decadence

and formalism. At a time when the living Scriabin would have been condemned by the

State, the memorialized composer was safely exempted as a luminary of Russia's past.

This chapter traces Scriabin's decline through the mid-century, exploring how his

reputation sank from a proletarian hero to a deplorable representative of the bourgeoisie.

By the mid-1920s, the demand for classical Russian culture left no place for modernist or

formalist art, and the anti-Scriabin backlash resounded through Soviet arts journals and

conservatories. Critics argued that the effete sensibility of Scriabin's music imbued it with

a salon-like quality that clashed with the nationalistic cantatas and marches desired by the

State.1 The composer became a contentious subject of debate again during Zbdanovshchina,

sharply dividing critics, politicians, and historians on his significance. Scriabin's role in this

watershed event exemplifies the paradoxes inherent in Socialist Realist dogma.

1
Neil Edmunds, The Soviet Proletarian Music Movement (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2000), 18-20.
 77

While the much-vaunted squelching of Soviet composers by the State is familiar

from such scholars as Sheila Fitzpatrick, Neil Edmunds, and Amy Nelson, Scriabin's role

as a favorite target of the proletarian music organizations has been overlooked.2 Indeed,

Soviet censors routinely adduced Scriabin's music to demonstrate the abusive excesses of

the Old Regime. The well-documented statements of Shostakovich and Stravinsky are

expanded here and set alongside newly consulted primary sources. Although Scriabin did

not face the same political persecution outside the Soviet Union, a comparable sense of

hard-nosed realism pervaded the aesthetic and ideological climate.

Lunacharsky's Fall and the Rise of the Proletariat

By the mid-1920s, Commissar Lunacharsky found his laudatory views on Scriabin

meeting with mounting resistance from Party officials. Stalin's consolidation of power in

the late 1920s signaled the Commissar's precipitous decline, and with it came the end of

Scriabin's official favor. Groundwork for that development, however, began in 1923 with

the formation of two rival groups whose establishment firmly entrenched the divide

between modernist and proletarian organizations. The Assotsiatsiia sovremennoi mu^yki

(Association of Contemporary Music or ASM) endorsed such modernist composers as

Scriabin, Prokofiev, and Miaskovsky, the latter of whom served as an active member.

The Rossiiskaia assotsiatsiia proletarskikh mu^ykantop (Russian Association of Proletarian

Fitzpatrick, Cultural Revolution in Russia: 1928-1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978);
Edmunds, "Music and Politics, "The Case of the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians," The
Slavonic and Hast European Review 78/1 (January 2000): 66-89; and Nelson, "The Struggle for Proletarian
Music: RAPM and the Cultural Revolution," Slavic Review 59/1 (Spring 2000): 101-132.
 78

Musicians or RAPM) represented the proletarian viewpoint.3 RAPM members contended

that in the pre-Revolutionary period music had been exclusive to the privileged class, to

the disadvantage of the working class. State officials, then, reoriented approved cultural

activities in favor of the proletariat. Soviet critics drew direct correlations between music

and labor under the assumption that patriotic anthems generated satisfied, productive

workers. Under the new cultural order, listeners of any class could appreciate a piece of

music for its primary purpose: to invigorate the spirits of the people.

RAPM officials issued mandates demanding objective and realist art in order to

counteract the subjective indulgences of pre-Revolutionary style. State officials urged

composers to recreate the soundscapes of everyday listeners: the din of a bustling street,

whistles, and other factory noises. The glorification of Russian industry is evident in such

works as Vladimir Deshevov's (1889-1955) toccata-like Rails (1926), with its imitation of

railway clatter, and Alexander Mossolov's popular ballet, Zavod (Iron Foundry, 1928). An

anonymous author of a 1927 article in October and New Music articulated proletarian tastes:

What is closer to the proletariat, the pessimism of Tchaikovsky and the false
heroics of Beethoven, a century out of date, or the precise rhythms and
excitement of Deshevov's Rails'? [. . .] During the playing of Beethoven the
workers were utterly bored, and patiendy, with polite endurance, waited for the
music to end. [. . .] Proletarian masses, for whom machine oil is mother's milk,
have a right to demand music consonant with the epoch, not music of the
bourgeois salon, which belongs in the age of the horse and buggy and
Stephenson's locomotive.

Such a rejection of Western music's artistic heritage markedly contrasted with the

policies of Lunacharsky, who refused to countenance such blinkered views of art and

Sovremennaia mu^yka lists an ASM concert of 2 March 1924 featuring Scriabin's Prometheus and an ASM
concert of 15 April 1927 featuring the F#-minor Piano Concerto with Samuel Feinberg as soloist.
Quoted in Slonimsky, "The Changing Style of Soviet Music," Journal of the American Musicological Society
3/3 (Autumn 1950): 237.
 79

insisted that such terms as formalism and realism "do not apply to music."5 Countering

RAPM accusations of class tendencies in music, Lunacharsky argued that such a topical

item as the Marseillaise could even be non-revolutionary if set to a different text.6

As the RAPM gained membership and political sanction, they dictated aesthetic

norms in favor of the proletariat. Just as cultivated music had once flourished under the

privileged class, now music for the people would prosper during the early Stalin years.

Political directives targeted bourgeoisie values and reoriented art towards a new kind of

nationalism. RAPM officials proclaimed their directives in a series of three articles (1924,

1926, 1929), which included the following offenses:

The bourgeoisie of the period of well-developed capitalism exerts, as a ruling

class, profound moral influence on all strata and classes of the population,
systematically poisoning the worker's mind . . . Bourgeois music . . . has reflected
the process of general decay and disintegration of culture. During this period
music begins to cultivate decadent moods and engages in the following pursuits:

(a) Cultivation of sensual and pathologically erotic moods as a result of narrowing

interests of the bourgeoisie [who are] degenerating morally and physically . . .
(b) Mysticism, a feeling of oppressiveness as a premonition on the part of the
bourgeoisie of the impending social catastrophe and the end of bourgeois rule.
(c) The so-called "emotionalist" trends in music, and specifically, urbanist music
that reduces itself to a more or less successful reproduction of noises.
(d) Cultivation of primitive coarse subjects as a means, on the part of the
bourgeoisie, to slow up the process of degeneration and to fight the proletariat
that threatens "anarchy" for the bourgeoisie after the Revolution.7

Other violations cited in these RAPM documents included the "hypertrophy of harmonic,

[and] vertical concepts" and the "alogical spasmodic rhythms." Soviet critics increasingly

leveled such damaging accusations as these at Scriabin as the 1920s wore on.

Lunacharsky, Vmire muvyki (Moscow: State Music Publishers, 1958), 309.

Lunacharsky, V mire mu^yki, 308.
7
Nicholas Slonimsky, Music Since 1900 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971), 1353, 1354. Also see
Amy Nelson, "The Struggle for Proletarian Music: RAPM and the Cultural Revolution," Slavonic Review 59/1
(Spring 2000): 101-132.
 80

These directives intensified during die mid-1920s, and RAPM activists targeted not

only Scriabin's style, but also his many epigones. While such avant-gardists as Nikolai

Roslavets and Anatoli Alexandrov affected a Scriabinian manner, they ultimately failed to

develop his style.8 In 1924 critic Carl Engel bemoaned the surfeit of Scriabin imitators:

"Whether it be Leonid Sabaneiev [sic] (who last year published a book on Scriabin), or A.

Shaposhinko, or D. Melkikh, or E. Pavlov everywhere the same perfumed grief and

impotent raving, the chromatic worming of inner voices and the furious assaults that

come to naught. Some of it is glorified Salon-music, nothing more." 9 In 1926, leading

RAPM ideologist Yuri Keldysh lashed out against Soviet composer Boris Shekhter's

"Skriabinesque excesses," grumbling, "he almost completely adopts Skriabin's musical

language in his compositions." Historian Neil Edmunds reported that in January 1926,

RAPM member Alexander Davidenko wrote to Shekhter personally in order to reproach

him for these "Skriabinesque excesses," a cardinal sin for any Soviet composer.10

While some Soviet critics applauded Scriabin's achievements, most argued that his

music was wholly unsuited to the modern proletarian spirit. In a 1924 article published in

the RAPM journal Mw^ykal'naia nov\ critic Klimenti Korchmarev heaped scorn upon

Scriabin's bourgeois tendencies. He argued that Scriabin "failed to see the tremendous

breakthrough of the proletariat to seize the power," and that self-absorbed bourgeois

In the late 1920s, critic Alfred Swan observed, "On the music that now comes from the Russian centres,
traces of the later Scriabin are scattered with a free hand, but it cannot be said that the seed has fallen on
fertile soil." "The Present State of Russian Music," The Musical Quarterly 13/1 (January 1927): 36-37. On
Roslavets, see Terry Ewell, "At the Vanguard of Russian Musical Modernism: Nikolai Andreevich
Roslavets" (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1994); and on Alexandrov, see Larry Sitsky, Music of the
Repressed Russian Avant-Garde, 1900-1929 (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1994), 38-59; 133-148.
9
Quoted in Engel, "Views and Reviews," The MusicalQuarterly 10/4 (October 1924): 629-630.
Davidenko, quoted in Edmunds, The Soviet Proletarian Music Movement, 246, 250. Cf. Keldysh,
"Tvorchestvo B. Shekhtera," Proletarskii muqikant 7'-8 (1929): 29.
 81

artists such as Scriabin ignored the everyday pressures of the working class with elitist

works that confused the public.11 Scriabin's lack of faith in the proletariat, his denial of

realism in art, and his subjective emotionalism all drew the wrath of Korchmarev, who

insisted that "all of these unhealthy tendencies were highly characteristic of their epoch"

and that ultimately, "Scriabin remains a casualty of his own narrowness of class." The

composer's handling of form was the sole compliment that Korchmarev bestowed upon

him, and he clearly saw Scriabin as a bitter reminder of a bygone age.

Korchmarev related a telling anecdote that illustrates the contemporary attitude.

Two friends accompanied the critic to a recital of piano music by Anatoli Alexandrov

(1888-1982), whose compositions owe a considerable debt to Scriabin (later, Alexandrov

downplayed this mystical influence to comply with Socialist Realism).12 Korchmarev's

two friends included an esteemed music critic and a young female Party activist who

happened to be a music enthusiast. After the concert, the three attendees compared their

reactions to the program, and unanimously agreed that Alexandrov's music was utterly

"unnecessary art!" Korchmarev concluded by asserting that, "All of these atonalists,

arhythmicists, amelodicists, are poets of 'nothingness' . . . We should blame the dying

class that raised them." 13 Clearly, by 1923 the culture that had once provided a congenial

atmosphere for Scriabin's revolutionary style was nearly extinct. Proletarian audiences

demanded realism in their art, not for entertainment, but to reaffirm the significance and

meaning of their working-class lives.

Korchmarev, "Skriabin v nashi dni," Musykal'naia nov' 6/7 (1924): 15-16; also see Alexander
Gol'denveiser, "Alexander Nikolaevich Skriabin," Iskusstvo trudiashchimsia 22 (26 April 1925): 2-3.
12
See Sitsky, Music of the Repressed Russian Avant-Garde, 1900-1929,199-213.
Korchmarev, "Sovremennaia muzyka," Musg/ka/'naia nov'% (1923): 18-19.
 82

One of the most aggressive anti-Scriabin factions was a group of conservatory

instructors known as the Red Professors, who recruited students as Party sympathizers in

order to spread the communist creed among the student body. The Red Professors

lectured on the relationship between art and communism and the need for academic

reform in the conservatories. Their polemics appeared in the journals Mu^ykal'naia notf

(1923-1924), Proletarskii mu^ykant (1929-1932), and Za proletarskuiu mu^yku (1930-1932).

Especially outspoken was Mikhail Ivanov-Boretski, who in a 1923 article reviled Scriabin

as a "solipsist preoccupied with theosophy, a mystic," and an "intolerable example of

bourgeois culture" whose art was "absolutely counterintuitive to proletarian ideology."

Citing the irreconcilable contradiction between the composer's style and communist

ideology, Ivanov-Boretski contended that "Scriabin's art forms, no matter how new and

revolutionary they may seem, are not only inadequate for revolutionary psychology, but

are endlessly far from it . . . The face of our revolution will be the music of New Artists

who will demonstrate in their art the psychology of their own class."15

Ivanov-Boretski took particular exception with Scriabin's flaccid rhythms, which

lacked the marching beat that could vitalize a nation of workers. Rhythm served as a

backbone that unified the masses, and complicated patterns such as the layered

polyrhythms common to Scriabin's mature piano and orchestral works violated this basic

principle. Critics frequendy protested the supreme difficulties faced by performers and

audiences alike in comprehending the swirling strands of rhythmic activity in Scriabin's

later music, which failed to provide any sense of directed motion (see Figure 3.1).

See Edmunds, The Soviet'ProletariatMusic Movement, 93-100.

15
Ivanov-Boretski, "Puti muzyki i revoliutsii," Murgkal'naia nov'l (1923): 17,18.
 83

IS] lout devient charme et douceur

Figure 3.1. Scriabin, Piano Sonata No. 6 (1911-1912), mm. 244-245.

In January 1925, Ivanov-Boretski was promoted to administrate the Moscow

Conservatory's composition department and he promptly updated the curriculum to

include such modernists as Scriabin, Debussy, and Reger alongside established classics of

the past.16 This volte-face is puzzling. Undoubtedly Ivanov-Boretski admired the experim-

entalism of Scriabin's music, yet his administrative decision seems strange in the face of

his contempt for the composer. In this case, it seems that Ivanov-Boretski's higher moral

standards for the educational system may have superseded any issues of personal taste.

Like Ivanov-Boretski, RAPM critic Klimenti Korchmarev argued that proletarian

audiences had difficulty following the "unreal, pointless rhythms" of Scriabin's late works.

Complaints against Scriabin's handling of rhythm are noteworthy considering that the

composer had earned critical acclaim during his lifetime for his rhythmic spontaneity.17

Edmunds, The Soviet Proletariat Music Movement, 95.

Pianist Samuel Feinberg wrote, "The most significant difference between post-Beethoven pianism that
led through Chopin and Liszt - to Scriabin's piano style is in the absolutely new principles of rhythmic
interpretation." Quoted in Robert Rimm, The Pianist-Composers: Hamelin and the Eight (Portland: Amadeus
Press, 2002), 111. Contemporary critic Grigori Profofiev concurred diat Scriabin "captivates die audience,
too, by giving the impression of improvising. He breaks the rhyuamic flow and somediing new comes out
each time. This suffuses the performance wim freshness. Never has he played his Fourth Sonata with
 84

Korchmarev reprimanded Scriabin for perpetrating an unhealthy bourgeois tendency and

stressed the current disinterest in "stagnant" modern music, arguing that the Russian

classics faithfully avoided such "unnatural, unhealthy" rhythms. He lamented that "music

is not moving forward," noting specifically the works of Scriabin and Nikolai Medtner.

RAPM officials sought a composer whose music could articulate the everyday

concerns of the proletariat. That composer turned out to be Sergei Prokofiev, whose

energetic rhythms and readily accessible scores captured the spirit of the contemporary

age and provided the remedy to Scriabin's subjective eroticism. Musicologist Nikolai

Zhiliaev (1881-1938) offered the following comparison: "Prokofiev is a real barbarian

compared to the fragile and sophisticated Scriabin"; while Prokofiev was a "Scythian who

captures wild animals with simple weapons," Scriabin was an "elf shooting at butterflies

with moonbeams." 18 The metaphor was clear: Prokofiev's music spoke to the masses

while Scriabin's mystic revelations ignored everyday concerns. Even Scriabin's erstwhile

supporter, Viacheslav Karatygin, welcomed Prokofiev as the "antithesis to Scriabin and

thank God that antithesis has appeared."19 Historian Boris Schwarz similarly commented,

"There is a streak of mysticism and decadence in Scriabin's music that, to us, appears

more representative of the effete precociousness of pre-revolutionary days than of the

harsh realities of post-October . . . Prokofiev's affirmation of life, his abhorrence to

more mastery or sincerity . . . What power he put in the theme in the second movement! Yet the actual
sound was not big. The secret is in the energetic rhythm." See Bowers, The New Scriabin, 197. The
technical difficulty in rendering Scriabin's rhythms has prevented his music from reaching a wider audience.
Zhiliaev, "Sergei Prokofiev," K novym beregam 1 (April 1923): 19. Soviet critic Nikolai Briusov argued
diat, "For the revolution in music to occur, diis new style should eradicate all characteristics of the former
style and construct a completely new order. We must build order out of chaos. We will be participants in
the fight for a new and even bigger change ahead" (p-14). See "Po tu storonu Skriabina," K novym beregam 2
(May 1923): 13-15. Cf. Viktor Beliaev, "Skriabin i budushchee muzyki," K novym beregam 2 (May 1923): 9-13.
19
Quoted in Harlow Robinson, Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography (New York: Viking Press, 1987), 57-58.
 85

sentimentality, his biting humor, his steely strength . . . endeared him to the young

generation of musicians."20 In his Book About Stravinsky (first published in 1926), Asafyev

also noted die aesthetic shift that ousted Scriabin in favor of Prokofiev:

Sergei Prokofiev . . . was a product of robust social health, and a counterbalance

to the sterile aestheticism, refined exaltation, and convulsive lyricism of
Scriabinism, and to the erotic intoxication that had captured almost universal
attention. Of course, Scriabin, who rose head and shoulders above those
immediately around him, dreamed of going even higher, whence no one could
follow him. That made a clearing of the atmosphere all the more necessary.21

Prokofiev was not the only Russian composer to whom critics compared Scriabin.

Critic Nikolai Malkov's 1925 "tribute" article for the tenth anniversary of Scriabin's death

devoted more attention to his bourgeois individualism than to his artistic achievements.

Comparing Scriabin with Tchaikovsky, Malkov inquired, "Wasn't Scriabin a typical

individualist" and "strange for us" because he disregarded the heritage and the opinions

of the folk? He drew the following comparison between these solipsistic composers:

Both [Scriabin and Tchaikovsky] came from this closed, bourgeois society, both
are lonely in spite of their genius, and both walk a desolate path alone. We don't
want to follow them; we are looking for a wider path to a bright future, a path in
which there are spots for everyone. All is one and one is all we should be
united in our collective art and our collective artistic sense.22

RAPM strictures emphasized that the new regime would not tolerate bourgeois

indulgences, thereby putting an end to any favorable conditions for pre-Revolutionary art

cultivated under Lunacharsky's aegis. Although Lunacharsky held his official post until

1929, his final five years in office were an uphill battle. At one point, Ivanov-Boretski

accused the Commissar of interfering in RAPM affairs, warning RAPM members Viktor

Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 62.
21
Asafyev, A Book About Stravinsky, trans. Richard French (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982), 22.
22
Malkov, " O Skriabine: k 10-letiiu konchiny," Zhiiqi''iskusstva 15 (1925): 5.
 86

Vinogradov and Mikhail Silov in a letter of 1927 that "the proletariat are at present facing

various enemies who believe that art has nothing to do with class . . . [and that] the

sounds of music cannot evoke life-like images."23 It was clear that Lunacharsky's tenure

had come to an end.24 Later in 1929, Andrei Bubnov (1883-1940), former head of the

Agitprop (Agitation Propaganda) Section of Proletkult (Proletarian Cultural and

Enlightenment Organization) replaced Lunacharsky as the People's Commissar for

Education. Bubnov was a politician completely indifferent to music and his appointment

signaled a new era for Soviet culture and politics.

The Iron Grip Tightens in Conservatories and Journals: 1928-1932

After RAPM gained the imprimatur of the Party in the late 1920s its ranks swelled,

enabling it to launch a full strike against formalism in music. Boris Schwarz reported that

the RAPM journal Artistic Education warned composers to stop composing "in the spirit of

Rachmaninoff and Scriabin" because they were "alien to the proletariat."25 Other RAPM

music journals demanded reforms in the conservatories starting with the arts curricula. A

1928 article announced, "our Communist ideology and advanced revolutionary views and

aspirations had to replace the three greatest evils deemed prevalent in the conservatories:

Edmunds, The Soviet Proletariat Music Movement, 98.

Moscow Conservatory professor Alexander Gol'denveiser (18751961) noted Lunacharsky's lone
admiration of Scriabin in the 1920s as well as die composer's declining status as a result of his dismissal in
"Zametka o Skriabine: k 20-letiiu so dnia smerti kompozitora," Sovetskaia musyka 6 (1935): 61. Cf. Gail
Lipidus, "Educational Strategies and Cultural Revolution: The Politics of Societal Development," in Cultural
Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 90-94.
See Golubovskii, Ivan, 100 let"Leningradskoikonservatorii, 1862-1962: istoricheskii ocherk (Leningrad:
Gosudarstvennoe muzykal'noe izdatel'stvo, 1962), 144. Quoted in Schwarz, Music and MusicalUfe in Soviet
Russia, 102.
 87

'idealism,' 'conservatism,' and 'individualism.'" These tenets were replaced by "realism,"

"progressivism," and "socialism." The 1929 All-Russian Musical Conference proposed a

ban on any further compositions in the modernist or classical styles. Although the

resolution was never enacted into policy, its proposal was a harbinger of times to come.

Later in 1929, two non-musicians were appointed to administrate the Moscow and

Leningrad Conservatories: Boleslav Pshibyshevskii replaced Konstantin Igumnov (a post

that Igumnov had held for thirty years) in Moscow, and Aleksei Mashirov-Samobytnik

(1884-1943) assumed power in Leningrad. Pshibyshevskii was a loyal Party member who

sought extensive socialist reforms in the conservatories, starting with the "conservatism"

associated with its name; under his orders the Moscow Conservatory became known as the

Felix Lon Memorial School of Higher Education. His avowed mission was to update

educational models to keep pace with the modern age.27 At his opening faculty address,

Pshibyshevskii set the tone for the new aesthetic:

We must do away with the useless system of musical education which arouses in
the student the unhealthy desire to compete and an unconscious urge for personal
advancement at the expense of the collective effort. As of today I am doing away
will all grades and examinations which are nothing but stupid, outmoded
bourgeois fetishes! [. . .] you will confine yourselves to composers whose music is
close to the proletarian spirit, and you will discontinue the unbearable practice of
studying composers who are foreign and hostile to our ideals.

Pshibyshevskii approved such Russian classics as Glinka and Mussorgsky, whose

music upheld proper proletarian ideals by drawing inspiration from the folk, and rebuked

artists such as Scriabin because their works subverted a collective cause. Scriabin was

branded an "obscurantist and mystic" and his music and likeness were expurgated from

Edmunds, The Soviet Proletariat Music Movement, 98.

27
Juri Jelagin, Taming of the Arts (NY: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1951), 188. Pshibyshevskii's quote from ibid.
 88

the conservatory. His portrait (along with those of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff) was

even removed from the walls of the Moscow Conservatory's Bol'shom Zale (Grand

Hall).28 Maksimil'ian Shteinberg (1883-1946) lamented that under such conditions Russian

musical life now faced the utter "annihilation of professional art and the reduction of

everything to complete dilettantism."29 Fortunately, a governmental decree of April 23,

1932 overturned this interdiction, thereby abolishing all proletarian music organizations

and effectively ousting Pshibyshevskii from his post. The portraits of Scriabin and the

aforementioned composers were replaced in the Grand Hall and by 1934 the conservatory

had reinstated examinations and other pre-takeover conventions.

In 1930, three articles in the journal Kabochii i teatr {Worker and Theater) fueled the

controversy. While respectful of Scriabin, the authors still commented on his diminishing

significance. One headline ran, "Do we Need Scriabin?" and its author, Nikolai Malkov,

argued that Scriabin had failed to unite the people through art. Despite the visceral sense

of struggle and triumph in his art, Scriabin failed to express these ideas in a language

compatible with the current age, and he was condemned for the "disposable," "transitory,"

and "foreign" age in which he lived. While Malkov argued that Scriabin's art could be

appreciated within the context of his age, he felt that the composer's idealistic outlook

bore little relevance for modern proletarian audiences. He indignandy asked, "Aren't we

aware that Scriabin failed to strengthen good spirits in us with the Poem of Ecstasy, in which

a frenzy is stirred up in the people with unprecedented, straining sounds?"

See Barbara Makanowitzky, "Music to Serve the State," Russian Review 24/3 (July 1965): 266, 268; and
Aleksandr Struve, "Skriabinskaia godovshchina," Kabochii i teatr 25 (6 May 1930): 10.
Schwarz, Music and Musical Ufe in Soviet Russia, 102.
30
Malkov, "Nyzhen li nam Skriabin?" Rabochii i teatr 25 (6 May 1930): 12.
 89

In the same 1930 issue of Rabochii i teatr, critic Aleksandr Struve paid homage to

Scriabin on the fifteenth anniversary of his death. Struve observed that "[Scriabin's] works

are rarely performed now and are hardly popular."31 He reasoned that the composer's

bourgeois roots preconditioned him to desultory mystical inclinations, and these

tendencies violated artistic standards set by the Party. Later in 1930, another proletarian

critic, Semen Gres, expressed similar hostile views in Rabochii i teatr against Scriabin's self-

affirming individualism, insisting that, "Music is the most powerful ingredient with regard

to the organization of mass self-consciousness." By glorifying himself over God and his

nation, the composer undermined the State's superiority. Gres observed:

only after determining the proper direction can we discern with certainty the
artistic merit and ideological value of each musical-artistic act for contemporary
Soviets . . . In light of such formulations, Scriabin's symphonic works and the Poem
of Ecstasy in particular should qualify as products that are wholly superfluous for
the modern artistic consciousness of musical culture.32

Gres concluded that Scriabin's art had been a "brilliant episode in music history," but

with passing time "it gradually gains a museum-like quality" that held little relevance for

contemporary listeners.33 As further evidence of the composer's diminished popularity,

Struve reported that the only symphonic organization capable of performing Scriabin's

orchestral works for the fifteenth anniversary of his death, SOFIL (Soviet Philharmonic

Orchestra, est. 1928), had decided that it was not worth the effort.34

While proletarian critics were predictably hostile towards Scriabin during the mid-

1930s, criticism from younger composers further damaged his reputation. In a scathing

Struve, "Skriabinskaia godovshchina," Rabochii i teatr 25 (6 May 1930): 12.

32
Gres, "Skriabin," Rabochii i teatr'(20 October 1930): 10.
33
Ibid.
Struve, "Skriabinskaia godovshchina," 12.
 90

1931 interview, Shostakovich bitterly condemned bourgeois composers such as Scriabin

for "bolstering the role of the upper classes." He stressed that artists should suppress

their individual desires and focus on music's sociological function. Quoting Lenin, he

preached that "Music is a means of unifying broad masses of people." Like Ivanov-

Boretski and Korchmarev, Shostakovich believed Scriabin failed to honor this obligation:

We, as revolutionists, have a different conception of music . . . as stirring specific

emotions in those who listen to it. [. . .] Even the symphonic form, which appears
more than any other form to be divorced from literary elements, can be said to
have a bearing on politics. Thus we regard Scriabine as our bitterest musical
enemy . . . Because Scriabin's music tends to an unhealthy eroticism. Also to
mysticism and passivity and escape from the realities of life.35

Here Shostakovich voiced not only the official word on Scriabin, but also the opinion of

his entire generation. His sincerity is dubious considering the Party-line rhetoric he glibly

recited, but regardless of Shostakovich's candor, Scriabin's fame had clearly been eclipsed.

Although State officials now regarded the composer's metaphysical doctrine the source

of the "mystic" association - as more waffling than subversive, his metaphysical principles

and musical works still defied the new socialist standards.

1932 was a watershed year, as ideological critiques of Scriabin and his contemp-

oraries fell under the domain of an official resolution. The Party Resolution of 23 April

1932, "On the Reconstruction of Literary and Artistic Organizations," officially enacted

Socialist Realism as the new political ideology. The policy identified art as a prime vehicle

to disseminate communist propaganda. State officials reasoned that art belonged to the

Rose Lee, "Dimitri Szostakovich: Young Russian Composer Tells of Linking Politics with Creative
Work," New York Times (20 December 1931), X8. Four years later, Aleksandr Gol'denveiser observed that
Scriabin "tried to connect philosophy with his art and because of that, his views were foreign to Soviet
listeners; that fact gave critics opportunities to implicate Scriabin as an unnecessary composer to the average
proletariat." "Zametka o Skriabine: k 20-letiiu so dnia smerti kompozitora," Sovetskaia musgka 6 (July 1935):
61.
 91

people more than its individual creator. Stalin's famous demand for "art which is socialist

in content and national in form" (a definition borrowed from Lunacharsky, who coined

the term Socialist Realism) summarizes the new agenda.36 Party secretary Andrei Zhdanov

(1896-1948) declared that Socialist Realist art should be "attuned to the epoch" and

"depict reality in its revolutionary development."37 In other words, artists were expected

to depict life in its ideal state rather than their own perception of the world. Scenes

glorifying Stalin became nearly compulsory for visual artists, and composers were obliged

to concentrate on opera, oratorios, and stage works whose plots promoted a classless

society. Such an intense focus on the relationship between art and society led to such

developments as the short-lived Persymphans (Pervyt simfonichnyi ansambF) a conductorless

orchestra that performed modern music and classics.

Scriabin's period of official favor had long since elapsed, and in many ways his

music violated the political mandate for music that was accessible to proletarian audiences,

at least according to terms defined by Soviet critics of the 1920s-1930s. Although critics

pointed out that Scriabin's music embodied the formalism and bourgeois decadence that

threatened socialist ideals, several brief bursts of enthusiasm coincided with anniversaries

and other landmarks to grant the composer immunity, as we shall see.

This chapter does not attempt an overview of Socialist Realism; principal sources consulted for this
study include Maurice Friedberg, "Socialist Realism: Twenty-Five Years Later," American Slavic and Hast
European Review 19/2 (April 1960): 276-287; and Mikulas Bek, Geoffrey Chew, and Petr Macek, eds., Socialist
Realism and Music (Brno, Czech Republic: Institute of Musicology, Masaryk University, 2004).
Quoted in Schwarz, Music and Musical Ufe in Soviet Russia, 110.
 92

Scriabin's Fate is Sealed: Zhdanovshchina

Boris Schwarz characterized the post-World War II era in the Soviet Union as

brimming with "immense national pride, strong anti-Western feelings fanned by vicious

propaganda, and renewed stress on ideological discipline."38 Adamant about maintaining

control over artistic subjects, Soviet officials stressed mandatory compliance with Socialist

Realism. Few fields reflected this ideological rigor more than music. From 1946-1948, the

Central Committee cracked down on composers' creative freedom, and Party secretary

Andrei Zhdanov supervised this phase of political tyranny. Taruskin contended that

Zhdanov's political directive represented a different ideological agenda than the ill-fated

RAPM, which he considered to be part of Russia's early avant-garde. Taruskin believed

that Zhdanovshchina exemplified the stubborn conservatism associated with high Stalinism.39

August 1946 brought the first of four restrictive resolutions. The "Resolution on

the Journals Zve^da and Leningrad" attacked two literary periodicals for publishing apolitical,

bourgeois writings by satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko and poet Anna Akhmatova.40 The next

two resolutions, issued within a month of the first, targeted theater and film and set in

motion an era of artistic oppression dubbed Zhdanovshchina. After a brief grace period of

"voluntary" compliance, on 10 February 1948 Soviet composers finally came under attack

with Zhdanov's final resolution, "On the Opera Velikaia dru^hba [The Great Friendship]

by V[ano] Muradeli." Zhdanov's final resolution shifted attention towards intolerance for

Schwarz, Music and Musical Ufe in Soviet Russia, 205.

Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 96. Taruskin noted
that, "Between 1948 and 1953, the year of Stalin's death, the style of most Soviet music became virtually
indistinguishable from that of the turn-of-the-century Belyayev [sic] school, itself a sodality of epigones."
Cf. Zhdanov, trans. Felicity Ashbee and Irina Tidmarch, The Central Committee Resolution and Zhdanovs
Speech "On the Journals Zve^da and Leningrad' (Royal Oak, Michigan: Strathcona Publishing Co., 1978).
Zhdanov famously branded Akhmatova a "half-nun, half-harlot" for her poetry's nostalgic idealism.
 93

formalism, which he equated with individualism and modernism. While Scriabin was not

directly implicated, such contemporary composers as Miaskovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich,

and Khachaturian were charged with formalism and forced to profess their guilt.

Several primary sources document this historic event, including Alexander Werth's

Musical Uproar in Moscow, a translation of the 1948 Central Committee proceedings in which

Party members debated their views on formalism.41 Werth reported that by 1948

formalism "was no longer an aesthetic, but a political concept."42 Veterans of the People's

Conservatory professor Nadezhda Briusova elucidated this much-abused term:

Formalism is usually considered to denote a lack of ideas, a lack of content, a

complete concentration on form . . . with no reference to reality. [. . .] Socialist
realism, as we know, does not require from the artist any sort of abstract
objectivism, but an understanding of the true road of life. [. . .] Formalism
manifests itself whenever the composer shows an insufficient creative will to
follow this road of life's fundamentals to the utmost limit of his imagination.

Soviet officials extolled program music for its accessibility to the masses and also

praised stage works that depicted everyday scenes familiar to the people. Vocal genres

took priority over instrumental works, although composers of both styles were urged to

craft their ideas in the form of conjunct melodies and march-like rhythms. Above all,

Soviet composers were advised to create a new form of nationalist art that would glorify

the "indissoluble ties that bind Russian art to the people and to the democratic ideals of

the progressive section of Russian society," in the words of Soviet composer Yuri

Werth, Musical Uproar in Moscow (London: Turnstile Press, 1949). Several reviewers commended Werth
for making available to Western readers the events of this momentous period, but they criticized his
journalistic approach in the commentary. See W. D., Review of Musical Uproar in Moscow, by Alexander
Werth, Music & Letters 50/4- (October 1949): 384-386; and J. Miller, Review of Musical Uproar in Moscow, by
Alexander Werth, Soviet Studies 1/2 (October 1949): 157-164.
Werth, Musical Uproar in Moscow, 87. Block quote by Briusova also from p. 87.
 94

Shaporin. 43 Z h d a n o v even declared in a 1948 Sovetskaia muyyka article, "Comrades, we

want we passionately wish to have our own 'Mighty Handful.'" 44 Revisionist historian

Werner H a h n argued that Zhdanov's Resolutions served as "more a function of political

maneuvering than an expression of ideological principle," but regardless of his political

motivations, Zhdanov's directives stifled Soviet culture and society. 45

Scriabin could not avoid the anti-modernist ire that escalated throughout the 1940s.

In 1939-1940, Stravinsky contemptuously dismissed the Muscovite as "an ideological,

pathological, and sociological disorder that took possession of music with impudent

unconcern." Adding rootless cosmopolitanism to Scriabin's list of offenses, Stravinsky

mused, "Frankly, is it possible to connect a musician like Scriabin with any tradition

whatsoever?" 4 6 Composer Nicolas Nabokov, a former member of Diaghilev's inner circle,

recalled h o w during the early 1940s, Soviet critics and audiences believed that "Scriabin's

eroticism was good only for high-strung adolescents, that his orgasms were fake, and that

his musical craft was singularly old-fashioned, dusty, and academic." 47

O n e of the most vociferous anti-Scriabinists during Zhdanovshchina was the music

critic and former RAPM member Boris Shteinpress (1908-1986). Bowers reported that at

the height of the controversy Shteinpress sneered at Scriabin as a "degenerate formalist of

the worst sort" and claimed that "listeners should be saved from the degrading experience

of having to listen to him." 48 In a 1948 article, Shteinpress took direct aim at Scriabin:

Shaporin, "Soviet Music and its Tasks," Soviet literature 6 (1948): 133.
Quoted in Marina Frolova-Walker, '"National in Form, Socialist in Content': Musical Nation-Building
in the Soviet Republics," Journal ofthe American Musicological Society 51/2 (Summer 1998): 331.
Hahn, Postwar Soviet Politics: (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), 10.
4
Stravinsky, Poetics ofMusic, trans. Knodel and Dahl (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 98.
47
Nabokov, OldFriends and New Music (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1951), 50.
48
Quoted in Bowers, The New Scriabin: Enigma and Answers (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973), 2.
 95

Scriabin's innovations are not a development, but a destruction of the

fundamentals of classical music. [. . .] Scriabin's artificiality is concerted into
normality in a manner in which classical-realism is reduced to extraordinary
sounds for the sake of sheer display. [. . .] If we do not decisively crush this
bourgeois liberalism and its idealistic viewpoints, this trend will become rampant
in our musical literature.49

Despite Shteinpress' snide accusations, the Composers' Union rallied to Scriabin's

defense and according to Werth, "publicly called the consistently ludicrous and over-

zealous Mr. Steinpress [sk] an ass."50 The irony of Scriabin's exoneration was not lost on

Werth, who cited the composer's case as a prime example of the State's double standards:

The most cosmic example of this inconsistency is provided by Scriabin. If ever

there was a composer who suffered from all the vices which Zhdanov attributed
to Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian, and Miaskovsky, it was surely Scriabin;
harmony, acute and morbid "neuropathic" egocentricity, total un-Russianism in
his themes, and who was, in fact, more "anti-People" than anything in the whole
of Russian music. But no! Scriabin was sacrosanct a classic, who was lucky
enough to die in 1915, two years before the Revolution. Had he been still alive
to-day, one shudders to think what Zhdanov would have said.51

Shteinpress was hardly the only critic to single out Scriabin during the 1948 trials.

Boris Yarustovsky also accused Scriabin of tainting Russia's musical heritage with formalist

tendencies: "Art that loses touch with the people is doomed to fade . . . the assertion of

ultra-individualism and subjectivism, the manifestation of formalistic trends all these are

especially characteristic of art in the epoch of imperialism."52 Scriabin's preference for

systematically manipulating referential collections, sequential repetition, preference for

polyrhythms, and metaphysical beliefs violated this fundamental principle.

Shteinpress, "Protiv zashchitnikov dekadansa v muzyke" (Against the Defenders of Decadence in

Music), Uteraturnaiaga^eta (24 March 1948): 3. Also see his "Raspad garmonii v muzyke modernizma" (The
Decay of Harmony in Modem Music), Sovetskaia mu^yka 10 (December 1948): 42-49.
Werth, Musical Uproar in Moscow, 32.
51
Ibid.
52
Yarustovsky, "The Classical Tradition and Innovation in Music," Soviet literature 6 (1948): 126.
 96

Several landmarks saved Scriabin from persecution by certifying his status as a

national hero. The State reprinted his complete piano works in 1933, and the twenty-fifth

anniversary of his death in 1940 prompted several all-Scriabin concerts and exhibitions

that were prepared by the Scriabin Museum and displayed across the USSR.53 Moreover,

the State published a volume of research and essays by leading Soviet scholars.54 The

composer's orchestral works were performed in a concert series in Tbilisi during the

winter and spring of 1941-1942.55 For the seventy-fifth anniversary of Scriabin's birth in

1946, Sofronitsky and other Russian pianists delivered all-Scriabin recitals and the USSR

Radio Committee under Nikolai Golovanov performed the orchestral works with "great

success."56 Sovetskaia mw%yka recognized the anniversary by printing analyses of Poeme de

I'extase and Prometheus by musicologist Lev Danilevich, Drozdov's reminiscences of the

composer, and a favorable review of a Sofronitsky recital.57 Memorial meetings were held

in the composer's former residence, and the Central Museum of Musical Culture arranged

an exhibit on his life and music.58 In 1947, the Moscow Philharmonic performed his

orchestral works and the Central Museum of Musical Culture sponsored a traveling exhibit

of Scriabin's personal effects, reinforcing his image as a national treasure. These isolated

incidents served as timely reminders of Scriabin's status.

O n the complete works, see Olin Dowries, "Scriabin Re-Studied," New York Times (26 Nov. 1933), X6.
Stanislav Markus ed., A/eksandr Niko/aevieh Skriabin, 1915-1940: sbornik k 25-letiiu so dnia smerti (Moscow:
Gosudarstvennoe muzykal'noe izdatel'stvo, 1940). On the 1940 and 1946 anniversaries, see Rudakova and
Kandinsky, Scriabin: His Life and Times (Neptune City, N . J.: Paganiniana Publications, 1984), 125.
See Harlow Robinson, Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography (New York: Viking, 1987), 115.
See "A Scriabin Cycle," Soviet Literature 12 (December 1946): 70.
57
Danilevich, "Skriabin (3-ia simfoniia - "Promete?')" Sovetskaia mu^yka 12 (December 1946): 65-70; A.
Drozdov, "Vospominaniia o A. N. Skriabine," Sovetskaia mu^ka 12 (December 1946): 71-74; and Drozdov,
"Konsert iz sochinenii Skriabina v ispolnenii V. V. Sofronitskogo," Sovetskaia muvyka 12 (1946): 94-95.
58
"Scriabin Days in Moscow," Soviet Literature 2 (1947): 66. Also see Igor Boelza, "Alexander Scriabin,"
Soviet Literature 2 (1947): 62-65; and "Soviet Pianoforte Music," Soviet Literature 4 (1947): 62-66.
 97

Zhdanovshchina provided a litmus test for Scriabin's mid-century standing. Testimony in

defense of the composer countered the defamatory statements of Shteinpress and others.

Moscow Conservatory piano professor Aleksandr Gol'denveiser proudly proclaimed, "I

was among the first to play Skriabin, that man of genius. His last six sonatas and

Prometheus are harmonically bold, almost paradoxical. But no one would call them

cacophonous - whether you like them or not."59 While Shteinpress compelled the State to

declare their opinion on Scriabin, it became clear that his extreme antagonism towards the

composer represented the minority opinion. In addition to the happy coincidence of

Scriabin's anniversaries, the composer also escaped persecution due to Zhdanov's

denunciation of art for art's sake and favoring of program music over absolute works.

Quoting Sofronitsky, Scriabin biographer Faubion Bowers concurred that '"Life, light,

struggle that is where Scriabin's true greatness lies,' placing him well within those Party-

line 'progressive, humanistic, living ideals' promulgated by officials."60 Although the

State's cultural crackdown lasted until 1952, Scriabin emerged from this turbulent era

relatively unscathed. Indeed, declassified Army documents confirm that by 1954 the

composer was still "favored by Communist music policy makers."

As we shall see, Scriabin's reception in the English-speaking world underwent a

similar shift, although as an outsider to the national heritages of England and the United

States, the composer was left without a net once his popularity ebbed.

Quoted in Werth, Musical Uproar in Moscow, 63.

Quoted in Bowers, The New Scriabin, 9.
Slonimsky, Supplement to Music Since 1900 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986), 342.
 98

A. British Excursion

With Scriabin's Soviet reception updated, let us briefly consider the composer's

changing fortunes in the West. While his precipitous decline outside of the USSR during

the 1920s-1940s lacks the political intrigue of his Soviet reception, his lowly status in both

regions testifies to the sober post-war climate and rejection of indulgence. Far from a

digression, this cross-cultural approach illuminates parallels between Russian and Western

views of Scriabin, such as their mutual contempt for his philosophy and a perceived lack of

discipline in his music.

During the early 1920s, the critical acclaim that Scriabin had earned in England a

decade prior became overshadowed by such homespun works as William Walton's Facade

suite (1922) and jazz-tinged overture Portsmouth Point (1925). By 1923, a London Times critic

reported that, "The popularity of Scriabin seems to be on the wane" now that passing time

had finally exposed the "real poverty of the music."62 The floodgates flung open. In 1924,

musicologist Herbert Antcliffe read a paper to London's Musical Association that decried

The hectic erethisms of [Scriabin], his morbid striving after stronger and even
stronger sensations and his frequent wallowing in what one might term the very
mire of hysterical emotions, if they are comparable with anything remotely
connected with religion, can only be likened to the most extravagant and
unbalanced excesses of a Salvationist prayer-meeting.6

Critics living across Western Europe and England similarly identified Scriabin as a bygone

romantic. Writing from Paris, Leonid Sabaneev summarized the prevailing attitude: "This

belated romantic a romantic to the marrow of his bones made his appearance just

62
H. C. Colles, "London Critic Finds Scriabin 'Cloying,'" New York Times (30 September 1923), R3.
63
Antcliffe, "The Significance of Scriabin," The Musical Quarterly 10/3 (July 1924): 334. Also see his
"Promedieus in Music," The Musical Quarterly 12/1 (January 1926): 110-120; and idem, "Music is Not
Esoteric," Musical Opinion (March 1951): 271-273.
 99

when romanticism had come to be regarded as obsolete.'" While such supporters as

Boris Schloezer defined Scriabin's romantic tendencies in positive terms as a celebration

that "overflows into everyday existence and integrates with it in order to illuminate and in

effect, transform it," this spiritual regard for art clashed with contemporary values.65 To

modern audiences, then, Scriabin appeared, in Schloezer's words, "old-fashioned, a demode

anarchist. [His] restlessness, his over-reaching desire, his ecstaticism are felt as vain

agitation, weakness and lack of discipline."66

Scriabin's mysticism squarely remained in the foreground of his reception during

the 1920s-l 930s. Critics and the public only vaguely comprehended his philosophical ideas

through popular publications or casual conversation, but such hearsay provided sufficient

grounds for his dismissal. In 1926, Alexander Brent-Smith offered a typical assessment:

Has, then, Scriabin's work any permanent value? Until he fettered himself with
theories to prove his independence of theories Yes. Afterwards his work was . . .
sterile and futureless . . . He strutted in the garments of a fashionable philosopher,
but his mind was made for small emotions and not for great thoughts.67

Criticism against Scriabin's philosophy grew increasingly common in the 1920s.

Perhaps the worst snubs of this sort came from historian Cecil Gray, who asserted that the

Russian composer "suffered from megalomaniac delusions concerning his own importance.

[. . .] His artistic achievement, apart from a few little piano pieces, is virtually nil."68 Gray

64
Sabaneev, "Scriabin and the Idea of a ReHgious Art," The Musical Times 72/1063 (1 Sept. 1931): 789.
Schloezer, Scriabin: Artist and Mystic, 2>\2.
Schloezer, "Scriabine," Modern Music: League of Composers'Review 1/3 (November 1924): 15. Pointing
out the narrow application of die term "romantic," Schloezer argued that aldiough romanticism dominated
the nineteenth century, the style "is more or less explicidy manifest not only in the works of Bach and his
sons Carl Philipp Emanuel and Wilhelm Friedemann, but even in die music of such preeminendy classical
composers as Haydn and Mozart." See Scriabin: Artist and Mystic, 311.
67
Brent-Smith, "Some Reflections on the Work of Scriabin," [Part I]," Musical Times 67/1001 (1 July
1926): 694.
Gray, A Survey of Contemporary Music, Second ed. (London: Humphrey Milford, 1927), 158,159.
 100

cited Scriabin's lack of self-control as his worst offense. Unable to suppress his contempt,

Gray asserted that the Russian composer's music

has all the appearances of great art in the same way that culture pearls have all the
appearance of real pearls. It is not a natural spontaneous growth, but is artificially
stimulated and provoked. It does not live, but has only a galvanic semblance of life,
a false appearance of vitality . . . His harmony is artificially and mechanically arrived
at and is, moreover, monotonous and extraordinarily restricted in scope. But
perhaps it is his melodic poverty which gives the show away most of all. He has no
sense of melodic line whatsoever [and] no rhythmic sense. His music never moves,
but merely heaves and undulates like an octopus in the flowing tide.69

Equally outspoken was Gerald Abraham, whose 1931 article on Scriabin commented

upon the composer's unfortunate historical position. "The most unfashionable position in

which a composer can be placed is that of having been dead for only a decade or so. He is

neither 'one of the greatest living composers' nor an established classic." Upholding a

view common between contemporary Soviet and Western critics, Abraham dismissed the

composer as a hopeless romantic who represented "a world gone forever."70 In 1933 he

acknowledged that, "Scriabin is now thought very little of," and the following year in

program notes to a 1934 Queen's Hall concert, he ridiculed Scriabin as a "sad pathological

case, erotic and egotistic to the point of mania."71 Abraham diagnosed Scriabin in 1938 as

a victim of "incredible egomania" and an "insane imagination." Far from siding with other

critics who extolled Scriabin's harmonies as his redeeming quality, Abraham dismissed his

late works as "paper music, cunningly disguised elaborations of symmetrical harmonic

Gray, A. Survey aj Contemporary Music, 155-157. For a critique on Gray's seething commentary, see
Ralph Wood, "Skryabin and His Critics," The Monthly Musical Record (November-December 1956): 222-225.
Abraham, "Scriabin Reconsidered," The Musical Standard (September 1931): 214-216.
Abraham, This Modern Stuff: A. Fairly "Plaine and Easie" Introduction to Contemporary Music (London: D.
Archer, 1933), 42. Also see his Scriabin chapter (with Calvocoressi) in Masters of Russian Music (London:
Duckworth, 1936). Program notes quoted in Martin Cooper, "MusicScriabin," London Mercury 31/182
(December 1934): 201.
 101

schemes." Abraham insisted that, "the whole of the later development of Skryabinesque

harmony is a mere side-track in the history of music as a whole."72

Even Britain's artistic luminaries rejected Scriabin, and critics noticed the antipathy.

Biographer Michael Kennedy reported that Sir Adrian Boult flady refused to conduct the

Scriabin selections recommended by BBC program director Edward Clark, sneering that it

was "evil music."73 Boult further issued a ban against broadcasting Scriabin's music on

British airwaves during the 1930s.74 Composer Constant Lambert sided with Boult and

also railed against the "opulent vulgarity" of Poeme de I'extase, which struck him as

angry waves beating vainly at the breakwater of our intelligence . . . Those who
were swept off their feet by Scriabin, and they included some of our most level-
headed critics, thought nothing of referring to Mozart as a snuff box composer in
comparison with the cosmic master.75

But times had changed. Several English critics commented on the composer's noticeable

decline after the mid-1920s. Ernest Fennell remarked in 1926 that Scriabin's "writings are

out of fashion," while by 1932 critic Terrence White could justifiably write, "Scriabin is

now, by artist and layman alike, almost entirely neglected."76 Martin Cooper confirmed in

1934 that, "Neither Scriabin nor Liszt have been great favourites with the concert-going

public in England in the last few years," while Robert Hull observed the same year that,

"During recent years Scriabin's orchestral works have been rarely heard in London." 77

Abraham, A Hundred Years of Music, Fourth ed. (London: Duckworth, 1974), 225, 255. First edition
published in 1938.
See Kennedy, Adrian Boult (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1987), 157.
See Robert A. Stradling and Meirion Hughes, The English Musical Renaissance, 1840-1940: Constructing a
National Music (Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press, 2001), 104,190.
75
Lambert, Music Ho! A Study ofMusic in Decline (New York: Scribner's, 1934), 65.
76
Fennell, "A Word for Scriabin," The Musical Times 67/1003 (1 September 1926): 833; and White,
"Alexander Scriabin," The Chesterian 13/104 (July 1932): 213.
77
Cooper, "MusicScriabin," 209; and Hull, "The Orchestral Method of Scriabin," The Chesterian 16/11
(November-December 1934): 34.
 102

Like Scriabin's Soviet reception, English critics' contempt for the composer's

philosophy and lack of self-restraint persisted well into the 1950s and 1960s. In 1956, an

anonymous London Times reviewer reviled Poeme de I'extase as a vestige of "declining

romanticism," protesting, "it is too much in sound saturation, length, and emphasis."78

The following year, Martin Cooper surmised, "Today Scriabin's harmonic 'innovations'

appear as no more than the exploiting ad nauseam of a single chord, while his mystical

beliefs are regarded as psychological fantasies of purely clinical interest."79 In a review of a

performance of Prometheus, British critic Alan Blythe similarly contended that

the structure seems non-existent, the philosophy behind it suspect if not lunatic,
and the atmosphere it creates as steamy as the air in Albert Hall that night . . . Let
us hear less in the future of how Scriabin has been unjustly neglected by posterity:
his semi-oblivion seems well justified if we are to judge by this empty score.80

Since Scriabin commanded less of a presence in the United States than in England,

his eclipse was less pronounced. American critics, though, sided with their British counter-

parts. Lazare Saminsky chided Scriabin's "formal anemia" and "strength-sapping literary

fancy,"81 and Yale professor David Smith jeered that, "Scriabin's harmonic mannerisms,

beautiful as they may be, mark a discouraging retrogression."82 Paul Rosenfeld observed:

"Scriabin is one of the artists whose work vanishes with the time in which it was
born!" This recent verdict by an earnest young composer is pretty generally that
of his tribe. Scriabin's glory remains fairly complete in its eclipse. From time to
time a zealous conductor repeats the unfortunate Poeme de ITLxtase . . . Scriabin is
"romantic," "inflated," "mere color," "international in the invidious sense." In
fine, he is tabu.83

Anonymous, "Scriabin and Rubbra," Tondon Times (19 January 1956), F3.
Cooper, "Ecstasy for Ecstasy's Sake," The Listener (10 October 1957): 563.
80
Blythe, "Hot Air," Music and Musicians 15/2 (1966): 42.
Saminsky, Music of Our Day: Essentials and Prophecies (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1939), 55.
82
Smith, "The 'Reds' of Music," New York Times (26 November 1922), 102.
Rosenfeld, Discoveries of a Music Critic (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1936), 158. For an example
of Rosenfeld's early enthusiasm for the composer, see his "Scriabin" in The Seven Arts 2 (August 1917): 638-
645, revised and expanded for his Musical Portraits (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920), 177-189.
 103

British critics snubbed Extase through the 1950s. In 1953, a critic declared it ""wearisome

in its self-intoxication, one more kind of decadent romanticism."84 Notwithstanding a few

supporters, another critic's 1957 estimate of Extase as "a bloated, desperately repetitious

piece whether it be judged as music or as eroticism" represented the majority opinion.85

Sabaneev and Schloezer: The Rift Widens

Now that we have examined the dissention towards Scriabin abroad, let us consider

the opinions of two music critics who were close to Scriabin in life and later fled the Soviet

Union after the Bolshevik takeover. Although Leonid Sabaneev (1881-1968) had been an

ardent supporter of the composer, he immigrated to France and later condemned Scriabin

as morally and sexually depraved. Scriabin's brother-in-(common) law Boris de Schloezer

(1881-1967), however, faithfully defended his idol from Paris after critics and the public

had turned against Scriabin. As professional critics living outside of the Soviet Union,

Sabaneev and Schloezer both occupied prime positions to assess the composer's lagging

popularity across Europe. Both were learned, experienced writers; Sabaneev contributed a

regular column in The Musical Times from 1928-1940, and Schloezer wrote for the Russian

emigre daily, Les Dernieres NoupeIIes.&6 Their knowledge of the composer both personally

and professionally led them to make astute observations on his position in modern music.

Our Music Critic, "In Cold Storage: Piano Concerto," London Times (6 November 1953), 12G. Three
years later an anonymous reviewer concluded that, "not all of Sir Malcolm Sargent's persuasive advocacy or
the full-blooded efforts of the orchestra could lend life to Scriabin's faded, though still very loud, illusions
of grandeur." "Promenade Concert: Russian Music," London Times (23 August 1956), 10E.
"Retreat from Wagner," London Times (29 January 1957), 3B. Another correspondent scoffed at
"Scriabin's dated and protracted orgy of loveliness, the Poeme d'Extase." "Music Inspired by the Stage,
Books, and Places," London Times (5 Oct. 1957), 9E. For some highlights, see "Scriabin Revived," London
Times (2 Feb. 1948), 7; and Myers, "Scriabin: A Reassessment," The Musical Times 98/1367 (Jan. 1957): 17-18.
Sitsky's Music of the Repressed Russian Avant-Garde lists Sabaneev's numerous publications (pp. 300-302).
 104

The conflicting interpretations of the composer propagated by these two men, however,

drove the wedge between rival factions still deeper. Their opposing views summarize both

sides of the debate over Scriabin's extramusical interests.

Both critics authored early biographies of Scriabin.87 The first to appear was Skriabin

(Moscow: Skorpion, 1916) by Sabaneev, who later authored the widely read Vospominaniia o

Skriabine (Reminiscences of Scriabin [Moscow: Mugniz, 1925]). Schloezer's Skriabin: Uchnost',

Misteriia {Scriabin: Personality, Mystery [Berlin: Grani, 1922]), translated in 1987 by Nicholas

Slonimsky as Scriabin: Artist and Mystic, appeared in the interim between Sabaneev's books.

Opinions on the veracity and value of these publications have been as sharply divided as

the views of their respective authors.88 Soviet biographer Viktor Del'son maintained that,

"Schloezer was far from understanding Scriabin in everything," yet he sided more with

Schloezer than with Sabaneev, whose opinion he regarded as "pernicious and absurd."89

Del'son's dilemma is typical. Although these two authors occasionally adopted cavalier

approaches to their subject, whether by blurring the line between Scriabin's own ideas and

a paraphrase of them (Sabaneev) or through indiscriminate hagiography (Schloezer), nearly

every subsequent Scriabin biographer refers to their writings, especially Sabaneev's.

Yulii Engel' published extensive biographical sketches the same year as Sabaneev's first Scriabin's
monograph; they appeared in the memorial issue of Muvgkal'naia sovremennik Nos. 4-5 (1916): 5-96; the
contents were entirely devoted to personal reminiscences and critical essays on Scriabin's life and music.
For reviews of Sabaneev's Reminiscences, see Nikolai Malkov, "Pravda o Skriabine" [The Truth about
Scriabin], Zhi^n' iskusstva 8 (1926): 6-7; Irina Vanechkina and Bulat M. Galeev, review of Reminiscences on
Scriabin, by Sabaneev,'LeonardoReviews (March 2001): [online]; and David Fanning, review of Erinnerungen an
Alexander Skrjabin, trans. Ernest Kuhn, Music <& Letters 87/3 (2006): 471-473. For reviews of Schloezer's
text in Slonimsky's translation, see David Murray, "Distorted Vision," The Musical Times 129/1743 (May
1988): 248; Richard Taruskin, review of The Music of Alexander Scriabin, by Baker and Scriabin: Artist and
Mystic, by Schloezer, Music Theory Spectrum 10 (Spring 1988): 143-169; Anthony Pople, review of Scriabin:
Artist and Mystic, by Boris de Schloezer, Music & Letters 70/1 (February 1989): 127-128; Caryl Emerson, ibid,
The Slavic and East European journal 33/2 (Summer 1989): 316-317; Christopher Barnes, ibid, The Modern
Language Review 85/3 (July 1990): 815-816; and Roy Guenther, ibid, Notes 47/3 (March 1991): 758-759.
Quoted in Bowers, The New Scriabin, 11.
 105

Background information on these critics will illuminate their personal perspectives

on Scriabin's music and ideology. Scriabin's junior by nine years, Sabaneev was a scientist,

musicologist, and founding ASM member who contributed to the composer's posthumous

reception through numerous publications on his music and ideas.90 An early admirer of

Scriabin, Sabaneev even modeled several youthful compositions on the elder composer's

late style.91 His early studies of mathematics and physics at the Moscow University led him

to devise pragmatic solutions to musical and aesthetic problems that Scriabin had only

hazily sketched. Sabaneev's scientific background led him to draw parallels between

musical harmonies and their optic counterpart in the clavier a lumieres, a light organ designed

to project colors corresponding to key centers in Prometheus. Sabaneev also first attributed

(erroneously) the origins of the "mystic chord" to the overtone series.92 While his 1916

biography focused on the ideological principles that inspired Scriabin's works, his 1925

Reminiscences drew on diary entries that Sabaneev recorded during his nearly daily visits with

Scriabin during his last five years of life. By 1926 Sabaneev fled the Soviet Union and

relocated to France. Soviet authorities, however, frowned upon his emigration and

regarded him afterwards as persona non grata?1

Sabaneev's two other Scriabin books include Skriabin i iavknie tsvetnogo slukha v sviasj so svetovoi simfoniei
"Prometei" (St. Petersburg: Muzyka, 1916) and A N. Skriabin (Moscow: Rabotnik prosveshcheniia, 1922).
For more on Sabaneev, see S. W. Pring, "L. Sabaneev," The Musical Times 68/1018 (1 Dec. 1927): 1090.
Sitsky's Music of the Repressed Russian Avant-Garde discusses Scriabinian traits in Sabaneev's Sonata for
Piano (1915), dedicated to the memory of die recendy deceased composer, as well as his 1932 Sonata for
piano, violin, and cello. A talented pianist, Sabaneev studied under die same teachers who taught Scriabin,
including piano with Nikolai Zverev and counterpoint with Sergei Taneev. Sabaneev's pianistic prowess
was such that Scriabin entrusted him with die solo piano and four-hand transcriptions of Prometheus.
Sabaneev first analyzed die famous sonority in "Prometei Skriabina," Muzyka 1 (Moscow, 1910).
From die inaugural issue of Muzyka in 1910 until 1915, Sabaneev audiored over thirty-five articles for tiiis
journal, several of which discussed Scriabin. See Daniel Bosshard, Thematisch-chronologisches Ver^eichnis der
musickalischen Werke von Alexander Skrjabin (Mainz: Ediziun Trais Giats Ardez, 2003), 296-297.
Sitsky noted that during the 1930s-1940s, "the Soviet establishment tried to write [Sabaneev] out of the
history books, and regarded him witii considerable hostility . . . his total neglect in Russia is die result of
 106

Also nine years Scriabin's junior, Schloezer first met the composer in 1896 at the

impressionable age of fifteen. Scriabin's attraction to Schloezer's sister Tatyana (who

became his common-law wife in 1905) brought Schloezer into close contact with Scriabin,

who often engaged him in philosophical discussions. Their kinship developed through a

shared belief that art serves an ecstatic, revelatory function, yet their divergent opinions on

the superior means for this process spawned endless debate. Schloezer eagerly indulged

the composer's glib theorizing, and he remained steadfast in his vision of Scriabin as an

eternal optimist whose vision of a transcendent art stemmed from his love for humanity

and desire to connect with it spiritually. Schloezer took great care to protect Scriabin's

legacy as well as his family after the composer's death. In 1919 when civil war broke out

in Russia, Schloezer fled to Yalta with Slonimsky, Tatyana, and Scriabin's children. The

following year he went into exile in France where he wrote his book on the composer. He

had intended to write two volumes, the first a study of the composer's ideology and the

second analyses of his music, but Schloezer completed only the first project.

Sabaneev and Schloezer diverged on fundamental issues regarding the connection

between Scriabin's music and his philosophy. While Schloezer considered the composer's

ideology as ancillary to music that stood on its own merit, Sabaneev argued that his music

was incomprehensible without a knowledge of his eschatology: "To understand Skryabin

anger at his defection and his sniping at the Soviet regime . . ." {Music of the RepressedRussian Avant-Garde, 292,
299). Sabaneev was also alarmed and annoyed at die rise of die proletariat into the highest musical echelons
as well as die increasing control exerted by die State. Commenting on the irrationality and mismanagement
of musical culture, in 1931 he bitterly complained diat, "the entire lack of basis at the moment, and in
particular the utter ignorance of the ruling authorities concerning such matters, permitted . . . projects to
assume hypertrophied, Homeric oudines; the new lord and master liked anytiiing strange and extravagant. . .
At that happy period it was easier to persuade men of the indispensable necessity of something quite
fantastic . . . dian to convince die ruling class of the need for the most elementary tilings." See "Musical
Tendencies in Contemporary Russia," The MusicalQuarterly 68 (1931): 475.
 107

one had to believe that he was a prophet, and that his music was a sort of tonal

pharmacopoeia on the subject of the premature production of the end of the world."94

Schloezer refused to accept this position, countering that, "Solipsistic individualism was to

him only the means to an end, not the end in itself." Schloezer further argued that

Sabaneev's description of Scriabin's doctrine inadequately accounted for its dynamic

development. Furthermore, while Schloezer rationalized Scriabin's philosophy as the

inspiration for the music, Sabaneev dismissed it as empty rhetoric that only proved the

inherent contradictions in Scriabin's principles. Their polarized judgments and respective

rationales for those opinions exemplified the divided views of critics and the concert-going

public on Scriabin's music and philosophy.

Both critics agreed that Scriabin's impulse to fuse music with philosophy indeed,

to reunite the arts in a Gesamtkunstwerk identified him as a quintessential romantic. Their

individual definitions of romanticism, however, remained incompatible. In Schloezer's

opinion, Scriabin's brand of romanticism manifested itself not only in his extension of

Lisztian and Wagnerian techniques, but also in his view of art as a vehicle for spiritual

transfiguration and renewal. The antithesis to romanticism (classicism) instead regards art

as diversionary entertainment. Schloezer's description is contemptuous:

Generally speaking, for a classicist, art is only an interlude, a celebration of some

sort; it disrupts the course of time and serves as a break in the routine of life. It is
an intermission, after which life resumes its course and returns to "serious
business" as if nothing had changed. The goal of a romantic is to erase such a
distinction. A romantic definitely desires that everything be changed, with art not
merely an ent'acte but a celebration that goes on, that overflows into everyday
existence and integrates with it in order to illuminate and, in effect, transform it.95

94
Schloezer, "Two More Russian Critiques: Sergei Prokofiev," Music & letters 8/4 (October 1927): 427.
95
Schloezer, Scriabin: Artist and Mystic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 234.
 108

Scriabin's popularity dwindled as a direct result of his reputation as a romantic,

which Schloezer conceded was the "worst of all insults nowadays." He observed that

critics and audiences had rejected the composer's philosophical beliefs as early as 1924.96

Contradicting Sabaneev and RAPM critics, Schloezer argued that Scriabin's distinction lay

in being Russia's only authentic romantic composer. Even Tchaikovsky, whose music was

associated with the autobiographical confessionalism identified with romantic art, was for

Schloezer a sworn classicist in the Italianate mold. Schloezer insisted that Scriabin's "soul

was aflame with human love," and he defined the composer's romanticism in terms of his

"eagerness to share with others the joys that were overflowing in his soul . . . Not for him

were the satisfactions of the recluse or the solitary happiness of the egotist."97 Schloezer's

hagiography recalls Lunacharsky's praise for Scriabin as a paragon of Bolshevik ideals.

For Sabaneev, Scriabin's brand of romanticism glorified the privileged culture of

the aristocratic salon and its obsession with the erotic and the diabolical. His criticism of

these elements echoes Socialist Realist rhetoric in its intolerance for non-realistic fetishism.

Sabaneev's characterization is disdainful: "There was in him an erotic quality that found

relief in the banal 'cavaliership' of fashionable salon life. This maniacal, conceited

demonism of self-adoration found it necessary to express itself in a form so peculiar to the

salon."98 Scriabin's romanticism was not only deplorable in its aristocratic posturing, but

also woefully arcane in its embrace of a pre-Revolutionary Weltanschauung that had all but

Schloezer noted, "The spirit of his music finds no alliance with the spirit of post-war Europe where
one perceives the need of calm stability, a desire for order, a fear of experiments in every field, in politics,
literature, poetry, and music." "Scriabine," Modern Music: The league of Composers' Review 1/3 (November
1924): 15.
Schloezer, Scriabin: Artist and Mystic, 134.
Sabaneev, Modern Russian Composers (New York: International, 1927), 41.
 109

vanished. Sabaneev concluded that this ephemeral quality, along with the "hysterical and

psychopathic nature of his music . . . did more than a little damage to his musical career."99

Socialist Realist rhetoric peeks through in Sabaneev's candid critiques of Scriabin's

bourgeois tendencies in the Reminiscences: "The incubated, isolated atmosphere of Scriabin's

inner circle led to creating the same type of incubated, isolated music."100 Nikolai Malkov,

an RAPM critic who wrote disapprovingly of Scriabin the year before the Reminiscences were

published, reviewed Sabaneev's book and agreed that, "Trying to label Scriabin as the

voice of the proletariat makes little sense, as we can't identify him by those lights."101

Judging by the estimates of Sabaneev and Malkov, then, Scriabin's music and doctrine

failed to meet the standards of either Russian or Western culture. To be scorned by an

RAPM critic was inevitable during the backlash against bourgeois decadence, but to be

censured by a former supporter reflected the composer's loathsome status at home and

abroad during the 1930s and 1940s.

Sabaneev isolated the problem as Scriabin's "sick and neurasthenic" narcissism.

He reasoned that this egomania revealed itself in Scriabin's inability to appreciate other

composers' music (whose scores Sabaneev routinely submitted for snap judgments and

then promptly recorded Scriabin's snubs for posterity) as well as in his obsessive harmonic

schemes. Scriabin's egocentricity revealed itself as early as 1893 in their first meeting at

Taneev's home, and Sabaneev adduced this conceit as evidence of the gulf between the

Sabaneev noted, "Russian music had never known a real romantic phase - it came too late for that
and Scriabin was the expression of that belated and hence exaggerated and hypertrophied romanticism."
"Scriabin: On the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of His Death," The Musical Times 81/1168 (June 1940): 256.
100
See Sabaneev, "A. N. Scriabin: A Memoir," Russian Review 25/3 (July 1966): 257-267.
Malkov, "Pravda o Skriabine," Zhi^n'iskusstva 8 (1926): 7. Sabaneev's "incubated" quote also comes
from this review. Elsewhere, Malkov observed that the insular nature of Scriabin's music and ideology
distanced him from the people. See "O Skriabine: k 10-letiiu konchiny," Zhi^n'iskusstva 15 (1925): 5.
 110

composer's values and those of the people. Such self-absorption, he argued, precluded any

development of Scriabin's style, diminishing his long-term value. Sabaneev recalled:

I had the impression that Scriabin was unable to love devotedly or with any sort
of necessary self-denial. In fact everything was construed so that he could
"accept" love. He was submerged in himself, his work, and psychically there just
was no room for love. Love to him was only a refinement of the erotic act, "a
symphony of sensations" he called it, to awaken his own creativity.102

Sabaneev asserted that Scriabin's philosophical musings compromised his reputation as a

composer, which as we have seen, disputes Schloezer's view. Sabaneev often stressed that

Scriabin's unhealthy egotism reflected his mental instability. As further evidence that

Scriabin was "psychically ill," in the Reminiscences he even compared Scriabin's tendency for

schematization and rhythmic dissolution to the music produced by psychiatric patients.

Despite his criticisms, Sabaneev eagerly foresaw a time when Scriabin's ideas and

music would regain popularity. This acceptance, however, required an ideological shift:

Scriabin is destined to be revalued and revived; not, of course, as an innovator

(nothing of that remains in his work), but simply as the composer of beautiful,
refined, expressive, and original music. But for this revaluation a psychological
change is required: the businesslike prosaic, realistic atmosphere of our days must
some day be illuminated by the fires of a reviving romanticism.103

Although this prophecy went unfulfilled during Sabaneev's lifetime, Scriabin's fortunes

improved once again during the early 1970s. This renaissance, however, arrived only after

critical scorn and neglect continued to plague Scriabin's reception through the 1960s.104

Quoted in Bowers, Scriabin: A Biography, 2:89. Of their first meeting Sabaneev recalled, "He was
supercilious towards the room . . . He looked too distracted for my taste, and he didn't even seem
particularly intelligent. . . Others too looked at him with skepticism and reservation." Bowers, ibid, 1:163.
Sabaneev, "Scriabin: On the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of His Death," 257.
Critiques against Scriabin in addition to neglect of his music endured through the 1950s and 1960s.
See Jan Holcman, "Horowitz Plays Scriabin," Saturday Review 39/34 (25 August 1956): 46; Howard Talley,
"Scriabine the Inscrutable," Clavier 3/5 (October 1964): 28-31; Albert Goldberg, "Divine Comedy, Poem
and Their Audiors - An Anniversary Year," Los Angeles Times (25 July 1965), K2; and Wilson Lyle,
"Alexander Scriabin - Innovator of Sound and Colour," Musical Opinion (April 1965): 401-403.
 Ill

* * * *

Let us sum up Scriabin's reception following Lunacharsky's fall from power in the

mid-1920s. The composer's Soviet reception exceeded issues of periodization to address

the social role of art. The rise of proletarian organizations and demand for realism in art

and music triggered an ideological shift, and Scriabin's individualism violated the Marxist

ideal of music for and by the people. As this orthodoxy hardened in the 1940s under

Zhdanov, Soviet politics and culture increasingly adopted nationalist overtones. But rather

than condemn Scriabin during the Zhdanovshchina trials, officials welcomed the composer

back into the canon, presenting a fortuitous turn of fate unforeseen by Soviet censors. By

sanctifying Scriabin as a classic, the State safely anaesthetized him. Schloezer observed:

Modern Russians have, as it were, neutralized the explosive quality of Scriabin's

work they have blunted the edge of his dangerous weapon, and have relegated
him to his own place: that of a great musician amongst many others.105

Scriabin's enduring celebrity is further evidenced by the several State-funded institutions or

tekhnikums named in his honor (Dmitri Kabalevsky (1904-1987) graduated from one).

The anti-Scriabin sentiment further stemmed from his negative association with

mysticism and symbolism, which had come to symbolize a bygone age. As RAPM critics

strove to heighten social awareness of the bourgeois hegemony, Scriabin became a prime

target by virtue of his celebrity. These Marxist critiques illustrate how deeply entrenched

socialist values had become in Soviet critical parlance. As we will see in Chapter Four,

mapping socialist ideals onto Scriabin's music endured into the late twentieth century,

piling on even more levels of hermeneutic meaning to his critical reception.

Schloezer, "Alexander Scriabin," The Sackbut (November 1926): 94.

 112
CHAPTER FOUR:
A Russian Mystic in the Age of Aquarius:
A Case Study in Composer Revivals

"We shall never again view Scriabin with the enthusiasm he aroused among
certain sections of the intelligentsia over forty years ago."
-Joseph Machlis (1961)

By the early 1960s, Scriabin's popularity had sunk to its nadir. Only an anniversary

or mere curiosity occasioned the composer's rare appearance on concert programs in the

West during the 1930s-1960s. Machlis' 1961 prediction that the composer's glory days

had forever passed represented the consensus of opinion. In a 1966 monograph, British

author Colin Wilson likewise considered Scriabin and Ernest Bloch as "unfashionable as

they could be." 2 Scriabin had long been an easy target for critics who dismissed him as

either an ersatz Chopin or else a charlatan who subscribed to crackpot philosophy to

fortify his compositions. But sweeping changes in politics, the arts, and society soon

fostered conditions that allowed Scriabin to regain popularity. While Soviet officials

reclaimed past luminaries to disseminate political propaganda, American listeners returned

to aestheticism. The 1972 centenary of Scriabin's birth arrived during this transitional era,

which saw a resurgence of interest in the composer's ideas and music.

Classical revivals remain largely unexplored. Mendelssohn's 1829 resurrection of

Bach's St. Matthew Passion served as a model for later revaluations of older repertoire, and

this reflective process shapes our modern musical identity. While musicologists have

focused on authenticity, notation, and performance practice, ethnomusicologists have

fruitfully explored the sociological aspects of revivals. Among them, Tamara Livingston

1
Machlis, Introduction to Contemporary Musk (New York: W. W. Norton, 1961), 132.
Wilson, Chords and Discords: Purely Personal Opinions on Music (New York: Crown Publishers, 1966), 102.
 113
has proposed a theory for the phenomenon. Revivalists reclaim an idealized past in hopes

that its values might benefit the present age, and in doing so, they oppose mainstream

culture. Livingston observed, "music revivals are middle-class phenomena which play an

important role in the formulation and maintenance of a class-based identity of sub-groups

of individuals disaffected with aspects of contemporary life."3 Their collective interests

create a transnational bond that unites people from disparate backgrounds who otherwise

might not have interacted. Livingston identified shared values and experiences that bond

revivalists, including the "categorization of culture into 'modern' and 'traditional,' the

privileging of exchange value over use value, the objectification, commodification, and

rationalization of various aspects of life, participation in the 'cult of consumerism,' an

ideology of modernity, and the imagined community of a nation, among others." 4

Livingston also pointed out that revivals share an industry that commodifies the

historical artifact, yet sustains the revival itself: "Not only does the media industry serve

to perpetuate revivalist doctrine and practices, but it is a valuable adjunct to organizations

for the formation and maintenance of a tight-knit society based on a shared interest and

consumption patterns." 5 Partnerships between revivalists and the commercial industry

extend the modes of interaction from face-to-face contact to mass media (recordings,

magazines, and institutions). This interchange allows events such as Scriabin's centenary

to reach significant proportions. The efforts required to reestablish a body of work varies

"Music Revivals: Towards a General Theory," Ethnomusicology 43/1 (Winter 1999): 66. She cited
research by Mark Slobin, "Rethinking 'Revival' of American Ethnic Music," New York Folklore 9 (1983): 37-
44; HaskeU, The Early Music Revival. A History (London: Thames & Hudson, 1988); Neil Rosenberg, Trans-
forming Traditions: Folk Musk Revivals Examined (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1993); and Georgiana Boyes,
The Imagined Village: Culture, Ideology, and the English Folk Revival (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1993).
Neil Rosenberg defines these musical systems as "historically bounded by such factors as class,
ethnicity, race, religion, commerce, and art." Transforming Traditions: Folk Music Revivals Examined, \11.
Livingston, "Music Revivals," 79.
 114
with the composer and revivalist group, but once a repertoire has been restored, the need

to assert its Otherness disappears. Revivals, though, can have afterlives. As Livingston

noted, "the tension caused by static definitions of authenticity and historical fidelity may

sow the seeds of the revival's breakdown, yet frequendy the revival will have served as a

cultural catalyst, stimulating new sounds, new textures, new repertoires." 6

Ethnomusicologists and historians have both recognized the revenue potential of

music revivals. Coinciding with centenaries and other landmarks, revivals increase ticket

and record sales, and the more the music sold and earned acclaim, the higher an artist's

cultural stock rose. With classical albums accounting for a meager percentage of sales

during the 1960s, revivals provided the shots in the arm desperately needed by the

classical music industry. Improvements in recording techniques and stereo sound also

rendered many older recordings obsolete, providing a need for new recordings of older

repertoire. American composer and critic Lester Trimble argued that revivals such as

Scriabin's in 1972 represented "a reaction to the exhaustion of consumer interest in the

'standard' musical repertoire (so long exploited) and a desperate attempt, mostly for

economic reasons, to create a new, commercially exploitable repertoire."7 Commentator

and author Martin Bookspan agreed that Scriabin's revival developed "as one result of

our musical life's being saturated in the standard repertoire, both on records and in the

concert hall, and the resultant need to investigate the fringe repertoire for additional

viable material."8 Critic Igor Kipnis agreed in 1972 that, "Burgeoning interest in Scriabin

can be ascribed to a number of causes, the most obvious of which is undoubtedly

Livingston, "Music Revivals: Towards a General Theory," 81.

7
James Goodfriend, ed., "Why Alexander Scriabin?" Stereo Review (January 1973): 69.
8
Ibid.
 115
commercial," a claim supported by statistics. The May 1957 Schwann catalogue lacked a

single Scriabin entry, but by 1971 it listed sixty-three.10 The next year, the Scriabin market

bulged at the seams. In addition to recordings of Scriabin's famous works, performers

and record companies re-recorded obscure rarities. Scriabin's revival was one of several

during the 1960s-1970s, including those of Mahler, Nielsen, Ives, or be/canto operas, that

represented a potent merger of high culture and the consumer market.11

Far from being random occurrences, revivals are conditioned by past events as

well as contemporary social, historical, and political developments. The synergy between

the artistic and the sociological elements of revivals led to Scriabin's renewed success

during the 1970s. The aesthetic and ideological values of the host environment must

match the ideals ostensibly detected in the music, and English and American audiences

responded to the emotional intensity of Scriabin's music and the mystic spiritualism

associated with its lore. The events surrounding Scriabin's revival conform to the criteria

outlined by Livingston, who cautioned that her list is more descriptive than prescriptive:

(1) an individual or small group of "core revivalists"

(2) revival informants and/or original sources (e.g., sound recordings)
(3) a revivalist ideology and discourse
(4) a group of followers which forms the basis of a revivalist community
(5) revivalist activities (organizations, festivals, competitions)
(6) non-profit and/or commercial enterprises catering to the revivalist market.12

Goodfriend, ed., "Why Alexander Scriabin?: Seven Critics Zero in on a Current Target," 69. Kipnis
added, "If enough people express enthusiasm over a particular composer or piece, others jump on the
bandwagon performers, listeners, and, not least, record companies."
10
Discus, "Scriabin and Other Recordings," Harper's Magazine 245/1470 (November 1972): 126.
Notable record releases in America and England from 1965-1969 include Wide Somer Plays Scriabin
(Mercury); Glenn Gould - Sonata No. 3 (Columbia); Mortin Estrin - 12 Etudes Op. 8 (Connoisseur
Society); and Stanislav Neuhaus - Piano Concerto (MK). By January 1972, additional releases included:
Claudio Abbado Poem of Ecstasy & Tchaikovsky: Romeo et Juliet (DGG); Eugene Ormandy Poem of Ecstasy
and Poem of Fire (RCA); Hilde Somer - "White Mass" & "Black Mass" (Mercury); Ruth Laredo - "White
Mass," "Black Mass," (Connoisseur Society); and Roberto Szidon - Piano Sonatas Nos. 4-10 (DGG).
See Harold Schonberg, "Cycles and Revivals in Music," New York Times (9 April 1978), D19.
12
Livingston, "Music Revivals," 81, 69.
 116
In Scriabin's case, all of the conditions above were met by the time his centennial

celebrations commenced. Core revivalists are invariably middle-class scholars, amateur or

professional musicians, or music industry representatives. Those who were instrumental

in Scriabin's revival included biographer Faubion Bowers, Western pianists Hilde Somer

and Ruth Laredo, and Russian pianists Sviatoslav Richter, Vladimir Horowitz, and

Margarita Fedorova. Moreover, Scriabin's letters were published in Moscow in 1965 and

English translations of numerous letters and journal entries appeared in Bowers' 1969 and

1973 biographies. The following year a collection of rare juvenilia featuring preludes by

Scriabin's son Julian also appeared.13 Moreover, works Scriabin committed to piano rolls

in 1910 for Welte-Mignon were re-recorded and reissued for the centenary.14

These milestones indicate that Scriabin's moment had arrived, at least according

to Livingston's criteria. Yet such a rudimentary list tells us litde about how these events

conformed to or confronted the dominant values of the era. At first glance, Scriabin's

centenary seems to account singularly for the change in attitude towards him in the Soviet

Union and the West during the early 1970s. But the centenary was far from an isolated

phenomenon and was presaged by a series of social, cultural, and political events that

culminated in his revival. This interpretation contradicts such skeptics as critic Eric

Salzman and Martin Bookspan, who attributed the fervor surrounding the composer

Bowers, Scriabin: A. Biography (Tokyo, Palo Alto: Kodansha International, 1969); Bowers, The New
Scriabin: Enigma and Answers (NY: St. Martin's Press, 1973); and Donald Garvelmann, ed., Youthful and Early
Works of Alexander and Julian Scriabin (New York: Music Treasure Publications, 1970). Also see John
Rodgers, "Four Preludes Ascribed to Yulian Skriabin," Nineteenth-Century Music 6 (February 1983): 213-219.
14
Scriabin recorded fourteen compositions for Hupfeld Phonola in 1908 and nine miniatures for Welte-
Mignon in 1910 (nineteen different works total). See Anatole Leikin, "The Performance of Scriabin's Piano
Music: Evidence from the Piano Rolls," Performance Practice Review 9/1 (Spring 1996): 99n3. The erroneous
date of 1905 for die 1910 recording session appears on at least one widely circulated commercial release:
"Scriabin Performs His Own Compositions in 1905 and Leff Pouishnoff Performs ca.1920" (681 Recorded
Treasures, 1975).
 117
15
entirely to his centenary. Scriabin's increased stage and media presence, however, along

with shifting aesthetic and political conditions during the early-1970s, allowed his revival

to become a sustained cultural phenomenon in the Soviet Union, America, and England.

The composer's cultural stock rose in the West and the USSR simultaneously, but

for different reasons. While his fame in the West stemmed from grass-roots revivalists,

his celebrity in his homeland owed to Soviet officials who honored the composer in their

quest for an official cultural sensibility. Scriabin's re-assimilation into the Soviet establish-

ment as an artist-hero mirrored the reappraisals of other condemned artists whose

rehabilitations served as reparation for the Soviet Union's arts crackdown during Stalin's

reign. Sanctioned in 1948, Scriabin became a national hero in 1972. In contrast, radical

developments in American politics, culture, and society during the 1960s fostered

conditions that led listeners to embrace Scriabin's message of spiritual redemption

through art. Reviews by such American critics as Harold Schonberg and Robert Craft

document Scriabin's rising appeal among music professionals while journalists and other

writers commented on his resonance with the youth counterculture. Early Scriabinists of

the 1920s who took seriously the composer's mysticism sowed the seeds for this

flowering. A consideration of the ideals upon which Scriabin's reputation in America was

founded will reveal these early enthusiasts' emphasis on the spiritual, mystical aspect of

the composer's legacy. It also suggests fascinating parallels in aesthetic values between

Scriabin supporters during the 1920s and the early 1970s.

5
Sakman noted that Scriabin's music "will probably continue to be around, but it is likely that it will
remain the province of a coterie and not really die subject of a large-scale revival." Bookspan similarly
jested diat, "The metaphysical elements aside, the chromatic weaknesses of much of the composer's music
will, I feel certain, soon cause it to be returned to die shelves once more to accumulate anodier layer of
dust." See Goodfriend, ed., "Why Alexander Scriabin? Seven Critics Zero in on a Current Target," 69.
 118
De-Stalinization and Rehabilitation

We begin on the far side of the Iron Curtain. As we have seen, a crackdown on

arts regulations dominated the post-World War II period in the Soviet Union, but when

Nikita Khrushchev assumed leadership in 1953 the frosty barriers of the old regime

thawed. Articles in the journal Nomj mir questioned the Party's ability to restrict artistic

expression, and Shostakovich and Khachaturian, newly vindicated by a May 1958 decree

that overturned charges they incurred during Zhdanovshchina, asserted their right to

"independence, boldness, and originality." 6 De-Stalinization policies during the 1950s-

1960s overturned the official censure of native artists from earlier in the century. These

conciliatory gestures projected a modern cultural sensibility that allowed the State to

atone for their earlier dismissals of Russia's most gifted artists.

Artistic products of the era reflected this change in policy. Ilya Ehrenburg's 1954

novella Ottepel' ("The Thaw") chastised communism and depicted its adherents as soulless

sycophants. Other important publications included Vera Panova's 1953 novel Four

Seasons, Leonid Zorin's 1954 play Guests, Vladimir Dudinstev's 1957 novel Not by Bread

A.lone, and Vladimir Pomerantsev's 1953 article "On Sincerity in Literature," which argued

that Soviet literature suffered in quality because many writers refused to accept the ideas

they were forced to support. Boris Pasternak earned a Nobel Prize nomination in 1958

for Doctor Zhivago (which Khrushchev forced him to decline) and poet Yevgenii

Yevtushenko lambasted anti-Semitism in his poem "Babi Yar," which Shostakovich

would set in 1962 in his Thirteenth Symphony. Although some artists were arrested and

deported, most enjoyed a degree of creative freedom unimaginable since the Lenin years.

Quoted in Francis Maes, A History of Russian Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 360.
 119
Most importantly for Scriabin's reception, artists whose works were either ignored or

banned in the Soviet Union during Socialist Realism or Zhdanovshchina were welcomed

back under de-Stalinization, a process that also facilitated Scriabin's transition in 1972

from artist to icon.

An illustrative case is that of poet Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose rehabilitation

mirrored the reclamations of other formerly condemned artists. Solzhenitsyn gained

fame in 1962 with One Day in the Ufe of Ivan Denisovich, which told the story of a Stalinist-

era forced-labor camp inmate. The novel's stark tone and candid approach to a

forbidden subject uncurled yet another finger of the fist that had gripped Soviet artists.

The poet's critique of the Soviet prison camps continued in December 1973 when The

Gulag Archipelago was published in Paris after the KGB seized the manuscript. In

February 1974, Solzhenitsyn was charged with treason, had his citizenship revoked, and

was exiled to West Germany. By the mid-1980s, Gorbachev's glasnosf policies brought

renewed attention to his work, prompting the State to commend the author for his

realistic portrayal of the era's horrific conditions.

While Scriabin never faced the political persecution endured by Solzhenitsyn, both

artists' cases exemplify the State's suppression of controversial material, from bourgeois

music to expose literature, and its later efforts to atone for these reactionary dismissals.

Solzhenitsyn's and Scriabin's uncompromising individualism threatened to undermine the

principles of socialism and the State's authority. Although Scriabin's music was never

banned in the USSR, such censorship was not necessarily overt.17 The years leading up to

17
Slonimsky, Supplement to Musk Since 1900 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986), 346. On the
blacklisting of composers, Slonimsky noted, "The more usual technique [of banning] is simply the silent
removal of the offender from radio and concert repertories; thus he or his work is consigned to oblivion."
 120
the composer's centenary brought his return to official graces. Scriabin's expanded entry

in the 1970 edition of the Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia (Great Soviet Encyclopedia) indexes

his rehabilitation during the early 1970s.

In the Soviet Union during the 1960s, Scriabin bounced back after years of

neglect with several landmark events that associated his music with popular currents of

the decade. On the heels of Sputnik's success, on 12 April 1961 Yuri Gagarin completed

the first manned space flight around the Earth, giving the Soviets an edge in the Space

Race between the USSR and United States. During that historic trip, the ail-Union Soviet

Radio broadcast Scriabin's Poeme de I'extase into the ether as if to proclaim to the universe

the central theme of the work - "I Am!"18 The piece was a fitting choice for an event of

such cosmic proportions. Three days later, Gagarin returned to Red Square to be

congratulated by Premier Khrushchev, President Brezhnev, and a host of other Soviet

officials. Scriabin's music once again complemented the triumphant mood, further

solidifying his growing recognition as a Russian icon.

In addition to providing a soundtrack for the world's first interstellar voyage,

Scriabin's music also inspired Soviet artists during the early 1960s.19 Moscow-based poet

Yevgenii Yevtushenko gained recognition in the early 1960s for his outspoken political

views, and he even appeared on the cover of Time magazine in April 1962. His 1960

Bowers, The New Scriabin, 15. In molding Scriabin into a proto-socialist, Bowers argued that the
Soviets even credited the composer's fascination with flight as a premonition of outer space travel.
In 1965 choreographer Kas'yan Goleizovsky (1882-1970) staged Scriabiniana (1962), a plotless ballet set
to piano selections by Scriabin (score by Dmitri Rogal-Levitsky). It debuted in London with the Bolshoi
Ballet on July 20, 1965. While the music to Scriabiniana was received favorably, the choreography received
mixed reviews. Reviewer Clive Barnes remarked that, "The dances deliberately bear no relationship to one
another, and are purely movement studies, each attempting to match the emotions of the music. In fact,
they are exercises in a style of dance expressionism that might have looked impressive 40 or so years ago
but now is as dated as last year's calendar." Nevertheless, the event hastened Scriabin's return to
mainstream culture. See "Bolshoi Presents a London First," New York Times (20 July 1965), 39.
 121
poem "Moscow Freight Station" depicts young artists and students working throughout

the night unloading watermelons in order to purchase tickets to a Scriabin concert. The

poet takes pains to make the reader feel the sense of revelation that awaited them after

their night's travail. O n one hand, Scriabin's music represents a commodity of high

culture, a reward that is finally accessible to the working class. The poem, however, also

equates Scriabin's messianic egotism with the indomitable proletarian spirit, a feature of

later Soviet criticism. Soviet critics and officials interpreted Scriabin's quest for spiritual

communion (sobornost) and all-unity (vseedinstvo) n o t as metaphysical goals, but as socialist

ideals of a collective identity. Here are selected stanzas: 20

A student wishes It grows light.

to sit and listen to Scriabin, Unloading has ended.
but for the last six months They each get twenty rubles
he's been living on the breadline. and a melon.

For him manna They pocket their cash

doesn't fall from heaven. and will rush the box office at noon.
Plenty of ideas, N o w for Scriabin
but no money! And all is well [. . .]

Fickle fate H o w much freshness

hacks at the roots, and youth is in the air!
but, like a caring mother, Munching watermelons
The Moscow Freight Station as the engines whistle,
loves students, they get into arguments even here
and helps them out - full swing about cybernetics,
gives them work. about Mars, about Remarque.

Night fades above the station. Moscow Freight Station,

Medicos sing as they unload coal, please remember them -
Poets unload, physicists unload, where else would you find
w o o d e n logs and sugar, their equals in strength
cement and figs [. . .] and passion! [. . .]

Yevtushenko, Pervoe sobranie sochinenii v vosmi tomakh, Vol. II, ed. Anatoli Leikin (Moscow: NEVA,
1997), 40-41. The translation above by Stephen Whittington appears on the personal website of Michigan
pianist Arthur Greene, http://www-personal.umich.edu/~agreene/Soviet.html (accessed 27 May 2007).
 122
These early tremors heralded Scriabin's canonic revaluation and eventual return to

the standard repertoire in the Soviet Union. The State's promotion of the composer,

though, was driven not by his ideological or spiritual import, but by his rehabilitation as a

model socialist who foreshadowed modern Soviet ideals. As we shall see, Soviet artists

and officials accented Scriabin's desire to enlighten the masses through communal art.

Such appropriation of recognizable personalities to promote communist ideology became

commonplace in the Soviet Union in the decades after World War II. 21 Scriabin's

centenary provided another opportunity for officials to advance these political tenets.

The Socialist Agenda

State officials honored Scriabin's 1972 centenary with an elaborate ceremony. The

Ministry of Culture and the Union of Soviet Composers had arranged for the opening

remarks to be delivered by People's Artist and Lenin Prize winner Dmitri Shostakovich,

but due to illness, Shostakovich's speech was read by the Secretary of the Union of Soviet

Composers, Rodion Shchedrin.22 Shostakovich hailed Scriabin's work as "very close and

Zhdanov's 1948 decree advocated die "slanting with pro-Communist language the texts of familiar
songs, and 'capturing' the names of great composers of die past and imputing Communist ideas to dieir
works." See Slonimsky, Supplement to Music Since 1900, 341.
Shostakovich's public statements on Scriabin reveal more on the official position on Scriabin than they
do Shostakovich's personal opinions. Two of his most notorious proclamations expose this tendency. In a
1931 interview he sneered, "we regard Scriabin as our bitterest musical enemy . . . because [his] music tends
to an unhealthy eroticism. Also to mysticism and passivity and escape from the realities of life." Rose Lee,
"Dimitri Szostakovich: Young Russian Composer Tells of Linking Politics with Creative Work," New York
Times (20 December 1931), X8. Compare this estimate with his opening remarks for Scriabin's 1972
centenary celebrations in Moscow, when he praised Scriabin's "ability to enrich the lives of the people" and
dianked Scriabin "for having expanded die boundaries of our art by his inexhaustible fantasy and his
brilliant talent." Quoted in Rudakova and Kandinsky, Scriabin: His Life and Times, translated by Tatyana
Khristyakova (Neptune City, NJ: Paganiniana Publications, 1984), 136.
 123
dear to us, his compatriots, men and women of the first Socialist country which opened

up new horizons for humanity in the Twentieth Century." He located Scriabin "on the

side of those who fought against tyranny for freedom and justice . . . We cherish him for

his faith in the transformative power of art, in its ability to ennoble the human soul, and

for bringing harmony into the lives of the People."23 Further State recognition came in

the form of an oversized four-kopeck stamp emblazoned with Scriabin's image. The

Moscow Philharmonic also recognized the Scriabin centenary during the 1971-1972

season with conferences, lectures, and concerts across the USSR. 4

Soviet newspaper tributes further reveal Scriabin's transformation into a model

socialist. Scriabin biographer Faubion Bowers reported that in 1972, Sovetskaia kultura,

the literary organ of the Ministry of Culture and the Professional Union of Cultural

Workers, ran a front-page headline in bold print that read: "Pride of Russian Music."

Sovetskaia rossiya, the "People's Daily Newspaper," opened a 1972 article by declaring that,

"Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin is one those names Russian art is proud of . . ."

Another proletarian journal, Ogonyok (Light), praised Scriabin's robust social health and

zeal for life, couching these observations in tones usually reserved for Lenin: "Scriabin

loved life as only man can love it, loved it to exaltation, and tenderly and lyrically sang of

nature, its colors and moods. He loved people . . . and passionately believed in the

triumph of light over darkness." 25 The State had reclaimed Scriabin not only as a

luminary of the past, but also as a symbol of strength and determination.

Quoted in Rudakova and Kandinsky, Scriabin: His Life and Times, 131, 134.
Important State centenary publications included Pavchinskii, gen. ed., A.. N. Skriabin: Sbornik statei k
stoletiiu so dnia ro^hdeniia (1872-1972) (Moscow: Sovetskii Kompozitor, 1972). Also see tribute articles by
Danilevich, Iavorskii, Bobrovskii, Bykov, Morozova, and Shaborkina in Sovetskaia musyka 1 (1972).
25
Bowers, The New Scriabin, 5, 6.
 124
The socialist subtext in Soviet criticism of the composer is further revealed in

musicologist Victor Del'son's 1971 biography, which explicitly connects Scriabin's music

to the 1905 and 1917 Revolutions as well as the social and political changes transpiring in

the USSR during that era. Del'son's view of Scriabin underscores the Soviet tendency to

dismiss the composer's philosophy, egomania, and eroticism, and promote his optimism

and progressive thought. In his introduction, Del'son observed:

Scriabin's art could only have grown out of that soil which nurtured the two
greatest revolutionary movements of 1905 and 1917 . . . Doubdess, the winds of
the symbolist-decadents touched Scriabin, but they did not determine the ideas of
his creative work, his direction, and historical significance. Thus, in spite of the
theme of doom, the picture of universal death and darkness which developed so
intensively in the art of many symbolist-decadents, the music of Scriabin in its
whole extent gives priority to the idea of overcoming obstacles through struggle,
presents an insurgent hero striving for happiness and victory of light and freedom
. . . Hence our acceptance today of Scriabin's 'yesteryear' art. This most brilliant
of Russian composers imbibed and expressed with extraordinary power and
sincerity the emotional red-heat of unrest and the protest feelings of people in the
shadow of intensifying social events. To a notable degree this is why his name,
the name of this daring innovator, is inscribed in the culture of the present.26

In his own speech for the ceremony commemorating Scriabin's centenary, Rodion

Shchedrin similarly offered a filtered account of the Russian composer's legacy:

During the last years of his life, Scriabin dreamed of a synthetic art which would
harmoniously unite music and dance, word and color, motion and the intoxicating
fragrance of the flowers and grasses of the fields. We cannot accept the
philosophy that accompanied Scriabin's dreams, but his belief in the elevating and
emotive power of music is close and understandable to the present generations.27

Yet another Soviet musicologist, Lev Pavchinskii, adduced the central "I Am" theme of

Poeme de I'extase as a testament to the same revolutionary ideals:

Del'son, Skriabin: Ocherki ^hi^ni i tvorchestva (Moscow: Muzyka, 1971), 9, 12. Translated in Bowers, The
New Scriabin, 8.
Rudakova and Kandinsky, Scriabin: His Ufe and Times, 135.
 125
The Poem of Ecstasy can be set alongside the most outstanding works of Russian art
composed in the atmosphere of the 1905 revolutionary upsurge. But the idealistic
'overlay' of the author's text need not disturb us. The 'explanatory text' or
commentary to the Poem of Ecstasy has long been forgotten. But a performance of
this music invariably attracts a full hall of young people who have nothing in
common with an idealistic world view. They, nevertheless, feel an undeniable effect
from the music with its unusual spirit. It is so close to young people with its
affirmation of the essence of life as a process of struggle, of spiritual powers
battling for everything that is new.28

Soviet officials' recasting of Scriabin as a proto-socialist expurgated the composer's

metaphysical views and ideological beliefs to uphold the image of the pure Slavic soul.

Livingston argued that such a blinkered view is typical of revivalists, as they are often

selective in the repertoire they choose as well as its presentation and target audience.

Such an idealistic spin on artists of the past became standard procedure during the years

of de-Stalinization. The offensive material becomes reformulated to promote a political

agenda. This phase of the composer's posthumous reception in his native country also

demonstrates how the same body of work can reflect markedly different ideals in the

hands (and ears) of later generations. As core revivalists, Soviets looked to historical

artifacts and the ideals they ostensibly represented in hopes of enriching contemporary

culture. Considering the critical backlash against Scriabin's philosophy during the decades

leading up to his 1972 revival, it comes as no surprise that Soviet critics suppressed that

aspect of his creativity in promoting his legacy.

American performers and critics also reinvented Scriabin for his centenary, and

commonalities between his reception in the Soviet Union and America suggest similar

ideological frameworks in place despite obvious differences in political, social, and

cultural structure. Before examining Scriabin's American revival, let us first turn to the

Quoted in Bowers, The New Scriabin, 16-17.

 126
1920s to understand the values upon which his American reputation was established.

Scriabin's Western reception developed on considerably different terms than his Soviet

reception. The spiritual idealism that his supporters championed in the 1920s, however,

would later characterize his reception among the American counterculture in 1972.

On the Western Front: Early Scriabinists in 1920s America

Scriabin's success in America during the 1920s can be attributed to pianists Djane

Lavoie-Herz, her student Dane Rudhyar, and Katherine Ruth Heyman, all of whom

tirelessly labored to familiarize and entice American audiences with the composer's music

and lore. A distinguished pedagogue, Herz instilled in her students an equal appreciation

for Scriabin as a composer and as a thinker, and among her pupils, Rudhyar devoted

considerable attention to Scriabin's music and philosophy. Heyman, however, was the

true performer of the group and she distinguished herself as one of the most convincing

Scriabin interpreters of her day, especially of the late works. Together these early

devotees founded Scriabin's American reputation on the core values of romantic idealism

and Eastern transcendentalism, ideals that American revivalists would tout during the

1970s. In addition to highlighting Scriabin's spirituality, Herz and Heyman also

established a lineage of Scriabin-playing pianists in America.

Among American cities that served as key hubs for Scriabin's reception, Chicago

was particularly receptive to his music. Critic Felix Borowsky authored several favorable

reviews of Scriabin's music during the 1910s, and the American premiere of Prometheus:

Poem of Fire occurred on 5 March 1915 under Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony
 127
Orchestra.29 A musical luminary of the city, Stock remained devoted to Scriabin's cause,

performing Scriabin's Third Symphony, the Divine Poem, annually from 1922 to 1941.

During the 1920s, Chicago served as a hotbed of alternative spiritual practices such as

theosophy, an influential spiritual movement founded by Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891) to

which Scriabin had eagerly subscribed. In 1926 Chicago hosted the fortieth annual

International Convention of Theosophy, and Scriabin's band of supporters in America

and England from the 1920s through 1950s was often in sympathy with followers of this

international spiritual movement.

Scriabin's reputation in 1920s Chicago also owed a considerable debt to Djane

Lavoie-Herz (1888-1982), a former pupil of the composer. Following a two-year sojourn

in Brussels among Scriabin's inner circle, Herz moved to Chicago in 1918. She and her

husband Siegfried closely studied the composer's music and theosophical interests, the

latter of which Siegfried published an article on.31 The Herzes were well known among

the city's star musicians. During the early 1920s, Djane established a Chicago salon for

the "ultra-modern" composers, including Henry Cowell, Edgard Varese, Rudhyar, and

Carl Ruggles, all of whom admired Scriabin's music. Herz also produced some of the

finest Scriabin-playing pianists of the era, including Gitta Gradova [nee Gertrude

Weinstock] (1904-1985), whom critics had praised in 1925 as America's "greatest

See Borowsky, "The Newest Phase," Chicago Record Herald (16 May 1912), 6; and "Scriabine and His
'Prometheus,'" Chicago Sunday Herald (28 February 1915), VI:4. The Chicago premiere of Prometheus omitted
the color organ, but the instrument was featured in a New York performance of late March 1915. See
James Baker, "'Prometheus and the Quest for Color Music: The World Premiere of Scriabin's Poem of Fire
with Lights, New York, March 20, 1915," in Music and Modern Art, ed. James Leggio (New York: Garland,
2003), 61-95.
Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger. A Composer's Search for American Music (New York: Oxford University Press,
1997), 45, 379n. The 1926, 1929, and 1932 seasons were exceptions to this trend. Stock and the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra also performed Prometheus'in 1930 and 1937.
31
Siegfried Herz, "The Art of Alexander Nikolaievitch Skriabin," The Etude 44 (May 1926): 345-346, 399.
 128
interpreter" of Scriabin, an honor she owed to her highly experienced instructor.32 Herz's

unwavering dedication to Scriabin also impacted the creative path of Ruth Crawford

Seeger, whose nascent compositional style bears several Scriabinian traits, including

dissonant counterpoint, quartal harmonies, and poetic expression markings.33

Through Herz's wide-reaching influence, Scriabin's reputation spread among her

many contacts in America, including famous harpist Carlos Salzedo (1885-1961) who also

knew Edgard Varese and Henry Cowell. Salzedo took a keen interest in Scriabin's music

after meeting Herz around 1916, and later transcribed several of the Russian composer's

preludes for solo harp. He performed two full-length recitals of these arrangements in his

New York apartment on 79th Street, and even planned a national tour with the Scriabin

works rearranged for four harps and four dancers (with choreography by Nijinsky).34

Salzedo's respect for Scriabin testifies to the composer's stature among America's avant-

garde during the 1910s and 1920s.

Among Herz's inner circle, one figure who did not specialize in performance yet

stood out for his efforts to elucidate Scriabin's metaphysical ideas during the inter-war

years was Dane Rudhyar [ne Daniel Chenneviere] (1895-1985). Like Herz, Rudhyar was a

Scriabin enthusiast and important interpreter of the composer's creative ideas. Rudhyar

met Herz in the fall of 1918 in New York, where their friendship was sparked by a

common interest in Scriabin. That winter, Rudhyar stayed with Herz in Toronto and

undertook a close study of theosophy under her guidance. Rudhyar's interest in

Quoted in "Contemporary American Musicians," Musical America (10 January 1925): 23.
Crawford even incorporated the "mystic" chord into many of her earlier works. See Judith Tick, Ruth
Crawford Seeger, 66-68, 71, 79; and Tick, "Ruth Crawford's 'Spiritual Concept': The Sound-Ideals of an Early
American Modernist, 1924-1930," Journal ofthe American Muskohgical Society 44/2 (Summer 1991): 221-261.
Dewey Owens, Carlos Salzedo: From Aeolian to Thunder. A Biography (Chicago: Lyon & Healy, 1992), 21.
 129
theosophy shaped his observations on Scriabin and prompted him to write of music not

in aesthetic terms, but as a spiritual experience that enriched individuals and society.

In a 1926 article, Rudhyar regarded Scriabin as a prophet of the next generation of

romantics, "the one great pioneer of the new music of a reborn Western civilization, the

father of the future musician." Rudhyar articulated his views on Scriabin in terms of the

classic/romantic dichotomy: "While music is, for the neo-classicists, an assemblage of

sound patterns and esthetic forms, and for the romantic, an emotional projection of

human life, for Scriabin it is a magical force used by the spiritual Will to produce ecstasy,

that is, communion with "the Soul!"35 During the 1920s, Rudhyar published several

articles on Scriabin's music in such widely circulated periodicals as Musical America and The

MusicalQuarterly?*' In a 1930 article, he wrote of Scriabin's mystic access to the divine. A

mystic, Rudhyar explained, can reveal hidden truths, but requires a "language beyond

language" in order to "lead others to that realization of transcendent freedom." Like the

1970s revivalists, Rudhyar sought to teach the masses how to understand this voice of the

people. Rudhyar argued that the acceptance of such gnostic revelations had been

thwarted by the dominance of formalism, and that Scriabin's music represented the

essence of his deepest musical and spiritual convictions. By basing his compositional

style on a "living tone," Rudhyar argued that Scriabin "stands as a prophet of the music

of the future . . . He came to a decadent civilization as the promise of a culture more real,

Rudhyar, "A New Conception of Music," Forum (December 1926): 899.

Rudhyar published three articles in Musical America, including "Looking Ahead into Paths Opened by
Three S's" (July 1927): 5-11, and five articles in The Musical Quarterly. The articles' contents ranged from
general observations on contemporary music to philosophy. Cf. Carol Oja, "Dane Rudhyar's Vision of
American Dissonance," American Music 17/2 (Summer 1999): 129-145; and "Djane Lavoie-Herz and Her
Work," Musical Observer (March 1926); online at http://www.khaldea.com/rudhyar/djanelavoieherz.html.
 130
37
more intrinsically beautiful, ethical and true, and more fundamentally human."

In addition to Herz in Chicago, Katherine Ruth Heyman (1877-1944) hosted

private recitals and forums with other Scriabinists in her New York salon. Her loft served

as one of the premier American hubs for Scriabin-related activities during the 1920s. If

Herz was the premier Scriabin pedagogue, then Heyman was die preeminent Scriabin

practitioner. Heyman, who was known as the "high priestess of the Scriabin cult,"

claimed she "met Scriabin on the moon and had an affair with him," "saw visions to his

music," and had translated Scriabin's coded messages from beyond the grave.38 Heyman's

beguiling self-publicity lent a sense of authenticity to her performances and asserted her

independence in a male-dominated profession. She delivered several high-profile all-

Scriabin recitals in New York in 1924 and 1927, and performed concert tours across

Europe in 1927, 1934, and 1935.39 In 1934, with permission from the Scriabin Museum

in Moscow, she founded the Scriabin Society in New York, which remains in operation.

A concert pianist frustrated by the stagnant recycling of canonized works, Heyman

admired composers who fused ancient wisdom with modern style. Heyman's 1921 book,

The Relation of Ultramodern to Archaic Music, expounds upon this principle with an emphasis

on Debussy and Scriabin. Its ideas were common currency at "Conferences" in her New

York loft, which were attended by such patrons as Charles Ives, Charles Griffes, and

Elliot Carter. Carter quipped that her text "was almost required reading for this somewhat

Rudhyar, "Alexander Scriabin, Precursor of the Future Synthetic Art," Christian Science Monitor (19 May
1923) (accessed 23 July 2007); available at http://www.khaldea.com/rudhyar/scriabinprecursor.html.
Faubion Bowers, "Memoir with Memoirs," Paideuma 2/1 (Spring 1973): 61. Also see Hilary Poriss,
"Women, Musical Canons and Culture: Katherine Ruth Heyman," The Journal of the Scriabin Society ofAmerica
2/1 (Winter 1997-1998): 14-31.
For a sample of reviews from her New York recitals see "Scriabin Memorial," New York Times (14
April 1924), 14; "Miss Heyman plays All-Scriabin Recital," New York Times (7 April 1935), N4; and
"Katherine Heyman Heard in Recital," New York Times (6 March 1937), 9.
 131
Blavatskian circle."40 Heyman lauded Debussy's integration of the old church modes into

a modern idiom, but argued that his art merely reflected the known reality. The real

future of music, she argued, was with Scriabin, whose art held the potential to be a

redemptive force for Americans. Heyman argued that, "Appreciation of Scriabin may

mark the evolution of a nation's spiritual receptivity; a higher sensibility if you like, but

turned towards the Sun."41 In accordance with the conditions specified in Livingston's

theory on revivals, Heyman's early efforts to sustain Scriabin's popularity represented a

classic desire to infuse new life into a stagnant repertoire.

Heyman and her contemporaries established Scriabin's American reputation during

the 1920s as an avant-gardist and spiritual guide. Heyman's reverential approach to

Scriabin's music and legacy was revived in the 1970s in such female pianists as Hilde

Somer and Ruth Laredo. In the interim, Scriabin's music maintained a respectable

presence from the 1920s to the 1950s, with regular performances of Le Poeme Divin and

Poeme de I'extase in Los Angeles (Coates), Boston (Koussevitzky), and Chicago (Stock).42

Ambitious pianists occasionally performed the Fifth or the Ninth Sonatas, but by the

1930s, the once thriving legion of Scriabin supporters had fallen silent. Nearly half a

century later, shifting conditions in America coincided with the centenary of Scriabin's

birth, leading to a resurgence of support for the Russian composer's music and his ideas

on terms strikingly similar to the values emphasized during the 1920s.

Carter, "Documents of a Friendship with Ives," in The Writings of Eliot Carter, eds. Else and Kurt Stone
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 333.
Heyman, The Relation of the Ultramodern to Archaic Music (Boston: Small Maynard and Co., 1921), 136.
See "Scriabin Stirs Interest," Los Angeles Times (23 November 1930), B17. On Coates' interpretation of
Extase, see "The Week's High Note in Music," Los Angeles Times (14 January 1940), C5. For a more critical
review of Scriabin's late works see "Pierre Key's Music Article," Los Angeles Times (20 April 1940), 31. Cf.
M. A. de Wolfe Howe, The Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1881-1931 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931).
 132
A.n American Return to Romanticism: 1965-1971

In the 1960s, stagnant programming left critics and audiences eager for a change,

and a revival of romantic music satisfied this desire. Livingston's model of revivals as

opposing the mainstream aptly applies. In 1966, New York Times critic Harold Schonberg

complained, "the once-popular Russian school, of which Koussevitzky was such a noble

and eloquent exponent, is slipping. There is very litde experimentation, outside of the

places where modern music has a foothold . . . In the process, great and important areas

of music are being neglected."43 The next year, he bemoaned the atrophied state of

classical canon and wondered, "Shall we get a romantic revival in our time?"44 Schonberg

regarded Scriabin as best suited for such a revaluation. By 1969, he surmised, "There is

no real sign of a Scriabin renaissance, which is in a way surprising, for of all composers of

the past Alexander Scriabin was the one closest to certain aspects of the modern scene."45

But a change was underway. The romantic revival that Schonberg had desired

materialized in early 1970, paving the way for Scriabin's American centenary.46 A revival

of romantic music may seem oxymoronic, as nineteenth-century repertoire had long

dominated programs of any sizeable orchestra, but Schonberg and other American critics

rebuked major orchestras' limited focus on the core canon, arguing that older repertoire

"Unobserved Anniversary," New York Times (24 April 1966), X13. Schonberg took umbrage with the
lack of attention to the 1966 centenary of Erik Satie's birth, which went virtually unnoticed by the press.
He also wondered, "when is the last time that. . . Scriabin's 'Divine Poem' has turned up?"
"Twilight of Romanticism?" New York Times (2 April 1967), 111. Schonberg bemoaned that, "the
active repertoire is in a process of stagnation, much more than it ever has been in the history of music. It
almost has boiled down to 50 or so popular classics plus a large amount of contemporary ephemera that
emerges, flops around for awhile, and dies."
45
Schonberg, "Visions to Put the Acid Set to Shame," New York Times (13 April 1969), D17.
Intimations of a return to romanticism were apparent in 1968 with festivals in Indianapolis dedicated
to obscure nineteenth-century orchestral and solo piano works, and also in 1969 in Newport, Rhode Island.
See "The Romantic is Enchanting," New York Times (26 May 1968), D27. Discussing New York
performances in the late 1960s, Schonberg noted, "If there is a romantic revival in the making, it did not
show up in the 1968-69 returns." "Playing Musical Stock Market," New York Times (19 July 1970), 78.
 133
still held potential. T h u s the romantic revival was n o t a polite n o d to nineteenth-century

composers who were understandably overshadowed by titans of the past, b u t operated

under the guise that these forgotten figures were equals to any composer. Nineteenth-

century composers were reexamined with renewed enthusiasm, and Scriabin's revival

arose from this return to romanticism. Although several obscure artists were revived,

Lester Trimble considered Scriabin "the only real refreshment of the 'Romantic revival.'" 48

Market-driven tactics of the music industry also played a vital role in the romantic

revival. Some critics argued that record executives had engineered the romantic retro-

spective to boost ticket sales and rejuvenate popular interest in classical music, which had

paled in comparison to popular music since the early 1960s. T o compete with p o p music

exhibitionists, classical programmers staged similar spectacles in concert halls with

virtuosos w h o enthralled younger audiences. 49 Record companies also explored new

imagery for their classical sets, utilizing avant-garde photography and art techniques to

depict composers and their music with a m o d e r n spin. Scriabin and dozens of other

classical artists were packaged in ways that made the physical record seem as entertaining

as the music that it contained.

Schonberg was among the first and most dedicated critics to call for and gleefully

report o n a Scriabin revival, impressed as he was with the Russian composer's prefiguring

of later stylistic developments. It seems paradoxical that Schonberg hailed Scriabin as a

7
See Howard Klein, "Should We Dig up the Rare Romantics? Yes . . .," New York Times (23 November
1969), M l . Klein noted, "One argument runs that we have eroded away with too much exposure [to] the
great peaks of the Romantic period, now we must be content with the foothills of inspiration . . . The only
true argument, therefore, should be that we overlooked noble summits and now should give equal time to
the rivals of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner, Schumann, Chopin, and Liszt."
48
Trimble, in Goodfriend, "Why Alexander Scriabin?" 69.
49
See Glenn Gould, "Should We Dig up the Rare Romantics? . . . N o , They're Only a Fad," New York
Times (23 November 1969), 57.
 134
modernist when his music had returned to the public eye under the guise of a romantic

revival, but his view of the composer as a progressive did not represent the public

opinion. Although Schonberg's enthusiasm for Scriabin colored his opinions, his

observations track the composer's return to popularity with steady measure. His review

of a 1965 performance of Poeme de I'extase under Lorin Maazel and the New York

Philharmonic is among the earliest to suggest a reappraisal of the Russian composer:

This listener had not heard the Scriabin "Poem of Ecstasy" for quite a few years.
It is a curious score, and a strangely attractive one. There is even a section that
anticipates Stravinsky's "Firebird" . . . Scriabin's spirit must have been a very
sensual one. The music is lush and as sexy as music can get. But it is not post-
Wagnerian. Scriabin's harmonic ideas were too advanced for that, and his
language is very original. Perhaps a re-examination of his work is in order.50

The next month Maazel conducted Extase again, provoking Schonberg to ruminate

further on Scriabin's return to the repertory. He lamented the dearth of performances in

recent memory and unabashedly proclaimed, "I happen to adore his music, all of it."

Schonberg painted a vivid picture of contemporary classical music critics' tastes:

Not only is the composer out of favor, but there seems to be active resentment
when his music is played. Let a pianist present a group of early Scriabin preludes
and etudes, and critics will go out of their way to condemn the music as nothing
but diluted Chopin. Let one of the late piano pieces be programmed, and the
musical intelligentsia are up in arms, inveighing against Scriabin's diffuseness,
vagueness and fake philosophy . . . The really significant contribution of
Alexander Scriabin, however, comes with the later works . . . Scriabin has been
largely ignored outside of Russia and there does not seem to be any indication of a
revival or a reappraisal. This grieves those of us who consider Scriabin one of the
most original, fascinating, enigmatic, revolutionary and, yes, rewarding
composers of the century.

Still it took years for the musical community to sympathize with Schonberg. In

50
Schonberg, "Music: Maazel Returns," New York Times (26 March 1965), 28.
51
Schonberg, '"Amoral Little Mystic,'" New York Times (11 April 1965), X l l . His next articles devoted
to Scriabin contain mini-biographies, as if Schonberg attempted to fill the void or perhaps entice others to
follow his lead.
 135
1967, biographer Faubion Bowers announced that Scriabin was finally emerging from a

"haze of public amnesia," and at Eastertide that year Schonberg devoted another column

to the deplorable lack of interest in the composer. But this time he optimistically noted

that recent trends suggested an impending revival: "There has been a major Scriabin

renaissance in the last few years, but most attention has been focused on the problematic,

mystical late works."52 Even as general interest in the late works grew, however, public

appreciation for middle-period Scriabin remained undiminished.

By 1969, Scriabin's rising popularity had reached even greater heights. Schonberg

sensed that, "recendy there have been the beginnings of a re-examination" of Scriabin's

works.53 Bowers' 1969 two-volume biography was a masterful stroke of timing, which he

followed up four years later with a second study.54 Scriabin's rising popularity was such in

1969 that Bowers reviewed recent Scriabin records in Vogue, and journalist Adrian Hope

wrote an article on Scriabin for Life magazine. Hope reported that multimedia experi-

ments had been carried out at an all-Scriabin concert at Yale University in early 1969,

including "clouds of incense pumped from the air ducts." By 1970, conductor Robert

Craft could well write that, "Judging from programs of younger pianists and conductors, a

Scriabin revival or resurrection, in the case of this messianist is underway."56

1
Schonberg, "Visions to Put the Acid Set to Shame," New York Times (13 April 1969), D17.
53
Schonberg, "Visions to Put the Acid Set to Shame," D17.
Both books received mixed reviews. Considering the lack of materials on Scriabin, they were landmark
achievements, but Gerald Abraham and Milos Velimirovic frowned upon their lack of references or a
proper index, irrelevant or even incorrect facts, and other errata. See Abraham, review of Scriabin: A.
Biography of the Russian Composer 1871-1915, by Faubion Bowers, Music & Letters 52/3 (July 1971): 311-314;
and Velimirovic, review of Scriabin: Enigma and Answers, by Bowers, Slavic Review 34/2 (June 1975): 443-444.
For a favorable review of Bowers' 1969 biography, see Peter Gorman, "Scriabin's Case Has Another Day in
Court Before New Values," Chicago Tribune (14 September 1969), G4.
Bowers, "Scriabin on Record: Blaze of Sunburst," Vogue 153/5 (1 March 1969): 106; and Hope, "Fiery
Music of a Mystic," Life 69/16 (16 October 1970): 72-76.
56
Craft, "Time for a Revival - or Resurrection," New York Times (5 April 1970), 280.
 136
Not surprisingly, virtuoso pianists from the USSR and the West brought Scriabin's

music back into circulation. Scriabin-playing pianists fell into two categories: those who

accented the mystical, romantic aspects of the music, and those who either downplayed

or ignored its extramusical elements. National origin made little difference, as pianists'

approaches remained matters of individual personality and taste. Consider the contrast

between Russian pianists Sviatoslav Richter and Vladimir Sofronitsky. Richter balked at

all-Scriabin programs and preferred to serve up small doses to audiences (although he

made an exception in 1972).57 Never one to allow personal mannerisms or gimmickry to

overshadow the music, Richter confined himself to literalistic interpretations.

Sofronitsky, on the other hand, was Scriabin's son-in-law and an acclaimed interpreter of

his music. He rarely performed outside of the USSR, but undertook several all-Scriabin

tours within the Soviet Union during the 1950s-'60s. Sofronitsky was an erratic

performer who sought to capture the fervor and mystique that characterized his idol's

own recitals, and he never discouraged comparisons between himself and his famous

father-in-law. Soviet emigre pianist Mark Zeltzer recalled how Sofronitsky "would walk

to the piano with a slow, distracted gait, then, before playing, apply a black handkerchief

to his nose. In musical circles, there were rumors about what was on Sofronitsky's

handkerchiefs, or in them."58 Richter and Sofronitsky demonstrate the extreme attitudes

towards Scriabin's music and the atmospheres that their respective approaches projected.

Bowers, "Richter on Scriabin," Saturday Review 48/24 (12 June 1965): 59. On Scriabin's mid-1960s
reception Richter noted, "When I play well, Scriabin is liked. When I play badly he is not. It's as simple as
diat." Other critics agreed with Richter on overdoses of Scriabin. In 1971, the Washington Posfs Paul Hume
remarked that, "listening to an entire program of his piano music is likely to leave you with the feeling that
you have been sitting for an hour and a half in a tub of mucilage. Beautiful, multi-colored, rich, gooey glue
from which you may never emerge." Quoted in Robert Evert, "The Man with the Astral Body," 128.
58
Quoted in Joseph Horowitz, "Disks: 26 Scriabin Pieces," New York Times (15 March 1979), C l l .
 137
These two pianists were not alone in their respective Scriabin campaigns. Aligned

with Richter in the literal approach was Vladimir Horowit2, who had called for a Scriabin

reappraisal as early as 1956: "The time has come for a rehearing of this man who has so

vastly enriched our piano literature."59 Horowitz regularly featured Scriabin's music on

his programs (the D#-minor etude Op. 8, no.12 often served as an encore) and recorded

an all-Scriabin disc over a decade before the Scriabin revival. Russian pianist (naturalized

Icelandic) Vladimir Ashkenazy similarly championed the composer, delivering critically

acclaimed all-Scriabin recitals in New York and London during the 1972-1973 concert

season.60 Other internationally known Scriabin pianists active during the 1960s and 1970s

included Tatiana Nikolayeva, Margarita Fedorov, John Ogden, Roger Woodward, Michael

Ponti, Lazare Berman, and Roberto Szidon.61

Viennese-born Hilde Somer earned a spot alongside such fanatical Scriabin

devotees as Vera Isakovich (the composer's first wife), Sofronitsky, Herz, and Heyman.

Somer toured the United States from 1969 to 1972 delivering Scriabin programs complete

with lighting effects provided by the designer for the Fillmore East's Joshua Light Show.62

On the centennial evening, 6 January 1972, Somer packed Carnegie Hall with a crowd of

young people eager to experience her multimedia production. While not nearly as

Liner notes to Horowitz Plays Scriabin (RCA-Victor LM 2005,1956).

Max Harrison, "Ashkenazy/Scriabin: Queen Elizabeth Hall," London Times (7 December 1972), 13.
Several pianists recorded sets of Scriabin's complete Sonatas close to the centenary: Ruth Laredo,
Scriabin: The Complete Piano Sonatas (New York: Nonesuch, 1970); John Ogden, Scriabin: Complete Piano Sonatas
(New York: EMI Records, 1971); Roberto Szidon, Alexander Skrjabin, Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-10 (Deutsch
Grammophon, 1971); and Michael Ponti, Scriabin: Complete Piano Music, Vols. I-IV (New York: Vox, 1974).
Allen Hughes reviewed die event: "This listener and watcher cannot honestly say diat [the colors]
seemed to bear any special relation to Scriabin's music, that they enhanced it, or that they would not have
gone just as well with, say, compositions by Chopin, Debussy, or Schoenberg. The projections were pretty,
and that was enough." "Hilde Somer, Pianist, Tries Out Scriabin's Multimedia Concept," New York Times
(18 December 1969), 63. Somer professed her devotion to the composer in "To Alexander Scriabin, the
Prophet of Peace, Love and Mysticism, my Profound Gratitude," Piano Quarterly 21/81 (Spring 1973): 32-
34. Also see Jack Hiemenz, "Scriabin and His Demons," High Fidelity 20 (September 1970): 19-20.
 138
flamboyant in her public devotion to the composer, Ruth Laredo also claimed rights as a

Scriabininst for her nods to the occult lore surrounding the composer. In her centennial

Scriabin cycle, Laredo focused on the Piano Sonatas and other shorter works. Reviewer

Peter Davis noted, "Since dedicated Scriabinites hold that the odd- and even-numbered

sonatas inhabit separate mystical worlds, Miss Laredo obligingly played all the odd works

on this occasion; the others will be heard, appropriately enough, on Halloween."63 Somer

and Laredo both promoted the Russian composer's works as an experience that promised

a spiritual uplift, sustaining the image of Scriabin's music as a vehicle to a higher

consciousness that had been cultivated by Heyman and her contemporaries in the 1920s.

The Centenary Arrives: On the Trail of Poeme de l'extase

Scriabin's return to the limelight was complete by 1971. Numerous articles appeared

in England and America that attested to his suitability for the current age.64 In 1972,

British critic William Mann confirmed, "The Skryabin centenary year has not yet flowed

into spate but already it is trickling steadily."65 The composer's popularity had reached an

Davis, "Ruth Laredo Plays in a Scriabin Cycle," New York Times (12 Oct. 1971), 87. On these and
other recordings of Scriabin's works, including the composer's own piano rolls, see John W. Clark, "Divine
Mysteries: On Some Skriabin Recordings," Nineteenth-Century Music 6/3 (April 1983): 264-268. For more on
Laredo and Somer, see Roy Hemming, "Discussions," Senior Scholastic 99 (January 1972): 21.
Notable publications include: Schonberg, "Visions to Put the Acid Set to Shame," New York Times (13
April 1969), D17; Edmund Rubbra, "The Resurgence of Scriabin," The listener (26 February 1970): 289;
Robert Craft, "Time for a Revival - or Resurrection," New York Times (5 April 1970), 280; Adrian Hope,
"Fiery Music of a Mystic," Life 69/16 (16 October 1970): 72-76; Don Heckman, "Scriabin: 'Ice, Cocaine,
Rainbow,'" New York Times (10 October 1971), D28; Robert Evett, "The Man with the Astral Body,"
Atlantic Monthly (October 1971): 128-131; Henry-Louis de la Grange, "Prometheus Unbound," Music and
Musicians 233/20 (January 1972): 34-41; Schonberg, "Scriabin: His Message is Just Beginning to be Clear,"
New York Times (16 January 1972), D13; and Hugh Macdonald, '"Words and Music by A. Skryabin,'" Musical
Times 113/1547 (January 1972): 22-26. Also see the Winter 1970-1971 issue of Piano Quarterly and the
January 1972 issue of Clavier, which are both dedicated to the composer (see Figure 4.1 for the latter).
See Mann, "Skryabin Rarity," London Times (18 September 1968), 11D; and idem, "The Divine Poem,"
London Times (25 February 1972), 11F.
 139
apex in the West comparable to the celebrity he had enjoyed during his final years of life.

While pianists championed his complete catalogue of piano works, conductors revived

such orchestral showcases as the Divine Poem and Prometheus.

This triumphant return signaled a rebirth of Scriabin's music on a wide variety of

cultural and musical fronts. In 1970-1971, the Stuttgart Ballet toured with choreography

set to Poeme de I'extase, performing in N e w York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other cities.

In reference to the recent romantic revival, critic Peter Gorner of the Chicago Tribune

commented that, "as the musical public continues to dislike what it hears coming from

contemporary minds, and keeps seeking treasures in attics, Scriabin has been making the

news." 66 In addition to live performances of Extase, recordings of the work also provided

reviewers with critical fodder. In a review of Maazel's and Ashkenazy's recording of the

Piano Concerto and Prometheus, Heuwell Tircuit observed, "After years of neglect, one of

the greatest nuts in the history of music has suddenly zoomed into near-star status." 67

Despite renewed enthusiasm for Scriabin's music and ideas, cynics reopened old

wounds. In 1966, British critic Alan Blyth slighted the program of Prometheus:

T h e structure seems non-existent, the philosophy behind it suspect if not lunatic,

and the atmosphere it creates as steamy as the air in the Albert Hall that n i g h t . . .
let us hear less in the future h o w Scriabin has been unjustly neglected by posterity;
his semi-oblivion seems well justified if we are to judge by this empty score. 68

Like Soviet critics' rejection of Scriabin's overcharged rhetoric, Scriabin's most sensitive

Western critics such as H u g h Macdonald scoffed at the idea that his music could provide

Gorman, "Scriabin's Case has Another Day in Court Before New Values," G4.
67
"A Scriabin Collection - Among the New Albums," This World (20 February 1972), 32. Also see
Marilyn Tucker, "Happy Birthday, A. Scriabin," San Francisco Examiner (15 February 1972), 32; and Anon.,
"Scriabin's First Love - the Piano," This World (27 February 1972), 41.
68
Blyth, "Hot Air," Music and Musicians 15/2 (1966): 42.
 140
anything outside of entertainment. Macdonald opened his centennial "tribute" article

with the following salvo: "Nothing is easier than to pour ridicule upon Skryabin's gradual

and finally total self-delusion. Ever since the bubble of his persona was so rudely pricked

in the 1920s . . . his quasi-religious convictions have been under relendess fire from the

few critics who have paid him any attention at all, and must be eliminated from any

possibility of serious consideration, now or even in the future."69 While Macdonald

sensed that Scriabin's music still offered something as long as one ignored his meta-

physics, American critic Winthrop Sargeant and British composer Edmond Rubbra wrote

in the popular press how the composer's philosophy had contaminated his entire output.

Sargeant surmised, "How far one can follow his musical thought depends on how willing

one is to delve into a subjective realm from which . . . there is no return."70 Rubbra was

similarly unimpressed, arguing, "the growing interest in Scriabin's music is aufond because

of the extra-musical associations rather than its solid and proven worth as music."71

In spite of these skeptics, by 1971, Pome de I'extase had become a veritable piece de

resistance for such conductors as Leopold Stokowski, Eugene Ormandy, Seiji 02awa, and

Claudio Abbado; when the latter performed the work later that year with the Philadelphia

Orchestra (alongside Beethoven's Eroicd), Schonberg hailed Scriabin as a "genius":

The present decade is first beginning to realize how revolutionary [Scriabin] was.
For a long time he was dismissed as a sentimental, mystic, a purveyor of neo-
Chopin melodies (which he was in his early piano music), a self-indulgent colorist.
Self-indulgence he did have, but also genius. His music is unique and it is good to
see it beginning to take its proper place in history.72

b)
Macdonald, '"Words and Music by A. Skryabin,'" 22.
7
Winthrop Sargeant, "Musical Events: Concert Records," The New Yorker (3 September 1973): 48.
71
Rubbra, "The Resurgence of Scriabin," 289. Rubbra further contended that, "It is precisely this kind
of mysticism that would attract a generation inclined to give more value to a fringe prophet than to
established ones, and to seek for truth in out-of-the way places when it is under their very noses."
72
Schonberg, "Abbado: Big Sonorities, With Control," New York Times (4 February 1971), 29.
 141
The following year, even Pierre Boulez conducted Extase, demonstrating Scriabin's

fashionability as well as the earnestness with which professional musicians regarded his

music. Schonberg remarked in astonishment, "The last piece in the world that one would

ever expect to hear under [Boulez's] baton would be the decadent, juicy, over-rich,

sensuous Poem of Ecstasy." Admittedly, some professional musicians agreed with Schon-

berg's view of Scriabin as an avant-gardist, while others simply subscribed to fashion.

Schonberg observed, "Even avant-gardists begin to find his music interesting, and that is

only just. For Scriabin was one of the great avant-gardists before his death in 1915 and

remained so until his abrupt plunge from favor in the 1930's."

Scriabin Meets American Psychedelica

The following that Scriabin earned in American concert halls and the popular press

facilitated his transformation into a pop culture icon. Western revivalists devised an

archetype of Scriabin as a proto-Flower Child in touch with the ideals and indulgences of

the 1960s: music as spiritual experience, granting privileged status to the artist, and

elevating human consciousness towards the divine. Scriabin's return to popularity in

America had been presaged by the 1967 "Summer of Love" and such music festivals as

Monterey Pop and Woodstock, which cultivated atmospheres where music provided a

ceremonial backdrop for the dissolution of individuality into the larger communal group.

These values quickly spread from the West Coast across the nation, and the Flower

Schonberg noted that Boulez's reputation as an "austere musician with a profound dislike for romantic
or post-romantic music," made his choice of Scriabin's tone poem more than a little surprising. "Scriabin
Handsomely Led by Boulez," New York Times (14 Oct. 1972), 39. The next quote also comes from ibid.
 142
Power generation's search for meaning and identity led to experiments with meditation,

Eastern religions, and hallucinogens in order to expand their consciences.

The 1960s counterculture turned to music for such enlightenment with the belief

that it offered new spiritual, intellectual, and emotional heights. Psychedelic rock catered

to this ideology with modal melodies, surreal lyrics describing dreams or visions, lengthy

improvised solos, and disorienting recording effects such as distorted, reversed, delayed,

or phased sounds. The Beatles' Revolver (1966) and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

(1967) brought the psychedelic style to the mainstream, paving the way for Scriabin's

luminescent scores accompanied by colored lights, incense, and other sensory

phenomena. In the October 1971 issue of the arts journal Atlantic Monthly^ critic Robert

Evett dubbed Scriabin "composer-in-residence to the Age of Aquarius" and remarked on

the timeliness of the composer's revival, "an event which would surely have passed

unnoticed had it fallen a decade earlier." 74 The composer's promise of spiritual

transcendence through his unfinished rite, Mysterium, must have equally appealed to

younger audiences and enhanced his image as an occult figure.

The image of Scriabin as an artist concerned with spiritual enlightenment came

through clearly in revivalist portrayals, particularly in popular publications. Certainly the

Russian composer's belief in the power of will and personal strength is alluring and

marketable. Writers of program and record liner notes often pilfered bits of data from

Bowers' newly published monographs in order to promote Scriabin as a relevant artist for

74
Evett, "The Man with the Astral Body," 128, 131. Another popular publication that attested to
Scriabin's relevance for the age was Schonberg's Uves of the Great Composers (New York: W. W. Norton,
1970), 497-506, in which a photo depicting the composer wistfully gazing into the camera bears the caption,
"Music with color, scent, dance, religion, smells, touch, sculpture, and vision."
 143
younger audiences of the era. His biographies offered the first English translations of

passages from Scriabin's private journals, long available to Soviet readers. Bowers even

authored the liner notes for Scriabin albums by such pianists as A n t o n Kuerti (1971) and

Ruth Laredo (1972). Consider Director of CBS Masterworks Thomas Frost's selection of

Bowers quotes for the liner notes of Horomt^Plays Scriabin (1973) one of the top-selling

Scriabin records of the day:

Bowers pointed out that, "not unpredictably, the present-day re-emergent taste for
Scriabin has been in part due to young people. Today's youth accepts n o t only his
music but much of his thought. Scriabin's 1905 notebook tided Lope. And Do Battle!
could be a campus or hippie credo. His extraordinary, even irrational acceptance of
violence as a means of shaking the masses (leaders, really) into increased spiritual
consciousness is n o t as lonely a voice as it must have sounded at the time of the
outbreak of the war in 1914. T o Scriabin, chronological time was a lie, which it is,
and he tried to slow its ticking to a near stop, which is precisely the disorientation
drugs achieve. A n d his theories of abolishing money, classes, removing
punishments, heightening individualism, as well as his elaboration of "planes" of
levels at which life can be lived within or without reality scarcely astonishes us
anymore. All in all, it should n o t b e too amazing n o w that we can look back, wise
after the matter-of-fact that our century catches up with a newly seen and
understood even approved Scriabin." 76

Frost's choice of quotes underscored the composer's affinity for the age. A n index of the

counterculture's values can perhaps be adduced by Timothy Leary's famous mantra, "turn

on, tune in, drop out." This catchphrase originated in a 1966 speech at a " H u m a n Be-In"

in which Leary proclaimed, "Like every great religion of the past we seek to find the

divinity within." T h e counterculture's desire to tap into a higher consciousness helps

explain what this demographic was attracted to in Scriabin's transcendental scores. Leary

explanation of the phrase's meaning encapsulates the counterculture's aesthetic:

The composer's complete literary output (journals, poetry, programmatic texts, etc.) first appeared in
Mikhail Gershenzon ed., Russkiepropilei: Materialypo istorii russkoi mysli i literatury 6 (1919): 120-121, 132-191.
Several writings by Pushkin completed the rest of the volume of this journal, demonstrating the esteem
with which Scriabin's ideas were regarded.
76
Horowit^Plays Scriabin, Vladimir Horowitz, piano (Columbia Masterworks M 31620, 1973).
 144
'Turn on' meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become
sensitive to the various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage
them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. 'Tune in' meant interact harm-
oniously with the 'world around you - externalize, materialize, express your new
internal perspectives. 'Drop out' suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of
detachment from involuntary commitments. Drop Out meant self-reliance, a
discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change.

Leary and his followers rejected the conventional, known reality and encouraged people

to explore new modalities of being, whether though hallucinogens or music.

Contemporary advertisements and popular publications also touted Scriabin as a

Flower Child in order to appeal to the counterculture's sensibilities. In 1969, critic Peter

Gorner conceded that Scriabin was "the first composer who may be righdy called a

hippie, and this makes him especially meaningful today."78 Clavier magazine printed a

psychedelic hologram of the composer and Hilde Somer even issued her first all-Scriabin

record in 1968 with a psychedelic decal depicting the "First Flower Child" (Figures 4.1

and 4.2). Somer's 1970 album AD. further emphasized Scriabin's image as an eccentric

interested in the occult, with images of androgenic faces peering through geometrical

shapes, mythical beasts, and otherworldly tropes. In a 1973 article, she asserted, "Long

before the word 'psychedelic' was invented, long before Fillmore West (rock temple in

San Francisco) and Fillmore East (in New York) were born, flourished and died, Scriabin

was writing far out music to be played to the accompaniment of colored lights."

Music critics' descriptions of the composer's works complemented these market-

driven advertisements in their suggestion that his music offered a heightened sensory

experience. Critic Don Heckman remarked that Scriabin's works provided a similar kind

Leary, Flashbacks: A Personal and Cultural History of an Era (Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, 1990), 253.
"Scriabin's Case has Another Day in Court Before New Values," Chicago Tribune (14 Sept. 1969), G4.
7
Somer, "To Alexander Scriabin, the Prophet of Peace, Love and Mysticism," 32.
 145

igure 4.1
The January 1972 cover of Clavier Magazine, depicting
the composer in an psychedelic-styled hologram.
1971 The Instrumentalist Publishing Co.
Used with Permission.
 146

Figure 4.2
The "First Flower Child" decal issued with
Hilde Somer Plays Scriabin (SR 90500).
Used with Permission, Universal Music Special Markets.
 147
of distorted perception, or at least complemented its effects: "His music throbs with an

intensity reminiscent of the sensations aroused by hallucinogens."80 A reviewer in Harper's

Magazine concluded that Scriabin "thought of music in terms that can only be described as

psychedelic," and critic Paul Kresh likened his music to "a kind of sonic methadone for a

generation already partially wrecked by drugs."81 Robert Craft similarly reported that

"younger listeners profess to find a psychedelic exaltation of the kind imputed to the

fungus of immortality" in Extase. Parallels between Scriabin's music and psychedelic

experiences might include its temporal quiescence through dominant suspensions,

patchwork design of motivic fragments, and the sensitive analog between its sonic and

visual components (especially in the color organ projections of Prometheus). Reports of

Scriabin's synesthetic abilities likely encouraged such cross-modal comparisons.

A final point that sheds light on what attracted younger audiences to Scriabin

during the revival years comes from no less an informant than the composer's daughter

Marina. In 1971, she proposed that Western youths recognized in Scriabin's music ideals

that resonated with their own spiritual outiook on art and liberal sexual attitude.

Asserting that American youths' fondness for Scriabin was based on "real affinities" as

well as "misunderstanding," Mdme. Scriabin stressed correlations between the values of

Heckman, "Scriabin: 'Ice, Cocaine, Rainbow.'" The title comes from fiction writer Henry Miller's
1961 book Nexus: "Scriabin's music sounds like I think He has that far-off cosmic itch. Divinely fouled
up. All fire and air . . . It was like bath of ice; cocaine and rainbows." Nexus: Book Three of the Rosary
Crucifixion (Paris: Obelisk Press, 1961), 368. Faubion Bowers used Miller's description as the tide of a series
on Scriabin that he commentated on for the Canadian Broadcasting Company in 1972. Featuring the top
interpreters of the day (Laredo, Ogden, Abbado, et al.), the series covered every Scriabin opus over die
course of fourteen installments recorded from 28 June to 27 September 1972. Filed in the Rogers and
Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, New York Public Library. The fourteen reel-to-reel tapes run
from *LT-10-2460 through *LT-10-2473.
81
Discus, "Wild Romantics," Harper's Magazine 238/1429 (June 1969): 102; and Kresh, in Goodfriend,
ed., "Why Alexander Scriabin? Seven Critics Zero in on a Target," 71.
Craft, Prejudices in Disguise (New York: Knopf, 1974), 185.
 148
the counterculture and Scriabin's

attempt to overcome the mediocre, everyday life, an attempt which corresponds

to the anguished search for a spiritual life absent in today's world. The quest for
an art that is not spectacle or entertainment but rather seeks to transform and
magnify, to give a plentitude or joy and life . . . We still find the passionate
expectation of a future world that will engender a superior humanity, a lost love of
liberty, and a confidence in man, not to forget the importance in Scriabin's
thought of eroticism and even sexuality.83

Notably, the counterculture did not necessarily subscribe to Scriabin's philosophy as

much as they expressed an interest in it, and this curiosity played a large role in sustaining

the composer's popularity among the young concert-going public. Commentators on the

Scriabin revival such as harpsichordist Igor Kipnis recognized that the interest in sexually

charged scores was a reaction against the dominance of formalism in previous years:

[T]he intrinsic nervousness of so much of his music, coupled with its sensuous,
orgasmic ebb and flow, would appear to be in sympathy with our own times, in
which tastes (especially of the younger generation) appear to have veered away a
bit from the de-personalized, clinical, and cerebral approach to the arts.84

Although Soviet officials, Western critics, and the American counterculture

diverged in their interpretations of Scriabin, their collective efforts enabled the Scriabin

revival to reach an international scale. Popular writers and critics alike who shared an

enthusiasm for Scriabin contributed keen insights on this musical phenomenon.

Although American critics and audiences young and old may not have universally

embraced Scriabin, the presence of a counterculture surely helped advocates of his music

describe it in terms that resonated with contemporaneous ideals.

* * * *

Marina Scriabine, "Alexandre Scriabine," Le Cahiers Canadiens de laMusique 3 (1971): 25-26. My thanks
to Shelley Lawson for her translation of this passage from the French.
84
Kipnis, in Goodfriend, ed., "Why Alexander Scriabin?" 70.
 149

The Centenary Dust Settles

Scriabin's centenary marked the apex of his reception during the second half of

the twentieth century. The 1972 revival reached such grand proportions through the

efforts of performers, market-driven enterprises, and critics in the popular and academic

press. Philosophers have referred to such moments in the history of an artwork as a point

de la perfection, a. high water mark that results in either a decline from or stagnation within

that state. Carl Dahlhaus emphasized that such a view of art contradicts the traditional

notion that an unvarnished understanding of a work can be attained best by

reconstructing the values that informed listeners at the time of its inception. By "skirting

the straight-forward schemes of progress and decline," though, a work inherits greater

significance in the latter stages of its reception.85 Jim Samson has also referred to the

"afterlife" of a work (borrowed from Walter Benjamin's ewiges Fortleben) as offering an

ever-changing landscape of interpretations for reception historians.86

Renewed interest in Scriabin's music during the years surrounding his centenary

granted an "afterlife" to such works as Poeme de I'extase, renewing an appreciation for the

composer's historical significance and introducing his music to a new generation of

listeners. Although Scriabin's music had never been entirely absent from the repertoire

in the Soviet Union or the West, his increased presence during the early 1970s far

surpassed that of previous decades. Livingston argued that music revivals can "partake of

the discourse of modernity even as they set themselves in opposition to certain

Dahlhaus, Foundations ofMusk History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983) 157.
He noted, "In its afterlife a work direads its way through many different social and cultural formations,
attaching itself to them in different ways, adapting its own appearance and in die process changing theirs.
The work remains at least notionally die same object at any rate it is die product of a singular creative act
- but its manner of occupying die social landscape changes constantly." "Reception," New Grove Online ed.
L. Macy, at http://www.grovemusic.com.offcampus.Ub.washington.edu (accessed 25 July 2006).
 150
manifestations of modernity." The Scriabin revival presented a foil for contemporary

values and held a mirror to contemporary aesthetic and canonic standards. The

mutability of a revived repertoire, Livingston argued, allows a body of work to forge an

"alliance with various political and social movements throughout history."87 By repurp-

osing older repertoire or personalities, revivalists can overturn past miscalculations (the

USSR) or express disillusionment with contemporary socio-political issues (the West).

Livingston observed that revivals have "afterlives" that stimulate the resurgence

of older repertoire, and indeed the romantic revival stimulated Scriabin's reclamation.

The revaluation of the composer's musical legacy in the Soviet Union and the West

offered a fresh perspective on the artistic and cultural significance of his creative output.

Differences between images of the composer in the two regions, however, could not be

more different. Scriabin's Western return was a music revival, with an increased

presence in the standard repertoire and elevated canonic status. The American

counterculture became the composer's strongest followers, but Schonberg and others

recognized Scriabin as an avant-gardist. Although this second camp remained in the

minority during the revival years, that interpretation of the composer would reach full

fruition in the post-revival period. In the Soviet Union, Scriabin's revaluation was largely

a political revival that signaled his return to the standard repertoire and elevated canonic

status. The composer was one of many formerly condemned figures such as Tolstoy,

Pushkin, and Solzhenitsyn who were rehabilitated as a consequence of a changing of the

political guard.88 Indeed, the rehabilitation process continues today; in October 2008, the

Livingston, "Music Revivals," 81.

See David Brandenberger and Kevin M. F. Piatt, Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist
Propaganda (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006).
 151
Pushkin, and Solzhenitsyn who were rehabilitated as a consequence of a changing of the

political guard.88 Indeed, die rehabilitation process continues today; in October 2008, the

Russian Supreme Court formally restored the Romanov name and encouraged the nation

to take pride in its tsarist past. Moreover, mysticism became a more respectable pursuit

for Soviet scholars to study after the 1960s, facilitating more serious studies of Scriabin's

philosophy in addition to his affinities with the Russian Symbolist poets.

As we approach the centenary of Scriabin's death in 2015, few remnants of the

revival era's fervor for the Russian composer linger. The writings, recordings, and critical

inquiries inspired by that phenomenon, however, continue to inspire new avenues for

future research. Considerable work remains in examining the revivals of Mahler, Nielsen,

Ives, and other artists whose revaluations occurred roughly concurrent with Scriabin's

revival. This study has explored several aspects of composer revivals, but considering

their contingent nature, specifying the conditions that breed such revaluations is difficult.

Does an appreciation for Scriabin's music require, as Sabaneev suggested in 1940, that

"the businesslike, prosaic, realistic atmosphere of our days must some day be illuminated

by the fires of a reviving romanticism . . .?" Perhaps a future study can answer that

question and evaluate what Scriabin means to our century.

See David Brandenberger and Kevin M. F. Piatt, Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist
Propaganda (Madison: University ofWisconsin Press, 2006).
Sabaneev, "Scriabin: On the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of His Death," The Musical Times 81/1168
(June 1940): 257.
 152

CHAPTER FIVE:
The Post-Revival Transformation:
From Arch-Romantic to Proto-Serialist

By the late 1970s, Scriabin's renewed celebrity from his revival had run its course.

Popular interest in his music may have subsided, but scholarly enthusiasm endured long

after the centennial dust had setded. This scholarship should have sustained Scriabin's

presence in the repertory, but cultural historians and analysts spawned conflicting images

of the composer as either an acute representative of the pre-Revolutionary avant-garde or

a calculating harmonicist of the modern era. Ethnomusicologist Mande Hood articulated

the challenges that any body of music faces in maintaining a secure place in its repertory,

arguing that the social, cultural, and political functions that artworks serve determine not

only their margin of success, but also their sheer survival:

Music persists as it is only to the extent that interlocking requirements allow it to.
[. . .] When a culture has finished with any [musical] tradition, when it no longer
communicates or ceases to fill whatever function it has filled esthetically or
otherwise, then it will most certainly disappear, particularly in cultures where there
is no form of written record of such things . . . I suspect diat in many ways their
real identities are gone. I think we are looking at skeletons, without being sure
what kind of flesh they ought to be clothed in.

Hood's skeletal metaphor will serve us admirably in our discussion of Scriabin's

post-revival reception (1975-2000). In this case, a record does exist, but even in written

cultures the meaning of the music may vanish. The blinkered accounts produced by

formalist analysts and cultural historians melted the flesh from Scriabin's music, leaving a

bony assemblage of data that fails to explain what animated his art. Granted, each field of

Hood, Perspectives in Musicology, ed. Barry Brook, Edward Dowries, and Sherman van Solkema (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1972), 203-204. Quoted in Joseph Kerman, "A Few Canonic Variations," Critical Inquiry
10/1 (September 1983): 107-108.
 153

study has its unique objectives, but many post-revival scholars tailored Scriabin to fit the

modern aesthetic rather than situate his art within the context of his own age. By the 1990s,

analytical publications outweighed any new biographical or socio-cultural offerings,

advancing a considerably more disciplined image of the once wayward composer. New

York Times critic Bernard Holland summarized this revised view: "As Scriabin the

forward-looking theorist bloomed, the dripping tropical heat of his late sonatas and

orchestra pieces cooled. What had swayed suggestively became tough and clear-eyed."2

But what incentive does Scriabin's music offer modern analysts?

A common thread throughout the analytical literature is the idea of musical

progress. Scriabin's novel harmonic organization made him a prime candidate for analysts

eager to pinpoint a decisive break with tonality. Richard Taruskin observed that many

post-revival scholars lauded Scriabin's "remarkably trackable stylistic evolution as

embodying in microcosm the essential musical progress myth of the twentieth century."3

In an attempt to prove the composer's avant-garde bona fides, analysts granted primary

status to pitch organization. Each successive study cemented Scriabin's image as a leading

modernist, vying with Schoenberg in a race to establish an alternative to tonality. This

reappraisal led many writers to echo Boris Schwarz's wistful remark that, "were it not for

Scriabin's premature death in 1915, Moscow might have joined Vienna as the citadel of

non-tonal music."4

The remarkable compatibility of Scriabin's late works with Fortean pitch-class sets

and Schenkerian analysis particularly rewarded analysts who sought to branch out from

2
Holland, "Sensualist Meets His Match," New York Times (17 June 2003), E6.
Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 314.
Schwarz, "Arnold Schoenberg in Soviet Russia," Perspectives ofNew Music 4 / 1 (Fall/Winter 1965): 93.
 154

Austro-Germanic repertoire. As these analytical orthodoxies gained currency, the

determinist view of Scriabin catalyzed through analyses and, later, performances of his

music. Once Scriabin gained the respect of theorists and historians, he was elevated a

notch in canonic status a remarkable reversal for an alleged eccentric who failed to found

a compositional school.

This chapter traces Scriabin's decline from the late 1970s through the 1990s, when

his music lost its toehold in the repertory despite the scholarly attention it attracted. After

examining the new analytical archetype of Scriabin that emerged during the post-revival

period, we will explore how performers of the 1990s assimilated this view of the composer.

The various approaches to analyzing his music and conflicting readings that often result

are illustrated in a comparative analysis of Scriabin's Prelude Op. 59, no.2. The Russian

composer's evolution throughout the last decades of the twentieth century presents a

fascinating study on the influence of analysis on performance practice.

 155

The Death of the Evangelical Avant-Garde

Throughout the 1970s, aftershocks faintly echoed the celebratory fervor of

Scriabin's centenary. In Charleston, South Carolina, Mayor Joseph P. Riley, Jr. declared

June 4, 1977 "Scriabin Day" and celebrated it with a guest lecture by Scriabin biographer

Faubion Bowers, piano recitals, chamber music rarities, and an evening performance of

Prometheus with lighting effects.5 The following year, an international symposium was held

in Graz, with presentations covering such topics as multimedia effects in Prometheus, formal

and harmonic aspects of the late piano works, and issues of pianistic interpretation.6 By

the end of the decade, analytical and stylistic studies appeared with increasing frequency in

languages other than English and Russian.7 Scriabin also became a prime dissertation and

thesis subject, with a broad range of historical and theoretical studies undertaken on his life,

aesthetics, and position in Russian culture and music.8

By the mid-1970s, popular interest in Scriabin cooled considerably. While many

critics had commented on the composer's return to fame, his subsequent decline was a

virtual non-issue. The few critics who bothered to notice his absence included Harold

Schonberg of the New York Times, who lamented in 1976 that, "A few years ago there was

See Martin Bernheimer, "Scriabin Day in Charleston," Los Angeles Times (10 June 1977), H I ; and Clive
Barnes, "Dance: Sweet Finale to Spoleto," New York Times (6 June 1977), 36.
The papers presented at the symposium were published in Otto Kolleritsch, ed., Aleksander Skrjabin:
Studien %ur Wertungsforschungao. 13 (Graz: Universal Edition, 1980).
Hanns Steger, Materialstrukturen in den fiinf spaten Klaviersonaten Alexander Skjabins (Regensburg: Gustav
Bosse Verlag, 1977); Amalia Collisani, IlPrometeo di Scriabin (Palermo: S. F. Flaccovio, 1977); and Manfred
Kelkel, Alexandre Scriabine: sa vie, I'esoterisme et le language musical dans son oeuvre (Paris: Champion, 1978).
Notable examples include Kenneth Peacock, "Alexander Scriabin's Prometheus. Philosophy and
Structure" (Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1976); Roy Guenther, "Varvara Dernova's 'Garmoniia Skryabina':
A Translation and Critical Commentary" (Ph.D., Catholic University, 1979); Anthony Pople, "Skryabin and
Stravinsky, 1908-1914: Studies in Theory and Analysis" (Ph.D., St. John's University, Oxford, 1985); Cheong
Wai-Ling, "The Late Scriabin: Pitch Organization and Form in the Works of 1910-1914" (Ph.D., University
of Cambridge, 1990); Mitchell Morris, "Musical Eroticism and the Transcendent Strain" (Ph.D., University
of California, Berkeley, 1998); and Jonathan Powell, "After Scriabin: Six Composers and the Development
of Russian Music" (Ph.D. University of London, King's College, 1999).
 156

a brief flurry with Scriabin symphonies, but that has died down. It would be a pity if the

'Poeme d'Ecstase' and 'Prometheus' were allowed to languish."9 But languish these works

did, at least in concert halls. Scriabin recordings, however, continued to be issued

steadily. Enthusiasts honored the composer through various tributes, but by the end of

the 1970s critics and audiences had grown weary of the Scriabin craze.11

One factor that contributed to Scriabin's eclipse was the dwindling interest of the

young audiences who had proved his strongest supporters during his lifetime and later in

the century. Teenagers and twenty-somethings living during the 1980s, the so-called

Generation X, largely rejected the socio-cultural values and political activism upheld by

their parents' generation. Image-conscious GenXers scoffed at the spiritual idealism of

the Flower Children, making these youths unreceptive to Scriabin's transcendental music

and philosophy. This disengaged, apolitical group rejected such religious overlay, and they

regarded art as a commercial commodity, a barometer for current style, and an escape from

the problems inherited from the Baby Boomers.

Scriabin's decline can be also equated with the eclipse during the late 1970s of a

composerly cohort dubbed the "evangelical avant-garde" by Donal Henahan. Music

critic of the Neiv York Times (succeeding Harold Schonberg in 1980) and recipient of a 1986

Pulitzer Prize, Henahan was among the most trusted voices in classical music. In a 1978

Schonberg, "Treasures from the Symphonic Trunk," New York Times (19 December 1976), XI7.
See Raymond Ericson, "Disks: Russian Piano Music," New York Times (30 March 1978), CIO; Joseph
Horowitz, "Disks: 26 Scriabin Pieces," New York Times (15 March 1979), C l l ; and Hilary Finch, "Chastity,
Sensuality and Spiritual Refreshment," The London Times (29 September 1984), C17.
1
A 1978 production entitled "The Divine Flame" by Paul Chand offers a telling example. A
"biographical impression," the performance offered a dramatic narrative of Scriabin's life up to 1903, but the
romanticizing of the events left a poor impression on reviewer Paul Griffiths who, although excited about
alternatives to traditional concerts, expressed "misgivings" about the event. See "The Divine Flame," London
Times (23 January 1978), D9.
12
Henahan, "The Evangelical Avant-Garde at a Dead End," New York Times (25 June 1978), D19. All
quotes in this paragraph come from this article.
 157

article, he counted Scriabin among such "high Romantics" as Mahler, Wagner, and Liszt,

who regarded artists as divine beings. Henahan's views reflected the recent publication of

Paul Griffiths' Concise History of Avant-Garde Music, which traced the avant-garde's roots to

the stylistic practices of Wagner and Liszt.13 Henahan argued that the high Romantics and

the next phase of avant-gardism in Scriabin and the Second Viennese School shared a

common goal of musical progress in service of a higher ideal. "With the arrival of

Schoenberg," Henahan contended, "the idea of a prophetic missionary of the avant-garde

passed over into our century and materialized into a powerful evangelical force."

Scriabin's rise and fall during the 1970s outlines the trajectory that Henahan proposed for

the modern avant-garde's lifespan. He marked the apex in 1971, citing Pierre Boulez's

appointment as music director of the New York Philharmonic as "the ultimate rout of the

avant-garde's most grizzled enemies." Boulez's resignation from that post in 1977

subsequently signaled for Henahan "the collapse of the avant-garde movement, which had

been drying up for some time."

Scriabin's legacy suffered another blow with the death of several Russian pianists

whose lifetime of experience had afforded them the expertise to interpret his notoriously

elusive scores, including Emil Gilels (d.1985), Vladimir Horowitz (d.1989), and Sviatoslav

Richter (d.1997). Critics voiced concerns over the drying well of Russian pianism.

Henahan wondered, "now the postwar heroes of Soviet art are just about gone . . . who will

be nominated to carry the banner of Soviet pianism?"14 Virtuosos abounded, but

1
Griffiths, A Concise History oj"Avant-Garde Music: From Debussy to Bou/e^ (New York and Toronto: Oxford
University Press, 1978). In a later article, Griffiths clarified that the second generation avant-garde referred
to several radical tendencies in post-1945 art music. See "Modern Music: The Avant Garde Since 1945,"
Music Educators Journal 68/4 (December 1981): 63-64.
14
Henahan, "Who Will Replace the Old Guard of Soviet Music?" New York Times (27 Oct. 1985), 19.
 158

technique hardly guaranteed sensitive readings of the composer's scores. Harold

Schonberg served as a juror in international piano competitions during the 1980s and

grumbled, "All this talent, all this preparation and dedication - and so little to say! . . .

Pianist after pianist would come with their Chopin or Liszt or Schumann with virtually no

idea of how the music should go."15 Flaws that Schonberg cited would prove disastrous in

Scriabin's music. As renowned interpreter Samuel Feinberg observed, "With Scriabin,

harmony and timbral coloring are inseparable . . . In his late-period compositions, the

smallest upsetting of balance and accurate distribution of force . . . may be perceived as

falsity or excessive nervousness."16 Over the last two decades of the twentieth century, a

new breed of Western Scriabin-playing pianists have emerged, including Marc-Andre

Hamelin, Garrick Ohlsson, Arthur Greene, Christopher O'Riley, John Bell Young, and

Jerome Lowenthal.17 The deference these pianists paid to Soviet-era interpreters has

allowed them to recover past performance traditions (range of color, rubato, fidelity to the

score) without sacrificing their personal touches.

Post-revival critics who spurned Scriabin invariably dismissed his music as romantic,

while enthusiasts (especially analysts) praised his late works as exemplars of modernism.

Critic Robert Everett-Green provided a late-century assessment: "It is fashionable to

emphasize Scriabin's technical innovations and to downplay his messianic ambitions. But

Schonberg elaborated, "They invariably played in a hard, percussive manner. They had no real legato.
They ignored phrase marks. They left out the inner voices so carefully notated by the composers. They had
no idea of the pedals and how to use them to mix sounds. They were metrically tight, with none of the
fluctuation of tempo so integral to 19dl-century performance practice. Application they had. But style,
personality, daring, imagination? Forget it." See "Batde of die Blands Pianists Today Can't Get Handle on
Romantic Music," Houston Chronicle (3 August 1986), 24; and idem, "Do Today's Pianists Have the Romantic
Touch?" New York Times (6 July 1986), H I .
Feinberg, Piani^m kak iskusstvo (Pianism as Art), 2 nd ed. (Moscow: State Publishing House, 1965), 111.
See Robert Rimm, The Composer-Pianists: Hamelin and The Eight (Pordand: Amadeus Press, 2002).
 159

the two can't really be divided . . . He was a romantic reactionary who wanted to drag us

toward some irrational truth, the full scope of which, if it ever existed, died with him."18

Critic Robert Cowan argued that Scriabin unfairly fell victim to "fashionable critical cliches,

crushed by the bandwagon of drug-induced unreality with its legacy of escapism, nihilism,

and 'free love.' But Scriabin is greater than all these fads; his work grows mightier . . . the

more closely we look into its infinitely complex workings."19 Yet, in defending the

composer, Cowan remained in the minority. Journalist Lon Tuck reported in 1985 that,

"the standard line these days on this turn-of-the-century Russian is that he was an

immense talent who wasted it, self-indulgent in the fuzzy mysticism of his later music and

self-destructive in his personal life."20

Henahan wholeheartedly agreed. Following a performance of Poeme de I'extase and

Le divin poeme with the New York Philharmonic under Giuseppe Sinopoli, he repeated the

typical modernist denigration of Scriabin as a narcissistic madman:

Scriabin's orchestral works, intended as mystical or philosophical revelations, are so

much alike in their shapeless meanderings and overheated rhetoric that hearing two
of them in an evening can be numbing . . . The line between mysticism and madness
is a thin, wavering one along which Scriabin tiptoed during much of his career. He
seems to have believed, to judge from works such as these, that his ego-induced state
of religious and sexual ecstasy could not only be communicated in music but also
sustained for heroically long periods. Saints and great sinners, perhaps, can live that
way, but composers know that music does not tolerate drawn-out sameness, even if
that sameness is identified as a mystical state.

The next month Henahan reiterated his complaints about Scriabin after a performance of

1
Everett-Green, "Unraveling the Mystery of Scriabin," The Globe and Mail (9 December 1999), R7.
19
Cowan, "A Mystic Madman's Message for the Millennium," The Independent (15 February 1995), 9.
20
Tuck, "The Philadelphia's Stunning Scriabin," Washington Post (29 January 1985), C4.
Henahan, "Concert: Sinopoli Leads 2 Scriabin Symphonies," New York Times (30 January 1988), 15.
 160

Poeme de I'extase and Witold Lutoslawski's "Chain 2" (1986). He approved of pairing both

works on the same program because they complemented one another, with Scriabin's

"sweaty Romanticism" balancing out Lutoslawski's "chilly Modernism." Both works

strove to express the ineffable, but for Henahan they managed only "half a musical truth."

The critic's main grievance was Scriabin's indulgence in constant surges, "one chasing

another in endless, hysterical climaxes." Rather than basking in ecstatic bliss as the

composer had envisioned, Henahan "grew increasingly depressed at the thought that

Scriabin hoped to transmit his soul-shattering experiences to other human beings in any

form that would resemble the original."22

Henehan was not alone in his skepticism. In 1999, London music critic Geoff

Brown reviewed Mikhail Pletnev with the Russian National Orchestra in performances of

the Piano Concerto, Poeme de I'extase, Prometheus, and Divine Poem. He was struck by

"harmonies treacherous as shifting sands, trumpet mottos blaring time after time, formless

meanderings, waffle and flatulence"; it was "music so blurred and boring that my ears

almost died." Brown deemed Extase a "post-Wagnerian mudbath" and concluded that,

"High technology has superceded Scriabin's imaginings," meaning that computer music

and lighting effects had far surpassed Scriabin's modest conceptions. 23 Adrian Jack

attended the same 1999 Barbican concert series and echoed Brown's condemnation of

Scriabin. Jack added that program notes for the event had even condemned Scriabin as

spiritually and artistically "unhealthy," presenting a striking portrait of the composer's

Henahan, "Opposites Don't Necessarily Attract," New York Times (7 February 1988), H23. See pianist
John Bell Young's rejoinder to Henahan, pointing out his error in identifying Scriabin as Polish. Young,
"Nothing's More Russian Than Scriabin," New York Times (6 March 1988), H21.
Brown, "Russian NO/Pletnev," London Times (22 November 1999), 16.
 161

enduring reputation as an eccentric at the end of the twentieth century in England.24

Critic Arthur Kaptainis lamented near century's end that although major pianists

performed Scriabin's music, "even ensembles such as the Montreal Symphony, to which

its extravagant idiom is perfectly suited" ignored his orchestral scores.25 Under such

seasoned conductors as Pierre Boulez, Gennady Rozhdestvenski, and Valerii Gergiev,

however, Scriabin's symphonies slowly resurfaced on orchestral programs. In 2002, the

New York Philharmonic programmed his First Symphony, which that organization had

not performed since 1907. The work's neglect, Paul Griffiths explained, was justifiable

considering that a year later Extase premiered in America.26 To journalist Ronald Broun,

however, the discrepancy between the Russian composer's earlier works and his mature

masterpieces seemed to leave "a wildly uneven musical legacy usually dismissed as more

voluptuous than spiritual, more solipsistic than ecstatic, more fume than fire."27

Since the late-1990s, though, intimations of a return have appeared once again. In

1995, Edith Finton Rieber founded the Scriabin Society of America, which publishes a

peer-reviewed journal. The next year Scriabin's music headlined the Adelaide Music

Festival in Australia.28 "1997 can rightly be called 'Scriabin's Year,'" Irina Vanechkina

commented in a review of the conference, "Prometheus of the Twentieth Century."29 1997

did mark the one hundred twenty-fifth anniversary of Scriabin's birth as well as the

24
Adrian Jack, "Not Quite Such Divine Decadence," The Independent (London) (24 Nov. 1999), 10.
Kaptainis, "Poem of Fire Burns: Orchestra Does Justice to Scriabin's Neglected Scores," The Gazette
(Montreal) (9 August 1999), G13.
Griffiths, "Resurrecting a Symphony After Nearly a Century," New York Times (16 April 2002), E3.
Broun, "The Potent Emotionalism of Scriabin," The Washington Post (25 August 2001), C5.
Jeremy Vincent, "Fiery and 'Fab': Scriabin Dominates in Adelaide's Boldest Musical Bill," The Australian
(1 March 1996), B6.
Vanechkina, "Scriabin Celebrations in Moscow," Leonardo Music Journal 8 (1998): 76. Vanechkina and
Galeev have published numerous articles in this periodical, a literary organ of the International Society for
the Arts, Sciences, and Technology. It publishes research by those who are "implementing developing
technologies and expanding the boundaries of radical and experimental aesthetics."
 162

seventy-fifth anniversary of the Scriabin Museum in Moscow. The occasion was

commemorated with month-long activities, including an interdisciplinary conference,

lecture recitals, scholarly publications, and other events. The composer continues to enjoy

popular recognition in his homeland. The popular Ukrainian pop group Skryabin

(founded in 1988) even adopted Scriabin's surname as their namesake, demonstrating the

enduring respect for the composer in the Russian Federation. In the west, Scriabin's music

has also been the subject of several recent publications in popular fiction.30

As in the revival years, inspired performances exposed younger generations to

Scriabin's music on recorded and transferable media.31 The 1996 re-release of Ruth

Laredo's rendition of the Piano Sonatas tapped into a new demographic of listeners who

sought alternatives to radio singles. One pianist who came to Scriabin through Laredo was

Arthur Greene, who observed in 2000 that, "only lately has Scriabin started to fare well

critically in the United States where he has undergone a revival through concerts and

recordings, books and symposiums . . . It's provoked by the millennium and the possibility

of the apocalypse." Greene argued that the absence of religious morals in modern society

provoked the masses to seek "a feeling of mysticism if not actual mysticism itself and

Scriabin's music provides that."32 In an attempt to spread Scriabin's gospel, Greene

utilized colored stage lights in his solo recitals and made his recordings of the Piano

Sonatas available for free download from his personal website. Similarly sensing that times

were ripening once again for Scriabin, critic Olin Chism argued that the composer's "weird

30
Georgiana Preacher, Skryabin Mysterium (Philadelphia: Xlibris Corporation, 2001). Jim Tushinski's Van
Allen's Ecstasy (Binghamton: Haworth Press, 2004), features a protagonist who becomes obsessed with
Scriabin's Fifth Sonata and suffers a nervous breakdown during his father's performance of the piece.
31
See Bernard Holland, "Ruth Laredo's Difficult Cup of Tea," New York Times (20 Sept. 1987), H31.
32
Jacob Stockinger, "Scriabin Recitals to be Steeped in Mysticism and Sensuality," The Capitol Times
(Madison, WI) (28 January 2000), IB.
 163

religious and philosophical ideas seem more appropriate for the new age of the 1990s than

the old age of the 1890s." In 1999, journalist Stephen Wigler concurred, "Alexander

Scriabin seems to finally have secured a toehold on the standard repertory."33 In 2000,

London Masterworks presented a comprehensive survey of composer's piano works over

a fortnight's worth of radio broadcasts, and in 2002, students from the Alexander Toradze

studio from Indiana University South Bend presented the composer's complete Piano

Sonatas and other works in a marathon four-hour marathon recital in New York City.34 In

a 2004 CD review, critic David Hurwitz remarked that, "Scriabin seems to be an 'in

composer' all of a sudden what with numerous new recordings of his youthful Piano

Concerto and late tone poems/symphonies." 35

While Scriabin's popularity was improving by century's end, audiences in the

post-revival era did not respond nearly as favorably as in the previous generation. With the

exception of a few highlights, the composer's music faced much adversity in the decades

after his revival.36 Although general audiences did not share the scholarly enthusiasm for

Scriabin, as we shall see, modernist performers endorsed this view of the composer as a

progressive figure.

Chism, "Times Finally Catch Up To Composer Scriabin," Dallas Morning News (8 December 1996), 6C;
and Wigler, "Difficult Artist Easier to Hear," The Baltimore Sun (8 August 1999), 7F.
4
See Adrian Jack, "Arts: On the Air," The Independent (London) (15 September 2000), 16; and Griffiths,
"Four Hours of Scriabin's Sonatas and Other Piano Thrills," New York Times (5 November 2002), E5.
Hurwitz, review of Scriabin Piano Concerto, Prometheus, Igor Golovschin, cond. (Naxos 8.55081, 2004),
available at http://www.capslock.ws/2008/01/19/scriabin-piano-concerto-promemeus.html (accessed 10
July 2009).
6
On 13 August 1988, Belgian astronomer Eric W. Elst discovered asteroid 6549, which he named in
memory of Scriabin. See Lutz D. Schmadel, Catalogue ofMinor Planet Names and Discovery Circumstances (Berlin,
New York: Springer-Verlag, 1993), 540.
 164

Analysis in Petformance: Scriabin chez Boulez

While critics and analysts promoted Scriabin as a pioneering avant-gardist in

popular and scholarly publications, performers reinforced this new image of Scriabin by

delivering clinical readings of his scores. To employ terms introduced in Stravinsky's

Poetics ofMusk, such modernist performers as Robert Taub and Pierre Boulez aimed for

precise "executions" rather than "interpretations" of Scriabin's scores.37 Like formalist

analysts, these performers sought to reveal structural details of the score. While modernist

performers updated Scriabin's image to accord with the analytical archetype, their

executions incited a firestorm of controversy over whether the composer's music had been

transformed or transgressed.

The formalist approach to Scriabin's works materialized on concert stages by the

mid-1980s, and critics questioned the stolid readings. Reviewing a 1983 performance of

Prometheus with the Baltimore Symphony under Sergiu Comissiona, Edward Rothstein

lamented, "more tastelessness, recklessness, passion, devotion and fanaticism would have

helped. There was even an assurance in the program notes of the lighting system's 'design

criteria for audience safety.' This fire was tamed before it was let loose." The next year,

Rothstein attended a "rare preaching of that symphonic gospel," the Divine Poem, and

encountered a similar reluctance on the part of Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia

Orchestra to surrender themselves the music: "Mr. Muti did not revel in excess,

egomaniacal display and extravagance. But this symphony is an evangelical 'production

Stravinsky, Poetics of Music: In the Form ofSix Lessons, trans. Arthur Knodel and Ingolf Dahl (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1998), 122. "The idea of interpretation implies the limitations imposed upon the
performer or those which the performer imposes upon himself . . . which is to transmit the music to the
listener. The idea of execution implies the strict putting into effect of an explicit will that contains nodiing
beyond what it specifically commands." Emphasis added.
 165

number.' It should have the musico-philosophical equivalents of baton- twirling

majorettes and water ballets."38 But no such spectacle ensued. Some critics appreciated

the fresh approach to Scriabin's music, at least as represented on new record releases. In

1986, critic Herbert Glass commended the exceptionally "trim, clarifying reading" of

Scriabin's "relatively obscure" Second Symphony by the Scottish National Orchestra

under Neeme Jarvi, "our busiest exponent of neglected Romantic and late-Romantic

repertory." Bernard Holland reviewed a 1993 performance oiExtase with the New York

Philharmonic under Valerii Gergiev and affirmed, "The tugging, nagging melodic lines, the

sensation of ooze, the ecstatic trumpet proclamations suddenly assumed broad shoulders

and a squarer cut in performance."39

Among pianists, Robert Taub stands out for his sober renditions of Scriabin's

works, which drew pointed opinions from critics and audiences. Taub's distinction as a

gifted interpreter of Milton Babbit's works sheds some light on his approach to Scriabin.

Between 1988 and 1990, Taub recorded the Scriabin sonatas for Harmonia Mundi,

prompting more than one critic to comment on the dramatic contrast between this

methodical reading and the maudlin manner in which Scriabin is generally performed.

Critic William Goodfellow hailed Taub's "remarkably disciplined view of this music, as

close as any pianist in my experience has come to 'sensible Scriabin,' if that does not seem

a contradiction in terms."40 In a 1990 performance of Scriabin's Op. 24 Preludes and

38
Rothstein, "Music: Scriabin's 'Fire,'" New York Times (14 March 1983), C13; and "Music: Scriabin by
Muti and Philadelphians," New York Times (24 February 1984), C5.
Glass, "The Other Russians," Los Angeles Times (14 September 1986), T61; and Holland, "From Russia
in a Different Voice," New York Times (13 February 1993), 11.
Goodfellow, "CDs Offer Taub the Modernist and the Complete Scriabinist." The DeseretNews (Salt Lake
City, UT) (14 June 1992), E4. Also see Steve Sweeney-Turner, Review of Scriabin: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-10 by
Robert Taub, The Musical Times 135/1821 (November 1994): 722.
 166

"Black Mass" Sonata, Taub's levelheaded approach prompted critic John Rockwell to

marvel at the effectiveness of his execution: "Not for Mr. Taub the brooding mysticism of

Romantically inspired Scriabin performances. This was hard-edged, clear-eyed pianism, a

little less evocative than usual, but far more intense and dramatic."41

In the mid-1990s, modernist executions of Scriabin's works reached an apex with

Pierre Boulez, arch-champion of modernist music. In the 1970s, Boulez actively pursued

roles as a conductor and music advisor, accepting distinguished posts with the Cleveland

Orchestra (1970-1972), the BBC Symphony (1971-1975) and the New York Philharmonic

(1971-1977).42 Just as Boulez's compositions owed a considerable debt to Schoenberg's

twelve-tone method and Stravinsky's rhythmic layering, his conducting was renowned for

its precision of sound, deliberate tempi, and analytical clarity. His performances and

recordings of the Piano Concerto, Prometheus (Anatol Ugorski, piano), and Poeme de I'extase

(Adolph Herseth, trumpet) with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during the 1990s are

considered the modernist versions par excellence of those works.

Considering Boulez's affinities with the Second Viennese School and Debussy, his

association with Scriabin's music is surprising. Indeed, the austere modernist and

extravagant musico-philosopher make for odd bedfellows. Boulez apparendy had little

appreciation for Scriabin's music apart from the Piano Sonatas, and he even argued in a

mid-1990s interview that, aside from Mussorgsky and Stravinsky, Russian music was

devoid of any effective symphonic works. He spoke candidly on the subject:

Rockwell, "Robert Taub Piano Recital Offers a Babbitt Premiere," New York Times (22 February 1990),
C14.
42
See Joseph McLellan, "Boulez Through the Ages," Washington Post (26 March 1995), G i l .
 167

I've conducted Scriabin, too, but I don't care much for his orchestral works; I find
them badly constructed. There again, certain passages in The Firebird are far better
than Scriabin's symphonic poems, because the musical thought is more profound.
Scriabin is very interesting when he writes for the piano, less so where orchestral
literature is concerned.43

Boulez's respect for his teacher, Messiaen, might explain his conditional acceptance of

Scriabin's music based on its spiritualistic element, but Boulez never dared to accentuate

the sensual textures or rhythmic thrusts of the Poeme de I'extase (originally titled the Poeme

Orgiaque or Orgasmic Poem) that made the work so effective in other conductors' hands. Yet

Extase became Boulez's most often performed Scriabin piece, which he first conducted for

the composer's 1972 centenary.44 His 1996 recording with the Chicago Symphony

Orchestra is marked by transparent textures, deliberate tempi, and attenuated dynamics.

Boulez's urbane performance is quintessentially French in style and attests to modernism's

enduring influence on late twentieth-century performance practice.

Boulez's modernist performances of Extase, the Piano Concerto, and Prometheus

were delivered in 1996 in preparation for Deutsche Grammaphon recording sessions.

Prometheus was a novelty during Boulez's tenure, as it had been absent from the CSO

repertoire since 1938.45 The disc's release provoked strong opinions from reviewers.

Some argued that Boulez's rational intellect revealed the modernist spirit of Scriabin's

music. "The slightly mad find their most eloquent spokesmen in the ranks of the eminently

sane," Bernard Holland noted. He praised Boulez for revealing the "method in the

madness . . . Here is indirect proof that Scriabin's ravings, like Messian's religious deliriums,

Jean Vermeil, Conversations with Boule^ Thoughts on Conducting (Portland: Amadeus Press, 1996), 48. Donal
Henahan considered Boulez and Scriabin to be as antipodal in style as Toscanini and Stokowski. See
"Dichotomies, Uncertainties, and Limits of Taste," New York Times (18 January 1981), D23.
See Harold Schonberg, "Scriabin Handsomely Led By Boulez," New York Times (14 Oct. 1972), 39.
Rhein, "Refined Boulez Conducts CSO Across Two Traditions," Chicago Tribune (7 Dec. 1996), 25.
 168

are founded not on raving or delirium, but on sophisticated and original grammars."46

Critic John von Rhein agreed that Boulez's "elucidating intelligence as an interpreter kept

the Promethean fires from consuming the performance: Madness, in art, must be based in

reason." Paul Griffiths praised Boulez for rescuing Scriabin's music, which "had

disappeared from the repertory for nearly a quarter of a century . . . Boulez's "textures [are]

at once sumptuous and clear, the melodies imposing and enticing by turns (blessed

especially by triumphant trumpet playing) and the sequences of relaxation well gauged to

support the rise toward a golden conclusion."47

Although many critics hailed Boulez's readings, Scriabinists were less enthusiastic.

In a letter to the editor, Kevin Lenaghan argued that Boulez's readings, "although note

perfect, are academic and disappointingly boring."48 Less polite was pianist John Bell

Young, who in a review on his personal website lambasted Boulez's "mathematically

inspired" approach to the orchestral scores: "This is small scale, geriatric Scriabin whose

get up and go got up and went. . . even the New York Times was duped, arguing that Mr.

Boulez had 'liberated' the composer. Nonsense!" Young sternly reproached Boulez's

stingy, prudish, metrically stillborn performance has a kind of Ersatz clarity that
relies principally on the notes themselves . . . his performances in all three works on
this disc are dispassionate, unimaginative, and cold-blooded. This is small scale,
geriatric Scriabin, whose get up and go got up and went. His limp idea of ecstasy, for
all the glories of the magnificent orchestra at his disposal, suggests the impoverished,
distant memory of one who has lost his ability to know what the experience feels like.
He gives us Scriabin sorely in need of a Viagra fix.

46
Holland, "Translating a Language of Ecstasy," New York Times (8 August 1999), AR29.
47
Von Rhein, "Refined Boulez Conducts CSO Across Two Traditions," 25; and Griffiths, "Setting Aside
History for the Ecstasy of the Moment," New York Times (31 August 1999), E5.
48
Lenaghan, "Scriabin and Boulez: A Place for Emotion," New York Times (29 August 1999), AR2.
49
John Bell Young, "An All-Consuming Philosophical and Spiritual Agenda," published by Music &
Vision, available at http://www.mvdaily.com/articles/2000/01/scriabin.htm.
 169

Despite this invective, Scriabin performances during the 1980s-1990s by Boulez as well as

conductors Muti, Svelanov, Jarvi, Sinopoli, Pletnev, and Rozhdestvensky helped keep the

composer's name in circulation.50 Similar to formalist analyses, the controlled and exacting

executions of modernist performers left many critics and audiences wanting greater risks

and more passion.

Post-Revival Analysis: Agendas and Limitations

The most striking feature of the academic studies published on Scriabin after his

1972 centenary was the emphasis on formalist analyses, which shifted scholarly attention

from his cultural background to his harmonic experimentation. While analysts sought to

elucidate the composer's music, their specialized notation and terminology required

patience and training to comprehend. With scholarly discourse so dauntdngly overgrown

with competing agendas and methodologies, it is no wonder that analysis and cultural

history were seldom combined in Scriabin studies. Thus late twentieth-century scholars

promoted contradictory images of Scriabin that complicated issues of stylistic

classification and compromised his standing in the Western canon.

The schism between history and analysis in Scriabin's reception stemmed from

modernism's enduring influence on twentieth-century music historiography. The shift

from hagiography to critical dissection prompted a revaluation of the canon and its

attendant criteria, and historians and analysts alike prized works that featured progressive

50
In 1989, British music critic Robert Maycock remarked, "Who would have thought the prestige labels
would be putting their standard-bearing conductors into competition over the Scriabin Divine Poem?" "The
Obscurity and die Ecstasy," The Independent (London) (13 May 1989), 33.
 170

compositional techniques and a sense of organic unity. Methodologies naturally arose that

validated the structural integrity of masterworks, and Scriabin's music was expected to

follow the same principles. In an attempt to isolate its distinctive qualities, analysts filtered

out the extramusical baggage. Critics argued, however, that abstracting the music from its

cultural matrix provided only a partial understanding of his creative output.

Despite the anomalies that Scriabin's music posed to analytical models, theorists

touted him as "an important force in the transitional period between the abandonment of

tonality and the advent of serialism" in the words of analyst Roy Guenther.51 Guenther

fully realized the impact of Scriabin's background on his creative ideology, and he

acknowledged that from 1906 onward ostensibly the period of greatest interest to

theorists "his music, his life, and his thinking became inextricably intertwined." Yet he

nonetheless justified analysts' decisions to disregard this information:

[Scriabin's] lifestyle and quasi-philosophical approach to musical expression

attracted much attention already when he was alive. But these surface features,
though of a certain interest to students of the period and despite their undoubted
relation to the genesis of Scriabin's compositions, have not maintained the degree
of fascination for theorists that has always accrued to his handling of various
elements of music structure, harmony in particular.52

Taruskin and others have voiced concerns over analysts' exclusive focus on

harmony in Scriabin's works, arguing that their interpretive decisions are shaped by a

work's compatibility with a particular analytical approach, and that such normalizing

criteria fails to emphasize how a given piece accorded with the stylistic developments of its

Guenther, review of The Music ofAlexander Scriabin by James Baker, journal of the American Musicological
Society 41/1 (Spring 1988): 195.
Guenther, "Varvara Dernova's System of Analysis of the Music of Skryabin," in Russian Theoretical
Thought in Music, ed. Gordon McQuere (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983), 165.
 171

time. But was this analytical fascination driven solely by Scriabin's contribution to the

myth of musical progress, and if so when did he become part of the narrative?

The modern analytical approach to Scriabin's mature style originated with Soviet

theorist Varvara Dernova's 1948 dissertation Garmoniia Skriabina (Scriabin's Harmony),

which was published in Russia in 1968 and advanced what still remains the predominant

theory in the analytical literature the notion that a germinal collection such as the

so-called mystic chord served as a foundational element of his late style.54 Dernova

rejected outmoded theories about quartal harmony or the overtone series and argued that

Scriabin did not abandon tonality, but relied on prolongations of select pitch-class

collections through transpositional invariance (her "Tritone Link") and chains of

secondary dominants. Her work allegedly cracked Scriabin's inscrutable harmonic code,

and her theory of composing out a core harmony accorded with the determinist values of

Western history and analysis dominant during the post-revival period. Dernova's research

was also distinguished for its focus on Scriabin's later works, which were not considered a

respectable pursuit for Soviet scholars until the 1960s. The two decades between the

completion of her dissertation and its publication in the USSR indicate the suspicion with

which Scriabin was regarded in State Conservatories and official circles.55

Taruskin noted, "I am bound to wonder whether the extreme formalist position dominant in music
analysis today will ever give us more than a partial and ultimately unsatisfying view of Scriabin's work, let
alone provide the vantage point from which the most important questions about it may be answered."
Review of Baker and Schloezer, Music Theory Spectrum 10 (Spring 1988): 144.
Dernova, Garmoniia Skriabina (Leningrad: Muzyka, 1968); trans. Roy Guenther, "Varvara Dernova's
Garmoniia Skryabina: A Translation and Critical Commentary" (Ph.D. Catholic University of America, 1979);
English summaries of her findings appear in Guenther, "Varvara Dernova's System of Analysis of the Music
of Skryabin," in Gordon McQuere, ed., Russian TheoreticalThoughtin Music, 165-216; and Faubion Bowers, The
New Scriabin: Enigma and Answers (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973), 146-171. Her work also appears in
A.N. Skriabin: sbornik statei, ed. Sergei Panchinskii and Viktor Zuckermann (Moscow: Sovetskii kompozitor,
1973); and Teoreticheskieproblemy mu^yki XX veka, ed. Tiulin (Moscow: Muzyka, 1967).
55
Viktor Del'son's biography, the official Soviet word on Scriabin during that era, does not mention
Dernova's work. See Del'son, Skriabin: Ocherki i %hi%ni i tvorchestva (Moscow: Muzyka, 1971).
 172

Inspired by Dernova, other analysts explored alternative approaches to deciphering

Scriabin's methods, including octatonicism, voice-leading, set theory, and Schenkerian

analysis.56 In the late 1980s, theorist T. J. Samson approvingly remarked, "[Scriabin's]

music offers an ideal perhaps the ideal meeting place for two of our leading orthodoxies,

Schenkerian voice-leading and set theory."57 Analysts seized the opportunity. The most

rigorous application of these orthodoxies has been James Baker's The Music ofAlexander

Scriabin (1980), part of Allen Forte's Composers of the Twentieth Century Series. Baker

argued that Scriabin's works from 1911 to 1914 constituted his atonal period, "a desig-

nation which implies that none of the compositions from this time possess tonal Ursatz

structures."58 While Baker advanced the most sustained case yet for Scriabin's role as an

early atonalist, he was sharply criticized for misreading Dernova and for exploiting

Scriabin to support a teleological narrative of twentieth-century music. 59 Today,

Schenkerian graphs and pitch class sets have been superseded by new analytical models,

but Scriabin analysts are far from renouncing these orthodoxies. One recent dissertation

utilizes "Schenkerian analysis, set theory, contour analysis, serial relations . . . pitch-class

Notable post-revival studies include Gottfried Eberle, Zwischen Tonalitat und Atonalitat: Studien %ur
Harmonik Alexander Skrjabins (Munich: Katzbichler, 1978); Manfred Kelkel, Alexandre Scriabine, Sa vie,
I'esoterisme et le langage musical dans son auvre (Paris: Champion, 1978); Hanns Steger, Der Weg der Klaviersonate bei
Alexander Skrjabin (Munich: Wollenweber, 1979); Jay Reise, "Late Skriabin: Some Principles Behind the
Style," Nineteenth-Century Music 6 (1982-1983): 220-231; Pople, "Skryabin's Prelude Op. 67 no.l: Sets and
Structure," Music Analysis 2/2 (July 1983): 151-173; Claude Herndon, "Skryabin's New Harmonic
Vocabulary in His Sixth Sonata," Journal ofMusicological Research 4 (1983): 353-368; George Perle, "Scriabin's
Self-Analyses," Music Analysis 3/2 (1984): 101-124; James Baker, The Music of Alexander Scriabin (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1986); and Baker, "Scriabin's Music: Structure as Prism for Mystical Philosophy," in
Music Theory in Concept and Practice, (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1997), 53-96.
Samson, review of The Music ofAlexander Scriabin, Journal of Music Theory 32/'2 (Autumn 1988): 353.
Baker, The Music of Alexander Scriabin, 145. Stanley Krebs similarly noted that Scriabin's "fourth chords,
invented modes and scales, and harmonic motionlessness were synthesized into an impressionistic
atonality." "Scriabin, Alexander Nikolaevich," in Dictionary ofContemporary Music, ed. John Vinton (New York:
E. P. Dutton, 1974), 667; and Donald Grout observed uiat the late piano sonatas "attain a harmonic
vagueness amounting at times to atonality." History of Western Music 3 r d ed. (NY: Norton: 1979), 659.
See the reviews of Baker by Guenther, Taruskin, and Samson, op. cit; and Anthony Pople, review of The
Music of Alexander Scriabin by James Baker, Music Analysis 7/2 (July 1988): 215-225.
 173

contour adjacency series, centers of inversional balance, and ordered step motives" to

illustrate modernist tendencies in Scriabin's earlier works, typically regarded as ersatz

Chopin.60

Baker was hardly the first analyst to advance Scriabin's role as a forerunner of

atonality and serialism. His study was predated by other analysts who also saw Scriabin as

a forgotten pioneer in early twentieth-century music. While examining the fifty-three

extant sketch pages of L'Acteprealabk (the Mysterium prototype) for his 1971 dissertation,

Manfred Kelkel proudly announced that Scriabin, not Alfred Casella or Alban Berg, was

"the first composer in music history to write a number of significant twelve-tone chords in

a single work."61 Two years before Baker's study emerged, George Perle similarly asserted,

"It seems likely that significant steps in the evolution of an autonomous and coherent

twelve-tone tonal system were long delayed because of [Scriabin's] early death."62

Forte and Perle were guided by a similar determinist vision, but their personal

views on the evolution of twentieth-century style diverged. (Forte analyzed Scriabin's

music only briefly, but his student Baker represented the Fortean approach.) Perle accused

Forte of imposing an ad hoc system that considers tonal relationships strictly in terms of

their compliance with the "analytical categories and compositional relations" outlined in

Forte's system.63 Perle believed that the true path of tonal evolution lay in symmetrical

Keith P. Salley, "Scriabin the Progressive: Elements of Modernism in the Early Works of Alexander
Scriabin" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oregon, 2007).
Kelkel, "Les Esquisses Musicales de L'Acte Prealable de Scriabine," Revue de Musicologie 17 (1971): 43.
Perle, "Scriabin's Self-Analyses," Music Analysis?)/2 (1984): 121. Elsewhere he noted, "Scriabin . . . may
be considered die first to exploit serial procedures systematically as a means of compensating for the loss of
traditional tonal functions." Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to theMusic ofSchoenberg, Berg, and
Webern (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), 38.
Forte, The Structure of Atonal Music (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973); and Perle "Pitch-Class Set
Analysis: An Evaluation," The Journal of Musico logy 8/2 (Spring 1990): 152; and idem, The Listening Composer
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
 174

pitch constructions, most notably Berg's, but also Scriabin's.64 Both Forte and Perle,

through, considered Scriabin's late works as important stepping-stones to atonality,

however much their individual interpretations of his style differed.

While critics of many stripes debated whether Scriabin's late style modified tonal

relations or invented a new harmonic language, analyses from the 1970s to 1990s amplified

the debate rather than reaching a definitive conclusion. The challenges that analysts faced

in their respective analytical approaches are illustrated below with a comparative analysis.

The Outpost of Formalism

The Prelude Op. 59, no. 2 (1910) is an effective piece for a comparative analysis due

to its brevity, restricted harmonic content, and clearly defined form (see Figure 5.1). The

work's concision allowed Scriabin to experiment with combinatorial possibilities before

maximizing them in such larger canvases as Prometheus. This piece, with its oft-noted

quartal harmonies, octatonic writing, and sequential transpositions illustrates two

contrasting approaches in the literature and reveals the pitfalls of formalist analysis.65

Marked Sauvage, belliqueux, its wrenching rhythms and strident harmonies are far removed

64
See Perle, "Berg's Master Array of the Interval Cycles," The Musical'Quarterly 6 3 / l (January 1977): 1-30;
and "Scriabin's Self-Analyses," op. cit.
65
For a sampling of post-revival literature on Scriabin's octatonic writing, see Jay Reise, "Late Skriabin:
Some Principles Behind the Style" (1982-1983), op. cit.; Claude Herndon, "Skryabin's New Vocabulary in his
Sixth Sonata," Journal'ofMusico logicalResearch 4/3-4 (1983): 353-368; Perle, "Scriabin's Self-Analyses" (1984),
op. cit.; Wai-Ling Cheong, "Scriabin's Octatonic Sonata," Journal oj'the Royal'Music Association 121/1 (1996):
206-228; and Ellon Carpenter, "Scriabin's Octatonic Motives," Journal of the Scriabin Society ofAmerica 8/1
(Winter 2003-2004): 45-58.
 175

2. Prelude
Sauvage, belliqueux

Figure 5.1. Scriabin, Prelude Op. 59, no. 2 (1910), mm. 1-19.
 176

^S i 4-jt

i mm *jf* F r
^ JxW*=
S t'r*^
f=t3T
cresc.
y- \ v P e* Bt^ y I Q * y E i V gi
T? ^ ^ ' ^ ^1

Figure 5.1 (continued). Scriabin, Prelude Op. 59, no. 2 (1910), mm. 20-39.
 177

aver, de/i

HP^M^^m^t P^f
m
'-^:
v^
& *, >i^f- tfrg *f' *f ' -*
Z^ , K 4 |7 7 y

PI 35 ~*W
v#

mh^ JU^J
# iW T T ^ m
* bo**. M 1?
fr:' Uife

^
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38 PI

Figure 5.1 (continued). Scriabin, Prelude Op. 59, no. 2 (1910), mm. 40-61.
 178

from the luxuriant, evocative soundscapes common to Scriabin's miniatures. This and

other works composed after 1908 such as Desir Op. 57, no. 1 eschewed tonic-affirming

cadential endings, leading several analysts to hail this and other "transitional" pieces as

important evolutionary links between late romanticism and atonality.

James Baker considered Op. 59, no. 2 Scriabin's "first nontonal composition" in

the composer's steady march towards atonality, a conclusion based on structural gaps in

the Ursatz.66 To understand this "atonal work," Baker plotted the work's harmonic

progression on Schenkerian graphs labeled with Fortean pitch-class sets. Once Baker

established this closed system, he assumed the daunting task of accounting for strict

diatonic functions in this "nontonal" piece, leading to some confusion as to how it actually

coheres. Determined to locate each segment of the "main matrix of the composition,"

8-28 (an octatonic collection), Baker claimed that hexachords (6-27) in t3 transpositions

were inconsistent with Scriabin's tendency to exploit "sets which have been classified as

predominantiy whole-tone," which are invariant at ic2.67 He never explicitly identifies 8-28

as an octatonic collection or acknowledges that its invariance at t3 levels makes it unlikely

to support a dominant function at t7 for the Ursatz. Figure 5.2 reproduces Baker's

diagram for the voice-leading in the bass, with the successive t3 transpositions labeled

throughout the graph (opposing stems represent the separate voice registers):

Baker, "Scriabin's Music: Structure as Prism for Mystical Philosophy," in Music Theory in Concept and
Practice, ed. James Baker, David Beach, and Jonathan Bernard (Rochester: University of Rochester Press,
1997), 78. In The Music of Alexander Scriabin, Baker cites the Poeme Nocturne Op. 61 as Scriabin's first work to
exhibit "genuine atonality" (p.viii). The image of Scriabin's unwavering progress post-Op. 55 is still
pervasive; Jonathan Powell's most recent Grove entry for Scriabin noted that the composer's harmonic and
stylistic development was "seamless" after the Feuillet d'Album Op. 58 (1911).
Baker, The Music of Alexander Scriabin, 139.
 179

m. 0 13 21 25 26 33

gpSJPp ^ =
^Tf '^llWzJf^^^^J
T6 T3 T3 T6

Figure 5.2. Bass Voice-Leading Reduction - Scriabin, Prelude Op. 59/2

Reproduced from Baker, The Music of Alexander Scriabin

This reduction recalls Mantle Hood's skeletal metaphor, as the salient surface features of

the work have been pruned away, leaving an abstract succession of events that reveals little

about Scriabin's rhythmic, contrapuntal, and melodic decisions. Baker asserted that Op.

59, no. 2, like most of Scriabin's shorter post-1905 works, explores "the compositional

possibilities of some novel procedure or the working out of some technical problem," in

this case, transpositional invariances between set segmentations, but he refused to admit

any parallels with hierarchical relationships in the tonal system. On the contrary, Baker

regarded the two approaches as "essentially unrelated." The presentation of "new sets" in

the work's final measures confounded Baker, as they seem to disrupt the harmonic pattern

established at the outset:

There seems to be no tonal basis for the closing measures of the composition.
The low bass C seems no stronger in structural weight than the bass notes
supporting the pattern at other levels of transposition (or at least no stronger
than the F # effective in the bass in mm.8-25) . . . The final chord is 6-Z49, the
only occurrence of this set in the piece; however, 6-Z49 is the Z-correspondent
of 6-Z28, which occurs frequently . .. Scriabin probably chose 6-Z49 rather than
6-Z28 as the final sonority because only the former is a subset of the basic matrix,
8-28.68

Yet this lack of a "tonal basis" in the conventional sense is precisely the point of the piece.

68
The Musk ofAlexander Scriabin, ix, 98,143. Set 6-Z49 is also a variant of the "mystic" chord, set 6-34.
 180

Baker implied that Scriabin's compositional choices were based on pitch-class relations in

Forte's system, rather than invariances in the octatonic or whole tone scales. This struck

Taruskin as a woefully anachronistic approach, and in a review of Baker's monograph he

admonished:

This well-nigh incredible passage is the most flagrant identification of composition

with analysis I've yet seen in print. Scriabin is imagined as weighing and choosing
sets abstractly on the basis of the inclusion and complementation relationships
tabulated by Forte, rather than developing his harmonies and transpositions
direcdy out of the implications and properties of his collection of reference (i.e.,
"improvising" and "embellishing" them).69

Interpretive liberties also reach new heights in Baker's Schenkerian reductions, which

often require the reader to supply implied harmonies in order to complete the Ursatz.70

Baker's discussion of the Prelude's non-harmonic elements reveals the disparity

between his formalist perspective and the characteristically Scriabinian features of this

work, which developed in a musical context that drew from Austro-German traditions, but

ultimately followed a different set of principles than the repertoire studied by Forte and

Schenker. Scriabin repeats material in literal transpositions (the second half of Op. 59, no.

2 transposes the opening material by a tritone) and prefers "square phrasing and period

balance" prompting Baker and others to dismiss such "surprisingly conservative"

practices.71 In terms of form, Baker's prioritizing of pitch-class sets leads him to regard the

Taruskin, review of The Music of Alexander Scriabin by James Baker and S'criabin: Artist andMysticby Boris
Schloezer, 162n.
In a later study of select Scriabin preludes (Op. 15/4 and Op. 39/2), analysts David Neumeyer and
Susan Tepping also admit some creativity in their Schenkerian analyses. Notwithstanding "the difficulties
that attend analysis of highly chromatic functional music," they explained that their "unusually 'abstract'
reading of the background" of Op. 39, no. 2 "gready simplifies our understanding of the composition's
essential features."^ Guide to Schenkerian Analysis (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1992), 122.
Among other analysts who criticized Scriabin's fondness for repetition through transposition was Perle,
who remarked, "Scriabin's new compositional exploitation of these new hierarchical relations and new
referential structures sometimes tends to be literal and mechanistic. There are passages that are hardly more
 181

Prelude as "a through-composed work in that its segments of material are all part of the

same basic subject matter."72 In 1997, Baker retreated from the extreme formalist position

of his 1986 study and reconsidered the historical background of Op. 59, no. 2 as well as its

octatonic basis. He contended that the transpositional levels that Scriabin chose suggested

a new type of harmonic progression that "abandoned overall tonal structure in favor of a

structure which has the geometrical proportions of a crystal [with] mystical

ramifications."73

Roy Guenther's alternative analysis of Op. 59, no. 2 adopts Dernova's "Tritone
4
Link" theory. Guenther was a trusted authority on the Russian theorist, having

translated her 1968 study (with commentary) for his 1979 dissertation.75 Like Baker,

Guenther's analyses of entire compositions marked a step forward from Dernova, who

included only score excerpts to illustrate her theories. Guenther and Dernova both

rejected the idea that Scriabin had abandoned tonality, as most scholars now agree, and he

maintained that "the term atonal can be justifiably dropped from the analytical vocabulary

for Skryabin." Guenther knew of Baker's application of Fortean pitch-class sets and

than routine demonstrations of the pitch-class invariance maintained under successive t3 transpositions of
the octatonic scale. It is almost as though he were so intoxicated with the excitement of his discovery of a
new tonal system that he sometimes forget that to compose means something more than the literal surface
restatement of background structural relations." "Scriabin's Self-Analyses," 116. In contrast, Robert Morgan
regarded Scriabin's balanced phrasing and fondness for symmetrical constructions as complementary
processes that provided a sense of organic unity. See Morgan, "Symmetrical Form and Common-Practice
Tonality," Music Theory Spectrum 20/1 (Spring 1998): 1-47.
7
See Baker, The Music ofAlexander Scriabin, 17-18. On the Russian predilection for sequencing and
repetition, see Taruskin, review of The Music of Alexander Scriabin by Baker and Scriabin: Artist and Mystic by
Schloezer, 164-165.
Baker, "Scriabin's Music: Structure as Prism for Mystical Philosophy," 79. For historical evidence, he
averred, "For Theosophists [like Scriabin] the crystal is die perfect reflection of cosmic principles."
Guenther, "Varvara's Dernova's System of Analysis of the Music of Skryabin," op. cit.
75
Guenther, "Varvara Dernova's 'Garmoniia Skriabina': A Translation and Critical Commentary."
Dernova's findings have also been summarized in Bowers, TheNeiv Scriabin: Enigma andAnswers, 131-171; Jim
Samson, Music in Transition: A Study of Tonal Expansion and Atonality (London: Dent, 1977); and Gottfried
Eberle, Zwischen Tonalitat und Atonalitat: Studien %ur Harmonik Alexander Skrjabins, op. cit.
 182

Schenkerian analysis to Scriabin's works from his 1977 dissertation and a 1980 article,

which to Guenther revealed "an individuality of aim but not wholly incompatible

results."76 Guenther's adoption of Dernova's methods sought to demonstrate the value of

an endemic approach that would debunk inveterate myths about atonality, quartal

harmony, and the mystic chord, and carefully consider the function of each stylistic

element, not only harmony.

Dernova's "Tritone Link" theory hinges upon the invariant properties of a core

harmony in Scriabin's musical language: the French Sixth. This chromatically altered

collection effectively mediates between diatonic, octatonic, and whole tone passages. This

harmony is enharmonically invariant at t6, thus creating a tritonovoe %yeno or "Tritone Link."

She termed the departure chord the iskhodni dominant or "Initial Dominant" (DA) and its t6

version the proi^yodni dominant or "Derived Dominant" (DB). Dernova posited this

procedure as a guiding principle for Scriabin's later works (Figure 5.3).

i
a 1L h N=
nil 36E li01 =as
LJ3E
s 3
PA ~^DB

Figure 5.3. Dernova's "Tritone Link" (from Guenther)

Guenther, "Varvara Dernova's System of Analysis in the Music of Skryabin," 211.

 183

Both chords function as dominants with two different tonics and this polarity

supplants traditional key relations to serve as the Prelude's harmonic axis. Scriabin alters

the third and fifth scale degrees for harmonic color (the minor third Eb weakens the

dominant sound of DA), and prefers t3 transpositions for their invariant properties.

Cycling through t3 transpositions simulates forward momentum in a static harmonic

environment. Such closely related pitch content also ensures smooth voice-leading, which

scholars now acknowledge as a key feature of Scriabin's later works.77 Admitting passing

tones and shifting between whole tone or octatonic passages breaks up the harmonic

monotony and suggests parallels with tonal procedures, yet this variability has frustrated

analysts' efforts to pinpoint a single "master set" in the late works.

Guenther analyzed Op. 59, no. 2 as a binary form (ABAB'-codetta) that hinges

upon the Tritone Link C-F#, which is outlined in the A sections, while the B sections

feature functional root movements of a fifth. Continuity between the A and B sections is

achieved by common rhythmic and motivic figures, such as descending octaves in the left

hand and repeated chords. The transposition roots throughout the work outline the

principal pitches [indicated with brackets] of the Initial Dominant (C) and Derived

Dominant (Figure 5.4). Guenther interpreted the graph below [he translates %yeno as

nucleus instead of link]:

The "a" sections show directed movement, first toward DB, then toward DA. The
" b " sections show stability, the first one emphasizing DB, the second emphasizing
DA. Within the "a" sections, the harmonic plan derives from a minor sequence [a

See Clifton Callendar, "Voice-Leading Parsimony in die Music of Alexander Scriabin," journal ofMusic
Theory 42/2 (Fall 1998): 219-233; and Anthony Pople, "Skryabin's Prelude Op. 67, no. 1: Sets and Structure,"
Musk Analysis 2/2 (1983): 151-173. Op. 59, no.2 is also analyzed by Vasilis Kallis, "Principles of Pitch
Organization in Scriabin's Early Post-Tonal Period: The Piano Miniatures," Music Theory Online 14/3 (Sept.
2008): available at http://mto.societymusictheory.Org/issues/mto.08.14.3/mto.08.14.3.kallis.html.
 184

composing out of the Tritone Link]. The " b " sections, on the other hand, display
one type of functional sequence, the dominant on C # "resolving" (i.e., moving by
fifth) through its theoretical equivalent in the tritone nucleus (on G) to the
dominant on F # in the second " b " section, the dominant on G "resolves" through
its equivalent on C# to the dominant on C. This movement toward and emphasis
on F # and C as the two focal points of the work conclusively support the linkage
of C-F# as the central tritone nucleus.78

() 6 7

PO Jjf0 g
(D/tf
2
11 19-20 2h 5 26-retransltlon
:
-b ") M 4y. fe
'(KB)
28 29 y* 36

Figure 5.4. Root Progressions and Tritone Links in Op. 59, no. 2 (from Guenther)

The greatest discrepancy between Guenther's and Baker's readings of the work

concern the disruptive final chords. While Baker found these bars the most confusing of

the piece, Guenther saw them as the key to decoding the work's harmonic scheme. The

octave C in the bass, he contended, confirms C as the Initial Dominant chord (DA) and

tonic, while Baker maintained that, "The low bass C seems no stronger in structural weight

than the bass notes supporting the pattern at other levels of transposition."79

Despite their divergent approaches, Baker and Guenther both supported a view of

Scriabin as a proto-serialist. Baker even argued that a formalist analysis of his music

Guenther, "Varvara's System of Analysis in the Music of Skryabin," 197.

Baker, The Music of Alexander Scriabin, 143.
 185

accorded with the composer's own creative orientation, arguing that, "Scriabin remained

at heart a confirmed formalist. His compositions consistently reflect both his sensitivity to

the finest detail and his interest in subde, complex relationships worked out with

meticulous precision."80 Baker surely understood that the term "formalist" carried

significant weight, but his use of this term underscores the dominant view of the composer

in the 1980s. Here Baker's views match those of Guenther, who similarly considered

Scriabin a forward thinker, but not an atonalist:

the view that Skryabin was unconsciously working in a proto-serial manner is not
totally incompatible with Dernova's system, at least not with its structural model.
The fact that the model is based on a closed set of six pitches, that there is a means
for progressing logically to the other closed set, that both harmonic and melodic
material can be derived from the set all of these characteristics which point even
more clearly than before to yet another anticipation of the serial technique.81

Guenther and Baker exemplify the dominant approaches to Scriabin's music in the

post-revival period. Despite their methodological differences, these and other analysts

ingrained the image of Scriabin as a precursor to atonality and serialism, even as their

methods sometimes blurred the line between clarifying the music and validating the

analytical technique.

Baker, The Music of Alexander Scriabin, viii.

1
Guenther, "Varvara's System of Analysis in the Music of Skryabin," 211.
 186

At the Dawn of a New Millennium

The opinions explored in this chapter demonstrate the aggressive campaigns of

critics, historians, and analysts over the last decades of the twentieth century to portray

Scriabin as a pioneering avant-gardist. The critical tendency to prioritize harmony over

other equally important elements, however, led to competing readings of the same piece

and contradictory accounts over whether Scriabin's late works abandoned tonality. While

different methodologies produce varying results, a discord between the various analytical

approaches and an insufficient deference to historical context tended to partition

Scriabin's image during the post-revival years, even as this scholarly reappraisal elevated

the composer's canonic status.

While formalism dominated Scriabin scholarship from the 1970s through the

1990s, the interdisciplinary work of twenty-first century scholars has begun to put meat on

the dry bones of past scholarship. Hermeneutics, semiotics, phenomenology, and critical

theory have all gained greater currency since the 1990s, affording scholars a more holistic

approach to understanding the composer's music.82 Irina Vanechkina and Bulat Galeev

from the Prometheus Institute in Kazan have extensively studied light music and

synaesthesia, tracking every known performance of Prometheus vAth. lighting effects. These

independent scholars have worked for decades outside of the Western academy and rank

among the leading contributors to research on Scriabin and synaesthesia. Adding to this

82
Danuta Mirka, "Colors of a Mystic Fire: Light and Sound in Scriabin's Prometheus," American Journal of
Semiotics 13/1-4 (Fall 1996): 227-248; Susanna Garcia, "Scriabin's Symbolist Plot Archetype in the Late Piano
Sonatas," Nineteenth-Century Music23/3 (Spring 2000): 273-300; Jason Stell, "Music as Metaphysics: Structure
and Meaning in Skryabin's Fifth Piano Sonata," Journal ofMusicological Research 23/1 (Jan. 2004): 1-37; and
Kenneth Smith, "Erotic Discourse in Scriabin's Fourth Sonata," British Postgraduate Musicology 7 (June 2005):
available at http://www.bpmonline.org.uk/bpm7/index.html (accessed 7 March 2009).
83
Vanechkina and Galeev, "Was Scriabin a Synesthete?" Leonardo 34/4 (August 2001): 357-361; "Light
Music Today: The Development of Scriabin's Ideas," available at http://prometheus.kai.ru/idei_e.htm
 187

interest in the cognitive aspects of Scriabin's output is Emmanuel Garcia, who has applied

psychoanalytic theories to the composer's formative years and creative orientation.84

Furthermore, Italian scholar Luigi Verdi has explored Scriabin's music with an eye towards

geometric forms as well as numerology, synaesthesia, and other extra-sensory

phenomena.85

In terms of performances, Scriabin's music retained a modest standing on concert

programs after the eviscerating wounds of modernist criticism healed. By the late 1990s,

however, commercial shifts in the classical music world permanendy altered the industry.

American and European orchestras sold far fewer subscriptions and attendance dropped

drastically, suggesting that classical concerts were a luxury the public could less afford.86

This trend made orchestras wary of straying too far from established classics in terms of

programming, but Scriabin's presence still did not vanish entirely. Such distinguished

pianists as Garrick Ohlsson continue to deliver critically acclaimed all-Scriabin programs,

and recendy, Riccardo Muti and the New York Philharmonic rescued Scriabin's Second

(accessed 23 January 2009); Poema ognia: Kontseptsiia svetomutykal'nogo sinte^a A. N. Skriabina (Kazan:
IzdatePstvo Kazanskogo Universiteta, 1981); and several articles by Vanechkina and Galeev on Prometheus
and synaesthesia at http://prometheus.kai.ru/in2_e.htm. Cf. Kenneth Peacock, "Synaesthetic Perception:
Alexander Scriabin's Color Hearing," Music Perception 2 / 4 (1985): 483-506.
Garcia, "Rachmaninoff and Scriabin: Creativity and Suffering in Talent and Genius," Psychoanalytic
Review 91/3 (June 2004): 433-442; "The Psychology of Creativity: Distinction Between Talent and Genius,"
Journal of the Scriabin Society of America 9/1 (Winter 2004-2005): 83-90; and "Scriabin's Mysterium and the Birth
of Genius," available at http://www.componisten.net/downloads/ScriabinMysterium.pdf. Also see Marina
Lobanova, "Ekstase und Wahnsinn: Merkmale der Dionysisischen Welterfahrung bei Alexander Skjabin"
["Ecstasy and Madness": Characteristics of the "Dionysus-Outlook"], AnalytischePsychologie 35/3 (September
2004): 318-345; and Renee Timmers, Matija Marolt, Antonio Camurri, and Gualtiero Volpe, "Listener's
Emotional Engagement with a Scriabin Etude: An Explorative Case Study," Psychology ofMusic 3A/4 (2006):
481-510.
85
"Numerical Symbology in Some of Skrjabin's Late Piano Works," Journal of the Scriabin Society 10/1
(2005-2006): 41-55. A bibliography is available at http://www.luigiverdi.it/engl/music_writings.htm.
Shawn Stone, Assistant Director of Marketing for die Philadelphia Orchestra, remarked at century's
end that, "There has been a drastic change in people's lifestyles over the past decade and people are shying
away from making commitments to a whole season of concerts at a time." See Gwendolyn Freed, "Where
Have All the Orchestra-Lovers Gone?" Wall Street Journal (\\ February 1999), A24.
 188

Symphony from obscurity with that organization's first performance of the work in forty

years.87 Scriabin recordings now number in the thousands, as popular mediums for music

dissemination have shifted rapidly over the last two decades from LPs and CDs to

electronic media. MPEG files place the world's greatest performances at the fingertips of

a new generation of listeners, providing audiences with more interpretations of a chosen

piece than ever before.

While sorting through the various archetypes of Scriabin that arose since his 1972

revival is daunting, accounting for the ideological shifts that shaped these popular and

critical images affords us a better appreciation for the precarious nature of our musical

tastes. With the composer's popularity on the rise once again, Scriabin enthusiasts, critics,

and scholars have more common ground to collaborate on and more interpretive avenues

to explore when considering this composer's music and ideas, which provoked so much

controversy and discussion throughout the twentieth century.

87
On his all-Scriabin program, see the 92Y Blog, "Q&A With Pianist Garrick Ohlsson," available at
http://blog.92y.org/index.php/weblog/item/92y_qa_with_pianist_garrick_ohlsson/ (accessed on 12
February 2009); and Allan Kozinn, "Pianist Celebrates Scriabin as an Angular Impressionist," New York
Times (11 November 2008), 3. Reviewer Vivien Schweitzer commented that Muti delivered "a disciplined
interpretation diat clearly illuminated the contrapuntal lines and voices diat lay beneath the swirling surface
colors." "A Swirling Symphony from the Vault," New York Times (31 January 2009), C9. Also see Eman
Isadiar, "San Francisco Symphony Goes Russian," The Epoch Times (23 February 2009), C4.
 189

Epilogue

Tracking the popular and critical accounts of Scriabin across the twentieth century

reveals a fascinating evolution in archetypes of the composer. From 1910 to 1925 Scriabin

ranked as a leading modernist, but over the next forty years neither his music nor his

aesthetic oudook found popular favor in the USSR and the West. After 1925, Scriabin's

modernist style riled Soviet censors until the 1948 Zhdanovshchina trials, when State officials

declared the composer a luminary of Russia's cultural heritage. In contrast to Soviet critics,

Western critics dismissed Scriabin as a decadent romantic after the 1920s, and this view

persisted well into the 1960s. With Scriabin's 1972 centenary, however, he became a

national hero in the Soviet Union and a fashionable figure in the West. Yet the ideals that

Soviet critics accented in the composer's art differed markedly from the values emphasized

by Western critics. By the end of the century, critics and historians from both regions

hailed Scriabin as a progressive figure.

The wealth of evidence collected for this dissertation suggested multiple avenues

for further research. Points of contact between stylistic traditions, the idea of progress,

issues of periodization, and canonic status explored in Scriabin's case might well apply to

the receptions of other so-called transitional composers, including Faure, Mahler, and

Strauss. Moreover, while the views of Italian, French, and German critics were largely

beyond this study's scope, evidence suggests that their opinions closely matched those of

their Soviet and Western counterparts. As we have seen, Soviet and Western critics'

opinions of Scriabin often overlapped despite their divergent terminology for a particular

characterization of the composer. Further examination of aesthetic correspondences

across Western Europe could shed additional light on the shifting images of Scriabin
 190

throughout the twentieth century. Cold War tensions between the United States and the

Soviet Union also surely impacted Scriabin's mid-century reception, a factor that this study

discussed only briefly. A follow-up study might consider how Cold War propaganda

shaped Western perspectives on such Russian artists as Scriabin. Likewise, future research

could also address how the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989-1990 affected Scriabin

scholarship in the West and the newly formed Russian Federation. Additional translations

of primary sources (of which D o n Louis Wetzel has contributed several) would further

benefit subsequent studies of Scriabin's reception. Finally, scholars could adopt a Wirkung

approach and explore the performance history and criticism of a single major work, such

as Poeme de I'extase or Prometheus, either during or after Scriabin's lifetime.

Future scholarship could also continue to develop bold methodologies that have

gained currency over the last several decades. While many twentieth-century scholars

endeavored to place Scriabin into a compositional school or Ism, today's scholars are

exploring new ways to bridge history, analysis, and interpretation. Gender studies or

hermeneutic approaches such as those proposed by Susan McClary, Lawrence Kramer,

and other so-called N e w Musicologists hold tremendous promise to uncover new layers of

meaning in Scriabin's music. Indeed, the composer's complex personality and diverse

interests welcomes these alternate readings. Studies undertaken during the post-revival

period by Richard Taruskin, Simon Morrison, and Susanna Garcia have laid a foundation

for such an approach. With hindsight of the profits and perils of the various approaches

undertaken over the last century, scholars are n o w equipped better than ever to discover

more meaningful ways to interpret this composer's music and ideas, which have provoked

so m u c h controversy throughout the twentieth century.

 191

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 224

W. D. Review of Musical Uproar in Moscow, by Alexander Werth and"RealistMusic: 25 Soviet

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 225

Audio Recordings

Scriabin, Alexander. 12 Etudes Op. 8. Mortin Estrin, piano. Connoisseur Society CS 2009.

. Complete Piano Music, Vols. I-IV. Michael Ponti, piano. Vox SVBX 5461, 1974.

. Complete Piano Sonatas. John Ogden, piano. EMI Records SLS 814, 1971.

. The Complete Piano Sonatas. Ruth Laredo, piano. Nonesuch 73035.

. Hilde Somer Plays Scriabin. Hilde Somer, piano. Mercury 90500.

. "White Mass" <& "Black Mass." Hilde Somer, piano. Mercury SR 90525.

. Horowit^ Plays Scriabin. Vladimir Horowitz, piano. Columbia Masterworks

M 31620.

. Yjepoeme de I'extase; Piano Concerto; Prometheus. Pierre Boulez, conductor and Anatol
Ugorskii, piano. Deutsche Grammophon 459647-2, 1999.

. Piano Concerto Op. 20. Stanislav Neuhaus, piano and Vladimir Dubrovsky, cond.
MelodiaD 16311/2.

. Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-10. Roberto Szidon, piano. Deutsch Grammophon D G MG

8653/6,1971.

. Poem of Ecstasy and Poem of Fire. Eugene Ormandy, conductor. RCA LSC 3214.

. Scriabin: Piano Music. Robert Taub, piano. Harmonia Mundi: HMU 907011.

. Scriabin: The Symphonies. Vladimir Ashkenazy, conductor. Decca 289 460 299-2.

. Scriabin, Sonata No. 3 and Prokofiev, Sonata No. 7. Glenn Gould, piano. Columbia
MS 7173.
. Scriabin and the Scriabinists Play Scriabin. Alexander Scriabin, Alexander
Goldenweiser, Samuel Feinberg, Heinrich Neuhaus, and Vladimir Sofronitsky,
piano. Saison Russe 788032,1992,1997.

. Symphony No. 31 Poem of Ecstasy. Igor Golovschin, conductor. Naxos 8.553582.

 226
APPENDIX
Translations of Primary Source Materials

Klementi Korchmarev

"Skriabin v nashi dni" (Scriabin in Our Days), Mui^ykal'naia nov' 6/7 (1924): 15-16.

"Scriabin's complete works rarely stopped appearing on concert programs," Mr.

Chemodan remarked at the Bolshoi Theater. If this is correct, it is impossible to remain

disinterested in the reasons for this phenomenon, as Scriabin's music inspired many

imitators and much controversy. Thus the dwindling interest in this composer in our

days should have more significant causes. This article seeks to determine those reasons.

All varieties of specialist musicians were in raptures over the beautiful sounds in

Scriabin's works his ability to control surging tempos, the striking sonorities of his

harmonic combinations, his vivid portrayal of fleeting moods in his charming preludes,

etc. And specialist composers find it hard to believe that this music could not possibly

enthrall audiences, although in reality it did just that. Additionally, the composer's

musical sense refused to acknowledge the fact that these daring sound combinations

rebelled against ordinary composers from what was known as the "leftist" camp.

Without any doubt, in regards to form, Scriabin's music is impeccable and capable of

withstanding any hostile criticism.

But all sorts of works consist of form and content and thus form finds itself

dependant on content instead of the other way around. Musical aesthetes of the last few

decades have rarely concerned themselves about this and tried at first only to improve

forms by inventing more complex harmonies, etc. And so these works, although they

displayed talent, failed to find a sympathetic response in concert halls and faded, having
 227
no time to flourish. Scriabin, standing infinitely above these inventors of sound,

understood that he was not considered among their ranks and the reasons that the

masses remained indifferent towards him ran deeper.

Granted, artists' creative outputs are linked to their epochs, and this aspect is

reflected in their music. Awareness of the psychology of the prevailing class as reflected

in their social organism may elicit a desired response during his own time, but are later

forgotten as a result of shifts in attitudes. For the general public such talents rarely last.

They realize that to appreciate the values of the working class this attitude must be

reflected in their works and achieve the same understanding these classes instinctively

expect. When the artist instinctively senses the public's attitude, their creative works

gradually reveal the origins of class psychology in anticipation of his social norms; they

advance on the front line, exhorting themselves as geniuses. These established

reputations are well deserved. An outstanding example of such genius can be seen in

Beethoven, who sensed the appearance of a strong, new powerful class on the world

arena and managed to reflect bourgeoisie creativity while retaining interest in spite of its

romantic inclinations and delightful sense of victory. Up until now, his works remain

interesting for us despite their limitations of simple sound combinations.

In order to reflect these attitudes that arose through the ruling classes in the

present epoch, an artist should be filled with truth and reveal only the most progressive

ideas for the current era. If it is only meaningful for a certain time, it is possible to create

exhilarating works of art, enthusiastic truths that can be filled with sincere exaltation.
 228
We remember Beethoven's firm belief in God, which in that day was the highest possible

intellectual current.

Returning to Scriabin, we can establish that he was the offspring of his era. His

creative work developed at a time when the remaining bourgeois aristocrats began a

process of spiritual decline and disintegration. After achieving full economic

independence, the bourgeoisie still felt the burden of society weighing upon individuals,

and being absolutely anti-society, they strove to relieve this pressure. From here sprung

up the trends of individualism, and Scriabin worked in that epoch when individualism

already existed as the main attitude of the upper classes. He elected to go along the

narrow path of individualism and never managed to grasp the nascent idea that was

already conceived at that time. He failed to see the momentous impulses of the

proletariat to seize power. This happened because of his weak-willed personality, which

limited his focus to the people in his immediate surroundings. Around larger circles of

people he was always aloof (for he could not relate to them) and he remained fixated on

the elite bourgeoisie intelligentsia, which ensured a narrowness of his themes and

selectivity to his music. Besides that, Scriabin was never a believer comparable to

Beethoven's faith in God or Tchaikovsky's fatalism, and Scriabin's beliefs died out and

had no chance of engaging the intelligentsia at the beginning of the twentieth century.

A new belief in the coming emancipation of the people generated so much enthusiasm

and made our time so dynamic, but for some reason Scriabin never understood that.

And he, being a person of high ranking, burdened himself with his own lack of faith, and

because of that he all too willingly succumbed to theosophical ravings.

 229
It might be that if Scriabin had understood the healthy spirit of the people of that

time, before he began to burden himself by his own emptiness, he might have developed

into one of the greatest artists in the world. H e handled forms perfecdy and by

"believing in the great ideas of our own time, he significandy enriched his creative

product" (Plekhanov). But Scriabin did n o t manage to elevate himself to the heights of

his environment and he whiled away his time, distancing himself from reality and turning

his spiritual view away F R O M REALITY. For his pieces he invented "programs" [p.16]

accompanied by inane poems about the cosmos, his " I , " interstellar spheres, divine

ecstasy, and other various mystical phantasmagorias. The earlier preludes, though, are

charming vignettes of fleeting m o o d s . They bear such tides as " P o e m e aile," "Masque,"

"Flammes sombres," and his musical scores are littered with abundandy profuse

interpretive cues that attempt to convey the author's very personal thoughts, with the

expressions for some reason being in French. For the most grandiose works of this

period, Scriabin called u p o n the orchestra (without quite knowing h o w to harness its full

beauty), and so he simply orchestrated some improvised keyboard passages.

Already in the First Symphony he wanted to speak extraordinary words to the

world, and this inclination ruined the final section of that work. Genius is displayed in

the Third Symphony in which textbook sonata form is observed; he tided this work the

"Divine P o e m , " which proves that he elevated literary programs above style. Following

the Poem of Ecstasy, Scriabin conceived Prometheus in which he displayed a striking mastery

of the full spirit of bankruptcy. T h e n he went nowhere and dreamt up the u n r e a d a b l e

idea of the "Mysterium." Somewhere in India or Ethiopia Scriabin wanted to have

 230
constructed a temple in which one participates in the experiences of sound-art in each of

its manifestations. There would be n o bystanders, everyone would commingle with the

universe. But w h o and what made Scriabin in the course of fifteen years move towards

the "Mysterium," which after the death of the author left us only some trifling poems?

Generally in symphonic works Scriabin attempted to conceal his spiritual paucity

with surface grandiosity; he incorporated new instruments such as the luce (which was

never realized), while the wholly irrational double-sized orchestra required for Prometheus

added an organ that is nowhere noticeable as a characteristic timbre. All of these

unhealthy tendencies are highly characteristic of the era in which Scriabin worked, but

for us they are too obvious and to s u m m o n up sympathy for t h e m is n o t possible. In

our time artists should strive to state their opinion with as meager means as possible.

The center of gravity in forms shifts on its supports. T h e essential tendency is to bring

together the masses and make art c o m m o n property for everyone instead of just a small

circle of aesthetes. Scriabin's music is n o t suitable for that, for there is a lack of clear and

precise rhythms and distinct melodic material, and these are exacdy the elements that

have the greatest effect on non-specialist listeners.

A n d in our time Scriabin's music is the music of the past just as the composer

himself is recognized as an immensely gifted talent, yet he remains a victim of his own

narrowness of class. We deeply regret that he did not live to see these days, w h e n his

optimism was on the cusp of seizing the psychological overcoming of the proletariat and

the liberation from their sad heritage, which is fading into the past. W e are fortunate

when a real talent has something to write about and when all varieties of intellectuals can
 231
feel sincere sympathy and joy in the bright days ahead of us. And if now there appears a

talent on the level of Scriabin, there is no need to look for anyone else, as that composer

will be able to engage the audience. Many valuable offerings were sacrificed for

capitalism and one of these was the great and brilliant talent of Scriabin.

* * * *

Nikolai Malkov
"O Skriabine: k 10-letiiu konchiny" (On Scriabin: On the Tenth Anniversary of His
Death), Zhi^n' iskusstva 15 (1930): 5.

This genius musician died just two years before the revolution. His daring sounds

were often thought to have given grounds for him to be counted among the greatest

messengers in the world of socialist revolution. Indeed, the heated passion of the past

decade has afforded us an accurate lens for proving that statement. But the naked truth

is more valuable than a misleading lie.

At the same time, earlier wasn't Scriabin a typical individualist who was inspired by

his egocentric conceits and who frequently grappled with his confused subconscious fate

as the "center of the universe?" Surely his fascination with theosophy, opposition to

God, association of himself with "divinity," equation of his own creativity with

cosmogony, and blatant eroticism bear witness to Scriabin's purely intelligent thinking

wasn't he an aesthete from head to toe?

 232
In the specter of revolutionary awareness, all these elements in Scriabin's creative

physiognomy quite clearly betray his bourgeois nature. A child of his own epoch, Scriabin

was an egocentric. He placed his individualism before the surrounding world and touted

it as something uniquely independent. But this did not contradict his dreams of universal

mystery, an original synthesis of the arts, and ecstatic artistic forms immersed in artistic

nirvana.

Scriabin lived and worked in a manner that was completely isolated from our art,

living only for his music and his boundless plans, lost somewhere in unrealistic fantasies,

absolutely assured of the titanic power of his mind. He was far from grounded, bounding

from raptures to despair, and he failed to secure a foothold for his own inspiration and

creative strength. Scriabin was an "internationalist" (not in our meaning of the word, of

course) and he marched past the wellspring of the creative song of the people unlike

Glinka, Borodin, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov. Because of this break from the

collective mainstream, the masses did not grant him impunity. Scriabin founded no

school equal to that of Glinka. Scriabin may have had his imitators, but no true

successors. The circle of his musical thoughts was locked and could not be expanded, as

they were closely bound to his individual artistic personality. Glinka, Borodin, Rimsky-

Korsakov, and Mussorgsky were brighter individuals and tilled a nobler and more fertile

soil to express their personal talents. Scriabin and his adepts didn't have this foundation.

Thus, his supporters only had his examples left to copy and were mere slaves to imitation.

Tchaikovsky and Scriabin were polar opposites one was bright while the other

represented the decadence of bourgeois music. One trembles before the fetishism of his
 233
fate while the other sought to surmount his own pride. But both are lonely in spite of

their genius, delirious in their own solitary paths. We cannot and we do not want to go

with them. We are looking for a wider path to a bright future, a path on which there is

enough room for everyone to achieve victory. We want all for one and one for all. It

should be one surge of a unified consciousness, close in thought and related by blood, in

our quest to unite the masses in a collective art and a collective sense of artistic creativity.

Scriabin will forever serve as a reminder of the pointlessness of his heroic efforts,

those worthless personal deeds that developed from his own unique understanding of

creative art, which was torn asunder from the lives of the greater whole. This individual's

attempt to discover a special world for himself was for naught. But as a genius musician,

Scriabin will continue to capture our attention through the graceful rhythms of his

singular works, which are fading more and more into distant history. Such a great artistic

force remained infertile for humanity!

* * * *

Semen Adol'fovich Gres

"Skriabin," Rabochii i teatr 56/57 (20 October 1930): 10.

In the first years after the Revolution, Scriabin's music never left symphonic

programs. This can be explained from one perspective by the charm of this greatest of

musical innovators, whose creative path ended just two years before the Revolution. On

the other hand, elements of passion, uplift and ecstasy that are so clearly expressed in

Scriabin's heritage also ensured his resonance with the revolutionary era. A temporary
 234
delaying of the progress of Soviet art music was inevitable at this time of social

commotion, which contributed to Scriabin's favorable reception. But later on Scriabin's

works began to disappear from the main symphonic repertoire.

In this we should recognize a definite sociological pattern. If, for example, the

"restoration" period means to general audiences a type of music that caters to consumers'

reliance on first impressions, then this constitutes a loose, liberal, and irrational musical

ideological formula (in which dissonance becomes a consonance). Such a period of

reconstruction, though, is typical of an aspiring social class trying to build a new culture

and understand the realities of modern ideology.

A single subjective moment prompted an evaluation that clearly indicated that

this issue of "consonance equals dissonance" is gradually distancing itself from the

masses. Music is the most powerful ingredient with regard to the organization of mass

self-consciousness. But this consciousness can be channeled in different directions. Only

after determining the actual direction can we discern with certainty the artistic merit and

ideological value of each demonstration of an artist's idea for contemporary Soviets. In

light of such formulations, Scriabin's symphonic works and the Poem of Ecstasy in

particular should qualify as products that are wholly superfluous for the modern artistic

consciousness of musical culture.

Burning desire, uplifting emotions, ecstasy yes, certainly Scriabin's art had all of

these elements. However, it is obvious that the social-psychological roots of ecstasy

originated from the spirits of wild "creative" individualism, which places the " I " of the

chosen artist as the center of the universe and proclaims art as a divine, mystical self-
 235
fulfilling prophecy. It is no mistake to say that this "exaggeration" of Scriabin's

individualist philosophy even before the revolution had its societal basis in an elite group

of upper-class bourgeois intellectuals who adhered to mystic theosophy and a strict

aestheticism that emphasized daring musical and formal innovations.

It is true that no one would think of comparing his works with revolution in a

social sense. But in my personal opinion, Scriabin's music is far from being equal to his

"philosophy." Incidentally, it is specifically the Poem of Ecstasy that functions as the best

illustration of a satisfactory balance between form and content. The mystical "program"

of the poet-author (we know that Scriabin omitted details from his poetic programs) fully

conforms to the exquisite and refined ethos of his musical-thematic material. The ecstatic

ascension of the finale to his poem, though, emits only a cold brilliance that fails to

resonate with the contemporary sound consciousness, and while it may have ignited

Scriabin's senses, it failed to arouse a similar response in us.

Scriabin's art appears to be only a brilliant episode in music history. It was not

fully understood or appreciated enough during his lifetime and it spawned no "school" of

followers after his death. So with the passing of time its character gradually gains a

museum-like quality. For his music to be revived, audiences must desire it at a time when

it is a genuinely viable possibility as long as conductors' interpretations are congenial to

Scriabin's creative style. Alexander B. Gauk [1893-1963] is a cultured Northerner who is

noticeably championing Scriabin's music in concert halls lately, yet that style of music is

not his specialty. His recent orchestral performances of Scriabin's music included the

Second Symphony and Piano Concerto (with Sofronitski as soloist) and the Poem of
 236
Ecstasy. Gauk exerted a great effort into the material and considerable energy and sincere

passion into the execution of these works.

But Scriabin's music demands greatness. Performances will only add to the

author's detriment if they ignore the stretched tempi and ability to illustrate the building

blocks of his forms, its revelations and kaleidoscopic, mosaic nature. Of course the

impression of flight in Scriabin's sense of the word is also required to communicate his

musical score with the requisite trembling intensity. All of these aspects were lacking in

Gauk's somewhat businesslike, prosaic interpretations. This only reinforced the fact that

Scriabin's symphonies require a special touch that is not easily attained.

* * * *

Nikolai Malkov
"Nuzhen li nam Skriabin?" (Do We Need Scriabin?), Rabochii i teatr 25 (6 May 1930): 12.

Fifteen years ago on April 27th, we unexpectedly lost the brilliant musician and

unique creative genius of the pre-Revolutionary period, A. N. Scriabin. Since men,

questions regarding Scriabin's output have been iUuminated by idealistic and formal

observations on his musical legacy (Sabaneev's work has been particularly notable in our

time), particularly in the Poem of Ecstasy and Prometheus. Now is the time to initiate a

sociological reappraisal of Scriabin's creative works, especially since, until now, many

incorrect assumptions have persisted about this remarkable musician who managed to

conceal the socialist aspects of his creative works, thus prompting the overused
 237
catchphrases of "mystic-composer," "spokesman for a refined, decadent art," "the

musical thesoph," and "the elector of eroticism who sensed the origins of music," etc.

As far as we know, all of these current estimates of Scriabin are valid up to a

point. Indeed, Scriabin's interest in theosophy, reading of Blavatsky, and dreams of

composing the "Mysterium" coincided with the rise of eroticism in his music. But is it

really possible to approach a major musical-cultural phenomenon such as Scriabin with

superficial labels? After all, we need to consider that Scriabin was a child of his times, of

his middle class upbringing, and of his cultural situation! We should dispel once and for

all the idea that everything wears a mask in its obligation to the age from which it

originated. These elements are foreign and ephemeral, transient and unnecessary. In

Scriabin's creative work an internal impetus is not in the least reflected in the real value of

his creative aspirations. Scriabin was largely unaware of this fount from which his healthy

socialist tendencies remained only latent.

In order to explain precisely the socialist aspects of Scriabin's oeuvre, it is

necessary to compare his approach to Tchaikovsky's creative path. Tchaikovsky was an

expressionist of the moods and sensitivity of Russian society, and he captured the sense

of hopelessness rampant during the 1880s-1890s. Hence his work embodies this sense of

pessimistic despair, desperation, and boundless sorrow. Scriabin, however, lived and

worked in an entirely different era. The end of the 1890s marked a period of societal

change and progress that laid the groundwork for the 1905 Revolution and then again in

1917. The political reaction to this time was not to perceive the situation as something

inevitably fatal (as Tchaikovsky did). In those attitudes lay the roots and fundamental
 238
motives of Scriabin's creativity: a subjective personality (a classic example is the "I am"

theme from the Third Symphony), a struggle for freedom, a striving for ecstatic art,

agnosticism, and equality among his fellow humankind.

Is it obvious that all of these fundamental motives in Scriabin's creativity are

decadent? Are we aware that he failed to strengthen the good spirits in us with the Poem

ofEcstasy, in which frenzy is stirred up in the people who are crudely represented by these

tense, strained, unearthly sounds? Is it not known that all of these things are not

illuminating and do not emanate from the heavens above? Granted, every epoch and

every class follows its own standards in comprehending artworks of the past. So we

should accept Scriabin as a passionate artist who attempted to reveal to us this joyousness

of creation. Let us forget all of this theosophical rubbish that conceals from us the

shining image of this highly original musician, this vital, robust personality who was a

profoundly unique musician.

* * * *

Aleksandr Struve
"Skriabinskaia godovshchina" (In Recognition of the Anniversary of Scriabin's
Death), Rabochiii teatr25 (6 May 1930): 12.

Commemorating the anniversary of Scriabin's death coincides with a moment of

active reappraisal of our past heritage and with a careful selection of works that should

fall under public discussion in regards to creativity, the talents of a given author, and the

precise analysis of a work's socialist nature. In order for the discussion to avoid an overly
 239

specialized nature, some preliminary familiarizing of everyday listeners with the most

brilliant works of the late composer is essential. Regarding Scriabin, this situation is all the

more important considering his works are rarely performed now and are hardly popular.

The only organization that could possibly perform Scriabin's symphonic works

SOFIL [Soviet Philharmonic Society, est. 1928] decided it was not worth the effort.

SOFIL never decided upon a firm date despite being the only chamber music society at

Radiocenter. But as we can see, the content of OKM's program demonstrates that the

group did not allow sufficient time for the Radiocenter program and besides that, it was a

poorly chosen time slot. Not many listeners observed the date and the composer's

anniversary was honored more for the "sake of remembrance" than truly recognized.

The OKM concert was prefaced by some interesting introductory remarks by

Comrade Sollertinski, who illustrated his points with a landmark Marxist analysis of

Scriabin's works. Considering Scriabin as a representative of the Russian bourgeoisie,

Sollertinski explained that Scriabin's lack of popularity abroad was due to the belated rise

and underdeveloped status of capitalism in Russia as compared to Western Europe.

Contending that the mystical aspects of Scriabin's creativity were a consequence

of the downfall of the Russian bourgeoisie, Comrade Sollertinski nevertheless avoided

discussing the most valuable topic of Scriabin's contemporary activities (ca. 1904-1907)

when he revealed himself to be an active representative of the bourgeoisie by saturating

1
Musicologist Ivan Sollertinski (1902-1944) was a close friend of Shostakovich and critic for Rabochii i
teatr. Shostakovich completed his Piano Trio Op. 67 the same year that he learned of the rise of the Third
Reich and the death of Sollertinski, to whom the work is dedicated. In Testimony, Shostakovich reported
that he shared Sollertinski's dislike of Scriabin's music; they both agreed that it was "gibberish." See
Shostakovich and Solomon Volkov, Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (New York: Harper &
Rowe, 1979), 40.
 240
his works with an invigorating, strong-willed outlook. The first orchestral division's

performance displayed an erratic, irregular character as a result of the brusque playing of

the pianist [Abram D.] Logovinski. The second division conducted by Razumovsky was

significantly brighter and more engaging in its execution.

* * * *

Boris Shteinpress
"Protiv zashchitnikov dekadansa v muzyke" (Against the Defenders of Decadence in
Music), Uteraturnaiaga^eta (24 March 1948): 3.

Russian music and Russian literature are rightly justified in their traditions of

progressivism, realism, and nationalism, as well as a noble ideological content, a

connection to life, and the forward progress of a given era. These principles received

remarkable expression in works by Glinka, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-

Korsakov, and other luminaries of the musical arts. These artists elevated Russian

classical music to a first-rate position in the world and brought it eternal fame. The decay

of bourgeois musical culture was first heralded in the years when such idols of Western

European intellectual life as Wagner infused their late works with mystical elements and

clericalisms, and when the unbridled eroticism of Richard Strauss and frantic

expressionism of Mahler rivaled Western music and the keen sensitivity of Debussy.

Russian classical music gained worldwide fame through its aesthetic ideal of emotional

idealism in art, which was designed to illustrate the aesthetic principles of grandeur and

beauty to humanity.
 241

The beginning of the twentieth century was an era of decadence that initiated an

ideological crisis in bourgeois art by exacerbating the ideological tendencies of various

oblast cultures. This is not so much sensed in the works of modern composers, but in

works that carried on classical traditions we notice symptoms of a crisis. It is precisely

these phenomena that are either stubbornly disregarded or unduly exaggerated by

musicologists.

On the eve of World War I, during an era of flourishing decadence and

mysticism, Rachmaninoff composed a cantata called The Bells set to verses by Edgar Allen

Poe (translated into Russian by Konstantin Bal'mont). Pessimistic motives and horrific

images, death, destruction, and devils coarse throughout the poem. Poe achieved a

remarkably condensed expression of the verses in the symbolic manner of Bal'mont. The

gloomy elements of this work enthralled Rachmaninoff and they became infused in his

piece, which in many ways recalls Leonid Andreev's The Ufe ofMan?'

The Bells has had a remarkable longevity with the propagandists of our concert

organizations. The music-lovers who attended the November 1945 Moscow

Philharmonic concert described the work as the musical embodiment of a "fatalistic circle

of the people's lives," "a vision of miserable phantasmagoric sensitivity," "the new wave

of terror and despair," and "a fantastic appearance something devilish stands there . . ."

These observations adopted subjective and reverential tones without a trace of critical,

ideological, or political appraisal. Instead, the anonymous critic framed his observations

with the suggestive rhetoric that The Bells were "a new stage in the composer's

On this morality play, see Sophie Witte, " T h e Life of Man,'" New York Times (28 September 1907),
BR577.
 242
development that clearly demonstrates his deep connection with this ideology (What?!

B. Shteinpress) and a stylistic quest in his time."

Igor Boelza, the author of an article on Sergei V. Rachmaninoff (1946), offered

commentary that praised Rachmaninoff s "unusual coloring refractions" as symbolic in

the style of Poe and Bal'mont, and his incorporation of philosophical concepts into his

cantatas "illustrate the beautiful feelings that a person can have." Concurring with Boelza

on this point was scientist Anatolii Solovtsov, who authored a small book on

Rachmaninoff (1947).

We are all well aware of the value of such seekers in philosophy, literature, and the

arts during this reactionary era against decadence. They reflect the most repulsive

qualities of our music. They were influenced by the creative works of such masters as A.

Liadov, who had several ties to classical and folk songs. From 1908-1912, Liadov wrote

music for the stage play "Sister Beatrice" by Meterlink and orchestrated "Neniya"

(Sorrowful Song) from Meterlink's "From the Apocalypse." The idealistic overlay of this

fashionable trend is completely clear and should be recognized by everyone as a

characteristic of Liadov's works. But this only substitutes ideological and stylistic analysis,

abstract aesthetics, and apologetic opinions for an objective assessment (from the

pamphlet "A. Liadov" by [Vladimir] Vasipoi-Grossman, 1945).

But especially distorted is the reception of compositions by Scriabin, who was

unquestionably the principal figure in Russian musical modernism. Detrimental ideals are

deeply rooted in him; in terms of harmony Scriabin rejected classical music foundations

that are regarded either as progressive or as a higher phase of musical arts, and he
 243

abandoned himself to messianic and ecstatic surges of inspiration that expressed "the

height of revolutionary activity of the Russian people in that period, the natural precursor

to the Great October." This last sentence comes from Igor Boelza's article "The Great

Innovator" published in Soviet Art (10 January 1947). The article represents an extreme

evaluation of the idealistic direction that our musical culture has embraced.

It is well known that Scriabin considered his music as the embodiment of his

philosophical conceptions. "The world," Scriabin wrote, "is the result of my activities,

my creativity, my freedom of will." The composer's extreme individualism and mystical

aspirations were expressed in violent surges of impassioned daring (Vers la flamme, the

Divine Poem) and languorous bliss (Poem languide [Op. 52, no. 3], Danse languide [Op. 51, no.

4], the Caresse dansee [Op. 57, no. 2]). If the earlier, more valuable works of Scriabin were

livelier, more poetic expressions of human faith that didn't need to summon magical

spells and incantations for its success, then his later works were ultra-modernist. In the

"Preliminary Act" to the Mysterium, Scriabin praised God and uttered something akin to

the following: "With the death of pure sounds, I am free, I am ecstasy."

This same understanding of "freedom" was shared by Igor Boleza, who endorsed

"the progressive power of humanity" as if it was some mystical-voluntary will gained

from "a profoundly optimistic feeling in the world and a belief in the moral and ethnic

strength of art and individual ecstasy from images of struggle and petrels, recalling . . .

the daringly beautiful "Song of the Stormy Petrel" by Gorki!3

3
Shteinpress refers to Maksim Gorki's (1868-1936) 1901 poem, "Pesnia o burevestnike" (Song of the
Storm Petrel), which became an anthem for the 1905 Russian Revolution. In the poem, a petrel defiantly
flies while seagulls, penguins, and odier creatures seek shelter from an incoming storm. Rather than cower,
the petrel sings forth, "Let the storm burst forth in all fury!"
 244
Here one should cite the erroneous assertions of Lunacharsky, Boelza, Alschvang

(A. Skriabin, 1945) and others, who turned Scriabin into a revolutionary artist and

harbinger of the Great October. This aspect is wholly foreign to the progress of the

proletarian movement and the reactionary symbolist upsurge against the bourgeois

intelligentsia, with its fashionable patterns of salvation for the people through art and its

god-building "innovations," not unlike Scriabin's Mysterium.

Boelza's attempts to depict Scriabin as a symbolist and exponent of the "ethnic

ideology of the people" leave quite a strange impression. Nevertheless, he connected

these ideals with an outlook expressed by the wise man Nefferokhy over 2000 years ago

(from Boelza's article in the memorial collection S. I. Taneev and Russian Opera, 1946). But

for him this was not enough. He reiterated the thesis that the author of the Poem ofEcstasy

proved his strength "in the struggle for the people's highest ideals"; Boelza linked this to

Scriabin's reactions "to the appeal of Lenin" as well as "the prophetic sounds in the days

of the October political uprisings of the Moscow proletariat in 1905 (Igor Boleza, Soviet

Musical Culture, Moscow and Leningrad, 1947, p.36.). In a book by that Soviet author

commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of that great year, he demonstrated with some

difficulty how these delirious idealistic profanities might receive written expression.

Among musicians there are solidly established opinions that Scriabin's innovations

represented a step forward in music history. These opinions are utterly mistaken, flawed

points of view. Scriabin's innovations are not a development, but a destruction of the

fundamentals of classical music. The basis of Scriabin's harmony is dissonance. The

composer had made a giant step forward from tonal to atonal music. He rejected the
 245
principal styles of classical music major and minor and instead based his music on the

so-called "complex mode" (enlarged, increased, doubly increased [extended chord

complexes], etc.).4 Sometimes they refer to examples of applying these "complex"

harmonies in the operas of Glinka, Dargomyzhgyi, Tchaikovsky, and others. But it is

significant that all of these examples portray fantasy through unreal music with unnatural,

distorted visions (Chernomor,5 wood goblins, ghosts, etc.). The point is that Scriabin's

artificiality is converted into normality in a manner in which classical-realism is reduced to

extraordinary sounds for the sake of sheer display. Scriabin turned to his own inter-

subjective world to project his expressions, which are foreign to the people. Is this not

proof of Scriabin's essentially anti-realist innovations? It is possible to say the same thing

about his use of rhythm, form, and the interpretation of his music. Scriabin was the first

among significant musicians who abandoned the great nationalist traditions, and he

divorced himself from normal, natural, broad melodies. He reduced melodic lines to a

haphazard collection of symbols. It is no accident that Scriabin's creative output was

limited to symphonic and solo piano music, and remained alien to the origins of vocal

song that distinguished the Russian classical heritage. He completely rejected nationalist

art and folk melodies.

Questions regarding the attitudes driving the creativity of the founder of Russian

musical modernism seem relevant to the struggle of the legacy of modernism in Soviet

Slo^hnikh ladakh (complex mode) stems from the theories of Russian analyst Boleslav Iavorskii (1877-
1942), who conceived of Scriabin's late harmonies as proceeding from a two-dimensional to a three-
dimensional space. James Baker translated this term as "dual modality," which he equated with
polytonality. See Baker, The Music ojAlexander Scriabin (New Haven and London: Yale University Press,
1986), 4-6, 28-29.
Chernomor is the evil sorcerer from Glinka's opera, Ruslan andUudmila.
 246
musical life. In our own time [Daniel] Zhitomirski posed questions about this issue in an

article discussing a trend towards the partial rehabilitation of modern contemporaries

(Sovetskaia mu^yka no. 9, 1940). He posited that "everything new that Scriabin created

also appeared in the work of the expressionists and impressionists in terms of

expressivity; how is it possible that all of this has turned out to be sterile for the future

development of Soviet music?" He responded in the following manner: "On the whole,

the process of assimilating Scriabin's legacy was historically fruitful." To illustrate a

positive example he cited Shostakovich, whose creativity "was enriched by the

achievements of Mahler, Scriabin, Hindemith, and Miaskovsky . . ." It was evident that

the influence of Scriabin's symbolism was equal to the influence of Mahler's

expressionism and Hindemith's structuralism this "enriching" creative output of the

Soviet composer is something that was foreign to [Scriabin] and hindered his

development. This essentially revisionist position was Zhitomirski's reaction against

musicians who have clung to a "heritage" of decadence. With great astuteness one must

fight against these revelations of nuances and retain some "flexibility within one's own

shades" in defending these "modernist traditions." The struggle against this issue is not

going to be resolved if we fail to question this revisionist attitude as some kind of

"customary" presentation or a phenomenon of pre-Revolutionary decadence. If we do

not decisively crush this bourgeois liberalism and its idealistic viewpoints, this trend will

become rampant in our musicological literature.

* * * *
 247

Boris Shteinpress
Excerpts from "Raspad garmonii v muzyke modernizma" (The Decay of Harmony in
Modern Music), Sovetskaia muzyka 10 (December 1948)

From the Editor. The realist trend in Soviet music has been engaged in a merciless

fight against formalism and extreme militant expressions in modernist music. Critics

suggest that the issue of decadent bourgeois music must be fully politicized. This under-

scores the tense state of music and its inability to meet the demands of a wide range of

composers, music critics, lecturers, and pedagogues, and suggests inattention to urgent

problems. Recently, many critics have either sought to justify the actions of modernist-

composers or crudely attempted to mdiscriminately tarnish the reputations of some of the

most distinguished modern Russian composers who do not necessarily fit that mold.

There is a tendency to overlook this negligence in the artistic activities of Scriabin,

Liadov, and Rachmaninofff, each of whom developed in unique directions. The art of

the great composer Scriabin is tied to the social revolution of the Great October, which

blindly accepted an outdated ideal in their worldview, as evidenced by Yurii Kremlev's

article in Zve^da # 5 (1948). This view was reproached for its schematicism and

carelessness, prompting a rejoinder in Shteinpress' "Against the Defenders of

Decadence" in Uteraturnaia ga^eta from 24 March 1948.

The article below serves to stimulate discussion of Shteinpress' article in order to

correct certain positions in the appraisal of Scriabin's art. By and large, these estimations

consist of accusations of excessive pompousness and concerns with the decay of

functional harmony as defined by theoreticians. Shteinpress is correct to point out the

role of dissonance in modern music and to criticize the absence of Marxist-Leninist ideals
 248
in his approach to this ruined harmonic language, as well as the fundamental

disassociation of music from realism and simplicity. The composer's muddled ideas

about the major-minor system of tonality are arbitrarily connected to a realm outside of

historical importance. The explicit expression and function of the "complex mode" in

Russian classical music is inaccurately and narrowly understood. The editors encourage a

discussion of musical aesthetics, theory and history, and invite readers to voice their own

opinions on the issues presented in Shteinpress' article. [. . .]

Hypertropbied Harmony Paths of the Atonalists

[p.45] Several musicologists in our times have observed various approaches to the

formation of such modern music conventions as the "Prometheus Hexachord," "double-

major," "duplex mode," and "double-chained mode," etc. These supposedly represent

the highest phase of harmonic development in music, although these represent the polar

opposite of the atonalists' principles. Quite recently, A. Schaverdian, in a lengthy

theoretical presentation at a conference of Moscow musicologists, announced that

Scriabin's late music has effectively developed our harmonic origins to their fullest extent,

and that his efforts directly oppose the music of the atonalists. This claim belies a

fundamental misconception.

It is impossible to compare the atonalists' modern harmonies without mentioning

their origin. It is precisely these artistic approaches that influence the development of

music from naturalness to unnaturalness, from excessively complicated, hypertrophied

rhythms that venture into arrhythmia to an accumulation of individual melodic lines in

 249
counterpoint that destroys the independence of these voices. The hypertrophy of modes

is not an outgrowth of this principle and represents deterioration, rather than an advance,

in harmonic evolution. The "complex modes" are the most notable example of this

deformation, which leads only to rootlessness. To confine oneself to functional

connections and contrasts between consonant sounds represents an attenuation of

dynamic development, the disappearance of a natural tonal center, and the erosion of a

discernible difference between consonance and dissonance. This approach considers

dissonance as a stable harmonic foundation, as its emphasis in effect fully banishes

consonance. Isn't this trend, if not the disintegration of harmony, a path to rootlessness

and atonality?

The issue is not only excessive complexity in terms of an analytical approach. A

radical fundamental difference separates analytical approaches in the progressive epoch

and approaches in the modern era. In a normal approach, as is customary in classical and

folk music, the tonic is always a consonant sound. In regards to artistic harmony, the

framework is based on dissonant sonorities. A stable tonal center becomes replaced by a

dissonant harmony, and this modernist approach negates any general comprehension.

Disharmony results not only from complete atonal confusion, as in Schoenberg and

Hindemith, but also in polytonal combinations that sonically contradict one another, as in

Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Here disharmony appears in the form of a double-major

[bichord] which functions as a tonic, but is essentially a dissonance. The "Promethean

hexachord" is another example of such dissonances. Scriabin's Sixth and Seventh

Sonatas contain not a single consonance an obvious fact that is irrefutable for any
 250

musician. One can only deny this fact only if consonance is recognized as "outdated" and

dissonance is embraced as a "foundation."

Such degeneration of harmony is a characteristic of Scriabin's late works, which

contain "false ideals that culminate in decadence, a break from the healthy vitality that

should constitute art." "Scriabin's exquisite art, with all of its egocentric philosophy"

matched the "ideological refinement of mystic individualism, which revels in the erotic

exaltation particular to that era."2 This quality is especially evident in the Seventh Sonata,

where "a thick atmosphere of mysticism achieves its apogee," 3 and "a ringing calls out,

from which there is no return." In these typical works of the late Scriabin, two moods

predominate: a "feverish, convulsive impulse" and a "purely mystical prostration."4

These ideals supposedly formed the basis of Scriabin's "harmonic reforms."

Scriabin's dissonant late music has been typically praised as the highest achievement

of this innovative composer. This is an erroneous viewpoint! No, musical convulsions

and prostration cannot endear Scriabin to us. A brilliant talent, this distinguished master

surpassed everyone in his mature style, in which a poetic, romantic pathos and noble

upsurge transformed into a frenzy of extreme subjectivism and mysticism. And although

he commands a unique harmonic language and melodies, in terms of form, Scriabin's

earlier works (for example, his gorgeous Third Sonata, marvelous Piano Concerto, and

charming miniatures) are more valuable, natural, and healthy for us than his later pieces.

Yuri Shapori, "Great Traditions and Contemporaries," I^yestiia 92 (1948).

B. V. Asaf yev, Russian Musicfrom the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century (Moscow, Leningrad, 1930), 203.
Yevgenii Gunst, A. N. Skriabin and his Creative Works (Moscow, 1915), 40-41.
Arnold Alschvang, "On Skriabin's Philosophical System," in Alexander Nikolaevich Skriabin, 1915-1940.
Sbornik k 25-letiiu so dnia smerti (Moscow, Leningrad, 1940), 159, 169.
 251
As Prof. [Yuri Nikolaevich] Tiulin rightly observed, the process of decentralization

effectively "leads to a degenerative approach in Scriabin's late works, in which clearly

organized patterns function not as stable key centers (as in his earlier period), but the

intervalic tones contradict one another in their unstable combinations. Thus, unstable

forms had previously played a subordinate role, but in Scriabin's works they assume a

dominant role, solidifying the tonic's transformation as a harmonic basis in its own right.

In a manner of speaking, Scriabin based his harmonies on dissonance, which represents a

fundamental shift from the harmonic approaches of the preceding epochs. The

composer took a great step forward from tonal to atonal music. His unique harmonic

evolution, which for a long time adhered to diatonicism, eventually destroyed this basis

and approached the 12-tone system (of Schoenberg).5

According to Nikolai Kolter, "the evolution of style and harmony leads to a

degeneration of melody. The broad melodic line vanishes: the sounds that are exploited

in these chords relate only to themselves, diminishing the beauty of the melody. The

brief melodic fragments that do actually seem to represent "summons." 6 "The melody

presents symbolic allusions," Alschvang concurred. 7 Thus all of these forms are

combined in such a way that Scriabin retreats from a normal, naturally broad melody,

and instead reduces the melodic line into a structural aggregate of symbols. Thus the

evolution of melody was closely connected with the evolution of style and harmony.

* * * *

Shteinpress's emphasis. Quoted in Yulii N. Tiulin, Studies about Harmony, Second ed. (Moscow,
Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1939), 67.
Yurii Shapori, "Great Traditions and Contemporaries," l^yestiia 92 (1948).
B. V. Asaf yev,'RussianMusk from the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century (Moscow, Leningrad, 1930), 203.
 252
Nikolai Shebuyev's essay from the commemorative postcard (ca.1915).

The Knight of Ecstasy

How delightful it is to attend concerts where Scriabin performs.

How delightful it is to see that our young people still have youth, idols, ideals, and
ecstasies.
I will never forget the symphony of ecstasy with which the young people responded to
Scriabin's "Poem of Ecstasy."
In response to the FFFF of the finale thundered the FFFF of uncontrollable applause.
Faces flushed.
Impetuous heads surged towards the stage...
Rain of flowers... choir...
There he is. There he is the god of young people! Apostle of a new art!...
I sit amidst the rejoicing. I also want to rejoice, but I am unable, for I feel joy and
sorrow.
My heart is heavy.
Can it be that I have become so backward in music that I cannot rejoice with them?
Why do I understand Wagner, am enraptured with Mussorgsky, love Rachmaninoff
and Liapunov, recognize Strauss and Debussy, but cannot understand the "Poem of
Ecstasy"?

Did I not greet the first rays of his ascending talent?

A Russian Chopin! Delicate mazurkas, preludes, and etudes...
No, he's Wagner! To prove that one only need look at his first symphony for
orchestra.
A Wagnerized Chopin. Just wait and see, he has a great future!
Scriabin went abroad to find his future. What a pleasure it was to meet him in Paris at
the salon of I. I. Shukin.
I thought, now we will speak of music...
But he, from the very first words began to speak ... Of theosophy!
Only of theosophy, only of theosophy he had been in America, that country of
'God-seekers', and became a god-seeker himself.
He spoke seriously even of Sophia [Helena] Blavatskaia -
Music is a means to understanding divinity! Nowhere else can interaction with
divinity be fuller or more direct.
Music is theosophy Theosophy is music.
He spoke, and I did not understand him.
Like right now, in the Poem of Ecstasy he wants to communicate theosophical truths
with sounds.
And I.. .cannot understand him.
Perhaps this is wonderful, perhaps I actually did fall so far behind the latest word in
music.
But it seems to me that theosophy and music do not have anything in common.
 253
T o trample music under theosophy's feet is to degrade it.
Music is the purest of all arts.
Let theosophy be the highest among sciences, but to force music to serve theosophy
means to turn pure art into applied art.
And still it hurts me that I cannot understand "the greatest composer of our time."

There are two Scriabins.

The Scriabin of preludes, etudes, mazurkas, and first sonatas. The Scriabin w h o
idolizes Chopin, and was completely pierced by his radiance. A delicate aristocratic
Scriabin, even a bit affectatious (like Tchaikovsky)
Take for example Mazurka N o . 9 [reproduced o n the card]:
H o w simple, a clear theme; it would be vulgar had it been developed by another
composer, b u t with Scriabin it is so elegant, even graceful.
This is the Scriabin that I love, for w h o m I pine, whose notes I repeat.
And there is another Scriabin.
The mystical antichrist, w h o instead of music gives the propaganda of some
unintelligible theories.
There are n o melodies. If one does appear it is immediately cut short.
Rhythms are constandy changing, capriciously and chaotically.
Transitions from key to key evoke confusion.
Dissonances inflict physiological suffering.
A n d all the time, [Hans Christian] Anderson's fairytale "The Emperor's N e w Clothes"
keeps importunately coming to mind.
This Scriabin rejected Chopin and publicly announced that he cannot understand h o w
he could have worshiped a composer of such small stature.
I do n o t understand this second Scriabin, even though I dreadfully desire to
understand and to love him like our young people.
This is why I bring forth here not my interpretation of the " P o e m of Ecstasy," but
rather the explanation of the author himself.

W h o is Scriabin?
Perhaps a prophet w h o found the promised land.
Perhaps a weaver from Anderson's fairy tale about "The Emperor's N e w Clothes."
Perhaps a genius.
Perhaps a madman.
A son of the future.
O r the son of the present, fleeting ecstasy.
Be that as it may, he roused the youth, forced them to argue, become agitated and
impassioned, and therefore, Triumph to him!

N . Shebuyev'
 254
The Poem of Ecstasy, Op. 54

To A. N. Scriabin, ecstasy refers to the joy of freedom of action. The universal Spirit is
eternal creation without an apparent path or goal. It is a divine game of worlds. The
constructive Spirit, the playful Universe, however, does not realize that its creation is
absolute. It subjected itself to a goal, and turned its creation into a means. But the faster
the pulse of life beats, the faster its rhythms race, and the more vividly the spirit realizes
that it is but self-sufficient creation through and through, that its life is a game. And
when the spirit, having reached the highest ascent of activity that tears it out of the
embrace of expediency and relativity, lives out its essence - free energy - to the end, then
commences the ecstasy.

With strings in the background, the flute plays the motif of languor, characterizing the as
of yet unformed thirst for life: Theme I.

The first motif is repeated by the violin and the piccolo. Immediately the trumpet
proclaims the theme of will in the form of excerpt II.

The tempo slows down and the clarinet sings theme III, the dream of creation:

The essence of the spirit of creation is opened before us. In the rays of its dream appears
a magic world - in the flutes sound the motif of flight, IV:
 255
Then three new themes enter: V, VI, & VII:

And immediately it is answered by the motif of flight (IV). The theme of anxiety,
muffled, can still be heard, but it is conquered by the dark will (lib). A third element
completes the psychology of struggle: at the time that the cellos expound the theme of
the appearance of creations (V), the violins sing the theme of pleasure (VII).

He conquered, he triumphs... the trumpets sound the motif of "I am" (IX). Above it
flutter light figures to the motif of flight (IV). The motif of anxiety (VIII) acquires a
bright, joyful character. Trumpets give a fragment of the theme of will (lib) and ...
everything quickly freezes. But what darkens this joyful moment? The very fact that it
has reached its goal.

The spirit once more flies off. An approximate repetition of the first episodes lies
ahead. But the universe resounds with an outcry: Different! New! The themes of
pleasure (VII) and the appearance of creations (V) obtain the fleeting character of a
headlong rush.

Once more victory, again intoxication and rapture, and satiety. O, my world, my life,
my ecstasy. Your every moment I create through rejecting formerly experienced forms.
Again the theme of will grows (lib), filling the entire orchestra. The spirit gets to know
itself through the all-radiating power of will, the desire of dawn, love, and struggle. In
the trumpets resounds a theme "I am" (IX). It evokes from the depths of the
mysterious spirit the aspirations that were hidden within, daring to bring them. The
motif of hidden aspirations in the flutes: XII.
 256

The Spirit became fully cognizant of itself: the ecstasy begins, the theme of languor (I)
passionately sighs in the flutes, and with it appears the theme of a dream. Both motifs
join with the themes of self-realization and flight. For the third and final time blooms
the theme of will (lib): it plays in the trumpets and flutes, with a big bell in C, the
tremolo of strings, the glissando of harps, the organ, and all the percussion in the
background. An all-encompassing fire envelops the universe. The Spirit is at the
pinnacle of existence. What used to be threatening is now rousing... What used to
horrify is now pleasing. Joyfully the trombones and bassoons resound with the theme of
horror. The French horns announce the theme of self-realization: and the universe
resounded with a joyous outcry, "I am."

Figure 6.1. Commemorative Postcard, ca.1915. Inner panels.

Illustrations by I. Brodski, I. Grabovski, A. Liubimov, and D. Mel'nikov
 257

ssESf-isillU
g~

sfsMMi?.-"

rbmflfb 3KCTA3A.

a
mm
m

Figure 6.2. Commemorative Postcard, ca.1915. Outer covers.

Illustrations by I. Brodski, I. Grabovski, A. Liubimov, and D. MePnikov
 258
Vita
Lincoln Ballard
Education:
Doctorate of Philosophy Music History (January 2010)
University of Washington in Seattle, WA
Research Advisor: Prof. Stephen Rumph, Ph.D.
Dissertation Tide: "Defining Moments: Vicissitudes in Alexander Scriabin's
Twentieth-Century Reception"
General Examinations completed: October 2005

Master's of Music - Historical Musicology (December 2001)

The Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
Research Advisor: Dr. Denise Von Glahn
Thesis Title: "Similar Directions, Possible Influences: Parallels Between
the Music of Alexander Scriabin and Charles Ives"
Bachelor's of Fine Arts Double major in Psychology / Music History (June 1998)
Miami University of Ohio, Oxford, OH

Teaching Experience: University of Washington, Seattle

MUSIC 120: Undergraduate survey of Western music history

Instructor - Summer 2003, Winter 2003-2004, Winter 2004-2005, Spring 2005,
Spring 2007
Teaching Assistant - Winter 2002-2003, Spring 2003, Fall 2003, Spring 2004, Fall
2004, Winter 2006-2007 (under a variety of instructors)

MUSIC 121: "The Orchestra," an introductory course to Western symphonic literature

Instructor Summer 2005, Summer 2006

MUHST 211: "Baroque and Classical Music" core prerequisite for music majors
Teaching Assistant - Prof. Stephen Rumph, Winter 2005-2006
Duties include grading and leading quiz sections (approx. 30 students per section)

MUHST 212: "Romantic and Twentieth-Century Music" core course for music majors
Teaching Assistant Dr. John Hanford, Spring 2006
Duties include grading and leading quiz sections

ENGLISH 197: "Writing About Music" - Undergraduate writing link to MUSIC 120
Instructor - Fall 2005
 259
Publications:

December 2009: "Postcards F r o m the Edge: Scriabin in Popular Trade." Journal of the
Scriabin Society of America 1 4 / 1 (Winter 2009-2010): 7-19.

December 2004: "Scriabin and Ives: A n Unanswered Question?" Journal of the Scriabin
Society of America 9 / 1 (Winter 2004-2005): 34-59.

O c t o b e r 2004: "Similar Directions, Possible Influences: Parallels between the Music of

Alexander Scriabin and Charles Ives," The Triangle ofMu Phi Epsilon (Fall 2004): 16-17.

September 2003: "Mu Phi Epsilon Rekindled at the U W School of Music," Fanfare:
University of Washington School ofMusic Newsletter (Autumn 2003): 10.

H o n o r s and Awards:

Fall 2006: University of Washington School of Music's Brechemin Fellowship Award

for outstanding graduate work among the entire School of Music graduate student body

Summer 2004: Winner of the M u Phi Epsilon 2004 Musicological Research Contest,
Category III for an outstanding Master's thesis in music studies (1 award every two years)

Spring 2004: T h e Kathleen Munroe Memorial Scholarship for outstanding leadership

qualities in a chapter president (Tau chapter) - M u Phi Epsilon

Spring 2003: T h e Francis Dickey Memorial Scholarship for outstanding graduate work in
music history - Mu Phi Epsilon

Fall 2002: Awarded the Irvine Scholarship University of Washington, Seatde

Fall 2002: M e m b e r of the 2001-2002 National Dean's List

Spring 2001: Inducted into Pi Kappa Lambda, an honorary academic fraternity

Fall 1999: Two-year graduate assistantship in Historical Musicology - Florida State

University

Professional M e m b e r s h i p s :

T h e American Musicological Society, T h e Scriabin Society of America, Pi Kappa

Lambda, M u Phi Epsilon (past President of T a u chapter - Seatde), and T h e Glenn
Gould Foundation