Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin () was a Russian composer and pianist. Initially influenced by Frédéric Chopin, he composed in a relatively tonal, late-Romantic idiom. Later, independently of his contemporary Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed a highly dissonant musical language that transcended traditional tonality without being strictly atonal, aligning with his personal brand of metaphysics. He embraced the concepts of Gesamtkunstwerk and synesthesia, creating a colour-coded circle of fifths inspired by theosophy to associate colours with specific harmonic tones. Scriabin is widely considered the primary Russian symbolist composer and a major figure of the Russian Silver Age.
Scriabin was an innovator and one of the most controversial composer-pianists of the early 20th century. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia said of him, "no composer has had more scorn heaped on him or greater love bestowed." Leo Tolstoy described Scriabin's music as "a sincere expression of genius." Scriabin's oeuvre exerted a salient influence on the music world over time, and inspired many composers, such as Nikolai Roslavets and Karol Szymanowski. His musical aesthetics have been reevaluated since the 1970s, and his ten published sonatas for piano and other works have been increasingly championed, garnering significant acclaim in recent years.
Biography
Childhood and education (1871–1893)
thumb|Scriabin as a child
Scriabin was born in Moscow into a Russian noble family on Christmas Day, 1871, according to the Julian calendar. His father, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Scriabin, then a student at the Moscow State University, belonged to a modest noble family founded by Scriabin's great-grandfather Ivan Alekseevich Scriabin, a soldier from Tula who had a brilliant military career and was granted hereditary nobility in 1819. Alexander's paternal grandmother, Elizaveta Ivanovna Podchertkova, daughter of a captain lieutenant, came from a wealthy noble house of the Novgorod Governorate. His mother, Lyubov Petrovna Scriabina (née Schetinina), was a concert pianist and a former student of Theodor Leschetizky. She belonged to an ancient dynasty that traced its history back to Rurik; its founder, Semyon Feodorovich Yaroslavskiy, nicknamed Schetina (from the Russian schetina meaning stubble), was the great-grandson of Vasili, Prince of Yaroslavl. She died of tuberculosis when Alexander was only a year old.
After her death, Nikolai Scriabin completed tuition in the Turkish language in Saint Petersburg's Institute of Oriental Languages and left for Turkey. Like all his relatives, Nikolai followed a military path and served as a military attaché in the status of Active State Councillor; he was appointed an honorary consul in Lausanne during his later years. His doctor said he would never recover, and Scriabin wrote his first large-scale masterpiece, his Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 6, as a "cry against God, against fate." It was the third sonata he wrote, but the first to which Scriabin gave an opus number (his second was condensed and released as the Allegro Appassionato, Op. 4). He eventually regained the use of his hand.
Leaving Russia (1903–09)
By 13 March 1904, Scriabin and his wife had relocated to Geneva, Switzerland. While living there, Scriabin permanently separated from his wife (who refused to grant him a divorce), with whom he had had four children, and began working on his Symphony No. 3. In 1905, the work was performed in Paris, where Scriabin was accompanied by Tatiana Fyodorovna Schlözer—a former pupil and the niece of the pianist and composer Paul de Schlözer and sister of the music critic Boris de Schlözer. Because Scriabin's first wife refused to grant him a divorce, Tatiana became his common-law wife (life partner), with whom he had more children out of wedlock.
With a wealthy sponsor's financial assistance, Scriabin spent several years travelling in Switzerland, Italy, France, Belgium and the United States, working on more orchestral pieces, including several symphonies. He also began to compose "poems" for the piano, a form with which he is particularly associated. While in New York City, in 1907, Scriabin became acquainted with the Canadian composer Alfred La Liberté, who became a personal friend and disciple.
In 1907, Scriabin settled in Lausanne with his family and was involved with a series of concerts organized by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who was actively promoting Russian music in the West at the time. Scriabin subsequently relocated to Brussels (rue de la Réforme 45) with his family.
thumb|Scriabin (sitting on the left of the table) as a guest at Wladimir Metzl's home in Berlin, 1910
Return to Russia (1909–15)
In 1909, Scriabin permanently returned to Russia, where he continued to compose, working on increasingly grandiose projects. For some time before his death, Scriabin had planned a multimedia work to be performed in a temple in India. He left only sketches for this piece, Mysterium, although a preliminary part, L'acte préalable ("Prefatory Action"), was eventually made into a performable version by . Part of that unfinished piece was performed with the title Prefatory Action by Vladimir Ashkenazy in Berlin with Alexei Lubimov at the piano. Nemtin eventually completed a second portion ("Mankind") and a third ("Transfiguration"), and Ashkenazy recorded his entire two-and-a-half-hour completion with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin for Decca. Several late pieces published during Scriabin's lifetime are believed to have been intended for Mysterium, such as the Two Dances, Op. 73.
Death
Scriabin gave his last concert on 2 April 1915 in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg), performing a large programme of his own works. Scriabin received rave reviews from music critics, who called his playing "most inspiring and affecting", and wrote, "his eyes flashed fire and his face radiated happiness". Scriabin himself wrote that during his performance of his Sonata No. 3, Op. 23, "I completely forgot I was playing in a hall with people around me. This happens very rarely to me on the platform." Scriabin elaborated that he normally "had to watch himself very carefully, look at himself as if from afar, to keep himself in control."
Scriabin returned triumphantly to his Moscow apartment on 4 April. He then noticed a resurgence of a little pimple on his right upper lip. Scriabin had mentioned the pimple as early as 1914 while in London. His temperature rose, and he took to bed and canceled his 11 April Moscow concert. The pimple became a pustule, then a carbuncle and a furuncle. Scriabin's doctor said it looked like "purple fire". On 10 April, Scriabin's temperature was , and Scriabin was now bedridden. Incisions were made two days later, but the sore had already begun to poison his blood, and Scriabin became delirious. Bowers writes: "Intractably and inexplicably, a simple spot had grown into a terminal ailment." On 14 April, aged 43 and at the height of his career, Scriabin died in his Moscow apartment of sepsis.
thumb|Le Poême de l'Extase—Traduction française de Joseph Belleau—Imprimé par Alexandre Scriabine—Don fait par la veuve du pianiste canadien et proche ami de Scriabine Alfred LaLiberté au grand pianiste canadien Marc-André Hamelin
Music
thumb|upright=1.4|The beginning of Scriabin's [[Étude Op. 8 No. 12 (Scriabin)|Étude, Op. 8, No. 12]]
Rather than seeking musical versatility, Scriabin was happy to write almost exclusively for solo piano and for orchestra. His earliest piano pieces resemble Chopin's and include music in many genres that Chopin employed, such as the étude, the prelude, the nocturne, and the mazurka. Scriabin's music rapidly evolved over the course of his life. The mid- and late-period pieces use very unusual harmonies and textures.
The development of Scriabin's style can be traced in his ten piano sonatas: the earliest are composed in a fairly conventional late-Romantic manner and reveal the influence of Chopin and sometimes Liszt, but the later ones are very different, the last five lacking a key signature. Many passages in them can be said to be tonally vague, though from 1903 through 1908, "tonal unity was almost imperceptibly replaced by harmonic unity."
First period (1880s–1903)
Scriabin's first period is usually considered to last from his earliest pieces to his Symphony No. 2, Op. 29. The works from this period adhere to the romantic tradition, employing common-practice harmonic language. But Scriabin's voice is present from the very beginning, in this case by his fondness for the dominant function and added tone chords.
thumb|center|500px|Common spellings of the dominant chord and its extensions during the common practice period. From left to right: [[dominant seventh, dominant ninth, dominant thirteenth, dominant seventh with raised fifth, dominant seventh with a rising chromatic appoggiatura on the fifth, and dominant seventh flattened fifth.]]
Scriabin's early harmonic language was especially fond of the 13th dominant chord, usually with the seventh, third, and 13th spelled in fourths. This voicing can also be seen in several of Chopin's works. According to Peter Sabbagh, this voicing was the main generating source of the later mystic chord.
According to Samson, the sonata form of Scriabin's Fifth Piano Sonata has some meaning for the work's tonal structure, but formal tensions in his late piano sonatas are created by the absence of harmonic contrast and "between the cumulative momentum of the music, usually achieved by textural rather than harmonic means, and the formal constraints of the tripartite mould". Samson also writes that the Poem of Ecstasy and Vers la flamme "find a much happier co-operation of 'form' and 'content'" and that later sonatas, such as the Ninth ("Black Mass"), employ a more flexible sonata form.
According to Claude Herndon, in Scriabin's late music "tonality has been attenuated to the point of virtual extinction, although dominant sevenths, which are among the strongest indicators of tonality, preponderate. The progression of their roots in minor thirds or diminished fifths [...] dissipate the suggested tonality."
[[File:Acoustic and Octatonic scales in Scriabin.png|thumb|left|upright|The acoustic and octatonic scales, and their combination