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| In memoriam
Alexander Scriabin 1872–1915
by Rosa Newmarch
A year has barely elapsed since I published in the Musical Times
an analysis of Scriabin’s latest and most fully self-expressive
work, ‘Prometheus: the Poem of Fire.’ A few days before
the composer’s first appearance in this country, at a concert
of the Queen’s Hall Orchestra, on March 14, 1914, when he played
the remarkable pianoforte part in ‘Prometheus,’ with its
deep psychological import, we had spoken together of all that he
wished to convey in the work, and of all that I had doubtless failed
to discover beneath the veil of mysticism and the new methods which
enwrapped it. While we talked, he gave me the impression of a man
whose music was a medium carefully evolved, considered, and rarefied,
for the expression of his philosophy, or religion; and that apart
from the expression of his spiritual experiences it had neither
meaning nor purpose for him. My personal intercourse with Scriabin
– brief though it was – entirely convinced me that his
spiritual outlook guided the employment of his creative gift, and
that there was no ground whatever for the charge of insincerity
occasionally brought against him: namely, that he wrote eccentric
works and attached theosophical programmes to them as an afterthought.
He then assured me that he intended ere long to reveal his ideology
more fully with the publication of his future works, each one of
which would be a new stone in the building up of his musical and
philosophical creed. The ‘Mystery’ to which he was even
then giving a definite plan, was to be a symphony of music, words,
and gesture, accompanied by secondary symphonies of colour and perfume.
It would, in fact, be a ritual; but a ritual which set up no barriers
between the celebrants and those who were passively initiated. In
spite of the physical suffering he was undergoing while in London,
he was obviously full of the quiet joy of life and work, while contemplating
this setting free of his powers in new creative forms. All this
was only a year ago – and now he has solved the greatest of
all mysteries, and while in the very midst of his activities he
was ever seeking the end, ‘crying for the across,’ the
Ferryman met him and carried him to the spirit-world wherein his
thought and imagination were already moving in freedom.
On May 2, I received from Scriabin’s devoted friend M. Briantchaninov,
who had accompanied the composer on his visit to this country, the
following touching telegram:
‘Our dearest, greatest Prometheus suddenly passed, through
the same lip disease, having just finished the most wonderfully
poetic text, the prologue to the Mystery. We are collecting funds
for his children, Ariadna, Julian and Marina; perhaps English
friends and admirers could do same. His last words, beginning
his painful agony were, clenching his hands: "I must be self-possessed,
like Englishmen are." His wonderful death testifies to a
terrible mystical fight above us in this war.’
Scriabin’s last words constitute an eloquent message from
Russia to England at a moment when every expression of mutual sympathy
is worth its weight in gold. They show up so clearly and poignantly
in what high estimation Russians hold the British character, with
its sangfroid, fortitude, and cheerfulness, even in the face of
danger and death.
The swelling on the upper lip, which ultimately occasioned Scriabin’s
end, made its appearance only a day or two before he reached this
country. It was impossible to take any drastic remedy at the moment,
as he was anxious to fulfil his engagements here; and there is no
doubt that he suffered severe pain and had to exercise a good deal
of that quality of self-possession which he so greatly admired in
us in order to do so. Commenting upon his untimely death, one who
was so often with him during those days wrote to me: ‘He had
an intense horror of anything of the nature of blood-poisoning,
and perhaps his extraordinary sensitiveness predisposed him to the
very thing he dreaded.’
As a sympathetic and capable analysis of Scriabin’s scheme
of harmony, by Mr. Clutsam, appeared in these columns in March,
July, and August, 1913, I need hardly dwell on that side of his
art. Moreover, there is no composer whose continuous and logical
development is more clearly displayed in his works for those who
care to make a systematic study of them. I do not as yet possess
information as to the work left unpublished and unfinished at the
time of the composer’s death. Some valuable musical fragments
of the ‘Mystery’ may already have been in existence, beside
the literary sketch of the Prologue.
When we recall the personality of Scriabin – at least, the
gentle and fragile outer man – it seems strange to think how
narrowly he escaped an uncongenial military career. It was chiefly
owing to the interest which he inspired in Professor Taneiev, who
gave him private lessons when he was ten years old, that he was
taken away from Cadet School and permitted to study at the Moscow
Conservatoire, where he finished his course in 1891. He was then
twenty, and had composed a few pianoforte pieces – the Etudes
and Mazurkas, which were a kind of homage paid to his idol, Chopin.
At the very outset of his career he had the good fortune to meet
Belaiev, the wealthy amateur publisher, who immediately undertook
to bring out his compositions, and assisted him to make a long concert
tour in order to make them known in Western Europe. From 1897 to
1903, Scriabin was Professor of Pianoforte at the Moscow Conservatoire;
but he relinquished the post because it interfered with his creative
work, to which from that time forward he devoted himself entirely.
He spent a good deal of time abroad, in Switzerland and Brussels,
only appearing in public now and again as the exponent of his own
compositions.
His artistic development was comparatively slow, for he was not
one of those temperaments that pour forth their best inspirations
in early years and soon begin to draw over and over again upon the
same sources. Scriabin rarely repeated himself, and never looked
back. Each new work of importance was the logical outcome of its
predecessor; what might seem merely sketchy or vaguely suggestive
in one composition, is generally made clearer, deeper, and more
convincing in its successor. Hence that remarkable unity of thought
and feeling observable in his whole output, which may be compared
to one great continuous poem, of which the individual works are
merely episodes.
From Op. 50 we begin to realise that he had found the solution
of those problems of form which at obviously hampered the expression
of his very individual moods and emotions. The two pieces Op. 52,
the five Sonatas and the ‘Poème de l’Extase,’
show how he contrived a basis of form wholly adequate for the new
and somewhat elusive thoughts he desired to translate into musical
terms; and this he accomplished not so much by destroying the convention
– for his works are never formless – but by emphasizing
the spirit of form. A Russian writer, Boris Schletser, has characterized
Scriabin’s music in a few pithy formulas: ‘Perpetual movement.
Continuous progress. Unceasing transition. Flight. Aspiration.’
Although Scriabin was not a national composer in the narrow significance
of the word, which would limit musical expression to the ‘national
idiom’ and the geographical boundaries of a composer’s
country, yet he was clearly representative of one most attractive
aspect of the Russian soul – I mean its mysticism; being more
occupied with the spiritual than the natural world, and wholly opposed
to the material view of things from which we have revolted in the
later works of Richard Strauss. His loss at the time of this Armageddon
seems to our finite visions cruel and incalculable; for, with his
sense of supernatural joy, his strangely beautiful language of ecstasy,
and his aspiration to pierce the frontiers of this world, he was
perhaps the best fitted among contemporary composers to celebrate
the millennium which lies beyond the present strife.
Alexander Nicholaevich Scriabin was born at Moscow, January 10,
1872 (December 29, 1871 O.S). He died on April 30 (?).
His principal works are as follows:
Symphony in E major, Op. 26 (with Choral finale);
Symphony in C minor, Op. 29;
Rêverie, Op. 24;
Pianoforte Concerto in F sharp minor, Op. 20;
Three Sonatas for pianoforte, Opp. 6, 19, 23; Allegro appassionato,
Op. 4; Concert allegro, Op. 18; Fantasia, Op. 28; Studies, Op.
8; Impromptus, Opp. 7, 10, 12, 14; Mazurkas, Opp. 3, 25; Preludes,
Opp. 11, 13, 15, 16, 17, 22, 27; besides Nocturnes, a Valse, and
other small pieces.
Musical Times, June 1915
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