Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (6 January 1872 [O.S. 25 December 1871] – 27 April [O.S. 14 April] 1915) 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 harmonies. Scriabin is widely considered the primary Russian symbolist composer and a major figure of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry.
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.
Childhood and education (1871–1893)
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 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. Nikolai left the infant Sasha (as he was known) with his grandmother, great-aunt, and aunt. Scriabin's father later remarried, giving Scriabin a number of half-brothers and sisters. His aunt Lyubov (his father's unmarried sister) was an amateur pianist who documented Sasha's early life until he met his first wife. As a child, Scriabin was frequently exposed to piano playing; anecdotal references describe him demanding that his aunt play for him.
Apparently precocious, Scriabin began building pianos after becoming fascinated with piano mechanisms. He sometimes gave houseguests pianos he had built. Lyubov portrays Scriabin as very shy and unsociable with his peers, but appreciative of adult attention. According to one anecdote, Scriabin tried to conduct an orchestra composed of local children, an attempt that ended in frustration and tears. He performed his own plays and operas with puppets to willing audiences. He studied the piano from an early age, taking lessons with Nikolai Zverev, a strict disciplinarian, who was also the teacher of Sergei Rachmaninoff and other piano prodigies, though Scriabin never lodged with Zverev as Rachmaninoff did.
In 1882, Scriabin enlisted in the Second Moscow Cadet Corps. As a student, he became friends with the actor Leonid Limontov, who in his memoirs recalls his reluctance to become friends with Scriabin, who was the smallest and weakest among all the boys and sometimes teased due to his stature. But Scriabin won his peers' approval at a concert where he performed on the piano. He ranked generally first in his class academically, but was exempt from drilling due to his physique and given time each day to practice piano.
Scriabin later studied at the Moscow Conservatory under Anton Arensky, Sergei Taneyev, and Vasily Safonov. He became a noted pianist despite his small hands, which could barely stretch to a ninth. Feeling challenged by Josef Lhévinne, Scriabin damaged his right hand while practicing Franz Liszt's Réminiscences de Don Juan and Mily Balakirev's Islamey. 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.
In 1892, Scriabin graduated with the Small Gold Medal in piano performance, but did not complete a composition degree because of strong personality and musical differences with Arensky (whose faculty signature is the only one absent from Scriabin's graduation certificate) and an unwillingness to compose pieces in forms that did not interest him.
In 1894, Scriabin made his debut as a pianist in Saint Petersburg, performing his own works to positive reviews. That same year, Mitrofan Belyayev agreed to pay Scriabin to compose for his publishing company (he published works by composers such as Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov). In August 1897, Scriabin married pianist Vera Ivanovna Isakovich, and then toured in Russia and abroad, culminating in a successful 1898 concert in Paris. That year, he became a teacher at the Moscow Conservatory and began to establish his reputation as a composer. During this period, Scriabin composed his cycle of études, Op. 8, several sets of preludes, his first three piano sonatas, and his only piano concerto, among other works, mostly for piano.
For five years, Scriabin was based in Moscow, during which time his old teacher Safonov conducted the first two of Scriabin's symphonies. According to later reports, between 1901 and 1903, Scriabin envisioned writing an opera. He expounded its ideas in the course of normal conversation. The work would center around a nameless hero, a philosopher-musician-poet. Among other things, he would declare: "I am the apotheosis of world creation. I am the aim of aims, the end of ends." The Poem Op. 32 No. 2 and the Poème tragique Op. 34 were originally conceived as arias in the opera.
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.