Scriabin: the symphonies.

[adriano]

Two years ago, when I visited the Scriabin House again, I was contemplating his "house made" prototype of the "colour wheel". I the score of "Prometheus" there an extra part, called "Luce" ("Light"), with exact indications where and which light bulb "button" have to be pressed. Of course, later on, in 1958, Jewgeny Murzin conceived a (coloured) keyboard, connected to a complicated electronic device, able to project the "played" colours on to a wall.

[Alan Howe]

I think I'll just close my eyes instead.

[adriano]

I would do the same, Alan, but at least respect the avant-garde thoughts Scriabin had!
Well, Handel's "Fireworks" Music is something similar :-)

[Alan Howe]

No, it isn't. Not even close. There's no system in the Handel, whereas in Scriabin it's all bound up with his crazy philosophising. I don't usually listen to 18thC music, but I'll take the fresh air and utter joyfulness of Handel over Scriabin's late-period descent into megalomania any day...

[Gareth Vaughan]

Personally, I would love to experience a performance of Prometheus with the coloured lights specified by the composer. I think it could be both interesting and exciting. The added dimension might, I think, open a window on this work.

[eschiss1]

There is a lot of Scriabin, early middle late and very-late, that I enjoy, but at the moment so far as his symphonies are concerned, my favorite Scriabin symphony is Myaskovsky's 3rd. (Which is not epigonic, merely sometimes earns (... I think!) the adjective Scriabinesque, but then Scriabin's symphonies aren't epigonic either...)

[Gareth Vaughan]

The state of "epigonic"! - I love it, Eric. Such nice use of language.

[adriano]

Yes, eschiss1, Miaskowsky's Third is a great Symphony, biut I also like his Second very much, of which I have right now a first-print score of 1928 in front of me :-)

[eschiss1]

Yes, the 2nd might be my favorite (... one of my favorites??) of the 27 (though not by so much that I feel that it was some sort of great decline after that, or something; I find e.g. no.20 wonderful (and 7&10, though 7 is even more Scriabinesque in quite different ways, fascinating and -- well...*- etc. etc. Anyway.)

Ikonnikov's description of the 2nd symphony as a journey through- iirc?? - Tchaikovsky-like territory, through Scriabinesque (middle movement), to mostly echt-Miaskovsky (close of the 2nd movement & attacca finale) (maybe not coincidentally the movement which got the composer in the most trouble, at least its 10-note? penultimate chord- historians still searching for the missing Miaskovski-Mahler correspondence ) - seems if not dead-on-the-mark than at least food for thought, I think.  That the symphony's -first- significant major-mode theme of any duration is delayed until the "second theme" group of the slow movement (and then occurs in E-flat, a tritone away from the key (A minor) that- with trouble- has been established for the slow movement after a troubled introduction...) - a significant delay - seems significant, too. (Probably paraphrasing something I wrote about the piece elsewhere... sorry.)

I do find much more of a sense of direction in these works- early-ish, like syms.1-3, or a bit later (sym.7) - by Myaskovsky than in the Scriabin symphonies I've heard that they remind me of (to the extent I know the latter. And this even though I like, enjoy, Scriabin's music and in his early late/later period his piano music on the whole seems more directional and convincing than what orchestral music I seem to recall hearing from around the same time. But this could be insufficient familiarity on my part...

*Though I appreciate Marco Polo (as a label, not as a business enterprise - where I have no personal experience), I won't argue that some of their orchestral recordings have, as has become the consensus, ended up something in the nature of "well, ... first efforts", or ... right!anyway...!

Case in point maybe, the Myask. 7&10; no.7 being, as I said, a symphony even more to put one in mind of Scriabin (my opinion), but much better performed and recorded by Svetlanov for Melodiya (or whoever he intended his complete cycle for? before it was issued on Russian Disc, on Olympia, on Erato/Warner (in the late 2000s))... than by Michael Halász (conducting) for Marco Polo.

**(and now Melodiya itself, which never really ceased to exist in some form has issued a 3-CD set (2014) of various and sundry old Myaskovsky LPs, but that doesn't relate to the new Svetlanov cycle, though the 2014 recording contains Svetlanov-conducted recordings of 22, 17, 25, 27 from 1971-92, as well as Ivanov's recordings of 16 and 21 from 1950.)

[Mark Thomas]

But returning to Scriabin...

[Amphissa]

Scriabin was a synesthete. More specifically, he sensed musical notes as color, called chromesthesia. (Rimsky-Korsakov was also said to have this sensory trait.)

Anyway, it is only natural that he would then try to convey to audiences this unique experience, by incorporating the visual aspect of color into performance of his music.

Personally, I find this fascinating. Scriabin was the inventor of the concert light show, long before Pink Floyd came along! haha

I really like Scriabin's 1st symphony, and I've bought every recording I've run across over the years. They all suffer some deadly defect -- audio, performance, or some dreadful mezzo warbling. I'd love to hear a splendid (or even just competent) recording of this symphony.

[Jonathan]

On a similar note, the autograph score of Liszt's Dante symphony included instructions for using a wind machine and also some lighting effects. Sadly, he abandoned these ideas (this is mentioned in one of Alan Walker's excellent biographies, not sure which volume though. Come to that, it might even have been the Faust symphony - I will check later on and amend this posting!)

I checked - it might be mentioned in Alan Walker's book but it is certainly in Derek Watson's Master Musicians book.  It does refer to the Dante symphony in that in 1854, while sketching the piece, Liszt considered using lantern slides projected through some form of diorama so that the work would be some sort of audio visual experience (see page 279 of the aforementioned book)

[adriano]

I see, Alan, no sense anymore for me to continue discussing in this thread with you; your hate for Scriabin is indistructible, but discussible. A musicologist could answer you appropriately, but I am not. And you did not even notice that my (impossible) comparison to Handel was intended as a joke - although there is someting in common: music accompanied by light effects.
Thanks, Amphissa, for intrervening :-)

[Alan Howe]

I don't hate Scriabin. I rather like his music - that is, up until his descent into philosophical idiocy; indeed I have all his piano music and orchestral music (except for the Nemtin reconstruction). His PC is actually one of my favourites.

As to whether Scriabin was actually a synesthete, there seems to be some doubt. Wikipedia (not always the most reliable source, I know), has this:

Though Scriabin's late works are often considered to be influenced by synesthesia, a condition wherein one experiences sensation in one sense in response to stimulus in another, it is doubted that Scriabin actually experienced this. His colour system, unlike most synesthetic experience, accords with the circle of fifths: it was a thought-out system based on Sir Isaac Newton's Opticks.

Apologies for not spotting the Handel 'joke'...

[Ilja]

Alan, the one does not necessarily exclude the other. Like most early-20th-century people Scriabin was given to thinking that all reality should be shoehorned into 'systems' of some kind, and he might well have wanted to stylize his personal experiences into something that he could combine with his music. This is speculation of course - but so is virtually everything that I've read about Scriabin's synasthesia.


But Scriabin's descent into megalomania, while personally tragic, is something I find musically interesting. After all, we have a number of composers whose mental turmoil (let's call it that) can be heard through their musical output: Langgaard is one, Rangström another, and one might even include Tchaikovsky. Great creativity probably needs a degree of instability: down-to-earth accountants rarely make for good composers.


Having said that, although I own the Nemtin reconstruction on CD, I really can't get my head around. We should probably experience it in its intended setting, during the apocalypse, played through immense speakers attached to airships.