Sonata No. 3 (Scriabin)
Encyclopedia
The Piano Sonata No. 3 in F sharp minor, Op. 23
, by Alexander Scriabin
was composed between 1897 and 1898. The piece is one of Scriabin's early piano sonata
s, but does exhibit some modernistic traits.
at Odessa
, Scriabin and his wife went to Paris
, where he started to work on the new sonata
. Scriabin is said to have called the finished work "Gothic", evoking the impression of a ruined castle. Some years later however, he invented a different programme
for this sonata and entitled it States of the Soul:
Together with Camille Saint-Saëns
and Edvard Grieg
, Scriabin is one of the few composers from the Romantic era to have left a recorded legacy. He recorded this sonata on piano rolls for Hupfeld-Phonola (German maker of Player Piano
s) before 1912. This recording includes some deviations from the printed music. Many of the sonatas were also recorded by Scriabin’s son-in-law Vladimir Sofronitsky
(1901–61). Other notable recordings include those by Emil Gilels
, Vladimir Horowitz
and Evgeny Kissin
.
linkage of the other three movements, and may thus be superfluous to the formal construction, it fulfills a psychological and programmatic function by offering some (‘illusory’) respite. In fact by the application of strict classical form to his late Romantic
indulgences, such as overwrought polyphonic
complexities and excessive chromaticization of tonal harmony, Scriabin succeeds in preventing the disintegration and fragmentation of his musical language.
The sonata consist of four movements, typically spanning 18 minutes in performance.
. Even the start of the development section is politely marked by a double-line. Exposition
, development
and recapitulation
are all of about the same length, the development falls neatly into two twenty-bar sections and the dividing point (bb. 74/75) is almost exactly the center of the movement. The phrase lengths of the exposition are: three times eight bars (first theme and bridge), three times six bars (second theme) and three times four bars (closing section). Equally controlled are the tonal relationships: The bridge modulates to the relative major, the exposition ends in A major
and the recapitulation of the second theme is in F-sharp major - all very typical of sonata form.
This very solid exterior is brimful of mind-boggling polyphonic extravagances. The opening of the development combines the two themes by winding the first one round the second. This complex texture is eventually condensed into a chromatic scale (the second theme) and an abbreviation of the first theme, maniacally repeated with ferocious abandon.
Another tool, employed in the establishment of a unifying Affekt is the use of a characteristic rhythmic motif
which (not unlike a Baroque
dance) permeates each movement with elementary energy. The Drammàtico indication of the first movement should not be mistaken for drama
in the Classical idea of the word. No clash of contrasting characters is effected. Instead we have the flaring up of an explosive rhythmic gesture, repeated ad nauseam: "Drammàtico" is not a progressive development, it is an unchangeable attribute, a "state of the soul".
memory of the Drammàtico theme, and in the Maestoso
restatement of the Andante theme as the ecstatic climax of the finale. Russian composers such as Tchaikovsky
or Rachmaninoff
often restated the lyric theme of the finale movement as climactic coda (for example in the piano concertos). Scriabin shows more boldness in using the "slow" movement’s theme, and this may have led to further experiments with a condensation of form in the next two sonatas. The outlay of the two movements from Sonata No. 4
appears to be closely related to the last two movements from No. 3 and the climax of the Prestissimo volando movement (Focosamente, giubiloso) is an ecstatic version of the Andante’s main theme (dolcissimo). A further condensation into a one-single-movement sonata has taken place in the 5th sonata, and—again—the climax (estatico) is a restatement of the Languido theme (dolcissimo).
, the modernistic traits in Scriabin can be seen as a result of using more and more radical means to express Romantic ideas. The compression of the finale’s theme in its conclusive triple statement (signaling the "plunge of the soul into the abyss of non being") does not sound Romantic anymore.
After this ending one somehow expects to hear the "Drammàtico" opening of the first movement again. Scriabin (who indulged in theosophical speculation) has created a "cosmic cycle" by opening and concluding the sonata with a very similar energetic signal. In a performance of the Andante from this sonata Scriabin is alleged to have exclaimed: "Here the stars are singing!"
With the final appearance of the slow movement's theme at the end of the finale, Scriabin builds up anticipation of a grand ending in F-sharp major, and then frustrates our expectations, ending the work bleakly.
Opus number
An Opus number , pl. opera and opuses, abbreviated, sing. Op. and pl. Opp. refers to a number generally assigned by composers to an individual composition or set of compositions on publication, to help identify their works...
, by Alexander Scriabin
Alexander Scriabin
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist who initially developed a lyrical and idiosyncratic tonal language inspired by the music of Frédéric Chopin. Quite independent of the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed an increasingly atonal musical system,...
was composed between 1897 and 1898. The piece is one of Scriabin's early piano sonata
Piano sonata
A piano sonata is a sonata written for a solo piano. Piano sonatas are usually written in three or four movements, although some piano sonatas have been written with a single movement , two movements , five or even more movements...
s, but does exhibit some modernistic traits.
Background
Scriabin had been married to a young pianist, Vera Ivanovna Isaakovich, in August 1897. Having given the first performance of his Piano ConcertoPiano Concerto (Scriabin)
The Piano Concerto in F sharp minor, Op. 20, is an early work of the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin composed in 1896. Written when he was 24, it was his first work for orchestra and is the only concerto that he wrote...
at Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
, Scriabin and his wife went to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, where he started to work on the new sonata
Piano sonata
A piano sonata is a sonata written for a solo piano. Piano sonatas are usually written in three or four movements, although some piano sonatas have been written with a single movement , two movements , five or even more movements...
. Scriabin is said to have called the finished work "Gothic", evoking the impression of a ruined castle. Some years later however, he invented a different programme
Program music
Program music or programme music is a type of art music that attempts to musically render an extra-musical narrative. The narrative itself might be offered to the audience in the form of program notes, inviting imaginative correlations with the music...
for this sonata and entitled it States of the Soul:
Together with Camille Saint-Saëns
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
and Edvard Grieg
Edvard Grieg
Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt , and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces.-Biography:Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in...
, Scriabin is one of the few composers from the Romantic era to have left a recorded legacy. He recorded this sonata on piano rolls for Hupfeld-Phonola (German maker of Player Piano
Player Piano
Player Piano, author Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, was published in 1952. It is a dystopia of automation and capitalism, describing the dereliction they cause in the quality of life. The...
s) before 1912. This recording includes some deviations from the printed music. Many of the sonatas were also recorded by Scriabin’s son-in-law Vladimir Sofronitsky
Vladimir Sofronitsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Sofronitsky was a Russian pianist, best known as an interpreter of the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin, whose daughter he married.-Biography:Vladimir Sofronitsky was born to a physics teacher father and a mother from an artistic family...
(1901–61). Other notable recordings include those by Emil Gilels
Emil Gilels
Emil Grigoryevich Gilels was a Soviet pianist, widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century.His last name is sometimes transliterated Hilels.-Biography:...
, Vladimir Horowitz
Vladimir Horowitz
Vladimir Samoylovich Horowitz was a Russian-American classical virtuoso pianist and minor composer. His technique and use of tone color and the excitement of his playing were legendary. He is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century.-Life and early...
and Evgeny Kissin
Evgeny Kissin
Evgeny Igorevitch Kissin is a Russian classical pianist and former child prodigy. He has been a British citizen since 2002. He is especially known for his interpretations of the works of the Romantic repertoire, particularly Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt.-Biography:Kissin was born in Moscow to...
.
Structure and content
Interestingly this sonata exhibits many conservative and modernistic traits at the same time. Yet Scriabin has managed to give it a convincingly unified appearance. Even though the scherzo-like Allegretto movement with its jaunty left-hand rhythm is not included in the cyclic formCyclic form
Cyclic form is a technique of musical construction, involving multiple sections or movements, in which a theme, melody, or thematic material occurs in more than one movement as a unifying device. Sometimes a theme may occur at the beginning and end Cyclic form is a technique of musical...
linkage of the other three movements, and may thus be superfluous to the formal construction, it fulfills a psychological and programmatic function by offering some (‘illusory’) respite. In fact by the application of strict classical form to his late Romantic
Romantic music
Romantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from 1810 to 1900....
indulgences, such as overwrought polyphonic
Polyphony
In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....
complexities and excessive chromaticization of tonal harmony, Scriabin succeeds in preventing the disintegration and fragmentation of his musical language.
The sonata consist of four movements, typically spanning 18 minutes in performance.
Drammatico
The first movement, for example, is written in extraordinarily well-balanced sonata formSonata form
Sonata form is a large-scale musical structure used widely since the middle of the 18th century . While it is typically used in the first movement of multi-movement pieces, it is sometimes used in subsequent movements as well—particularly the final movement...
. Even the start of the development section is politely marked by a double-line. Exposition
Exposition (music)
In musical form and analysis, exposition is the initial presentation of the thematic material of a musical composition, movement, or section. The use of the term generally implies that the material will be developed or varied....
, development
Musical development
In European classical music, musical development is a process by which a musical idea is communicated in the course of a composition. It refers to the transformation and restatement of initial material, and is often contrasted with musical variation, which is a slightly different means to the same...
and recapitulation
Recapitulation
Recapitulation may refer to:* Recapitulation , a section of musical sonata form where the exposition is repeated in an altered form and the development is concluded...
are all of about the same length, the development falls neatly into two twenty-bar sections and the dividing point (bb. 74/75) is almost exactly the center of the movement. The phrase lengths of the exposition are: three times eight bars (first theme and bridge), three times six bars (second theme) and three times four bars (closing section). Equally controlled are the tonal relationships: The bridge modulates to the relative major, the exposition ends in A major
A major
A major is a major scale based on A, with the pitches A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. Its key signature has three sharps.Its relative minor is F-sharp minor and its parallel minor is A minor...
and the recapitulation of the second theme is in F-sharp major - all very typical of sonata form.
This very solid exterior is brimful of mind-boggling polyphonic extravagances. The opening of the development combines the two themes by winding the first one round the second. This complex texture is eventually condensed into a chromatic scale (the second theme) and an abbreviation of the first theme, maniacally repeated with ferocious abandon.
Another tool, employed in the establishment of a unifying Affekt is the use of a characteristic rhythmic motif
Motif (music)
In music, a motif or motive is a short musical idea, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition....
which (not unlike a Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
dance) permeates each movement with elementary energy. The Drammàtico indication of the first movement should not be mistaken for drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
in the Classical idea of the word. No clash of contrasting characters is effected. Instead we have the flaring up of an explosive rhythmic gesture, repeated ad nauseam: "Drammàtico" is not a progressive development, it is an unchangeable attribute, a "state of the soul".
Allegretto
In a similar way the constant repeats of the Baroque-like sixteenth-note triplets in the middle section of the Allegretto create the "state of gracefulness".Andante
A more Romantic idea is the use of cyclic form in linking the two last movements by a pianissimoDynamics (music)
In music, dynamics normally refers to the volume of a sound or note, but can also refer to every aspect of the execution of a given piece, either stylistic or functional . The term is also applied to the written or printed musical notation used to indicate dynamics...
memory of the Drammàtico theme, and in the Maestoso
Maestoso
Maestoso is an Italian musical term and is used to direct performers to play a certain passage of music in a stately, dignified and majestic fashion or, it is used to describe music as such. The term is commonly used in relatively slow pieces; however, there are numerous examples - such as the...
restatement of the Andante theme as the ecstatic climax of the finale. Russian composers such as Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
or Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
often restated the lyric theme of the finale movement as climactic coda (for example in the piano concertos). Scriabin shows more boldness in using the "slow" movement’s theme, and this may have led to further experiments with a condensation of form in the next two sonatas. The outlay of the two movements from Sonata No. 4
Sonata No. 4 (Scriabin)
The Piano Sonata No. 4 in F sharp major, Op. 30, was written by Alexander Scriabin in 1903. It consists of two movements, Andante and Prestissimo volando, and is the shortest of Scriabin's sonatas ....
appears to be closely related to the last two movements from No. 3 and the climax of the Prestissimo volando movement (Focosamente, giubiloso) is an ecstatic version of the Andante’s main theme (dolcissimo). A further condensation into a one-single-movement sonata has taken place in the 5th sonata, and—again—the climax (estatico) is a restatement of the Languido theme (dolcissimo).
Presto con fuoco
Not unlike WagnerRichard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
, the modernistic traits in Scriabin can be seen as a result of using more and more radical means to express Romantic ideas. The compression of the finale’s theme in its conclusive triple statement (signaling the "plunge of the soul into the abyss of non being") does not sound Romantic anymore.
After this ending one somehow expects to hear the "Drammàtico" opening of the first movement again. Scriabin (who indulged in theosophical speculation) has created a "cosmic cycle" by opening and concluding the sonata with a very similar energetic signal. In a performance of the Andante from this sonata Scriabin is alleged to have exclaimed: "Here the stars are singing!"
With the final appearance of the slow movement's theme at the end of the finale, Scriabin builds up anticipation of a grand ending in F-sharp major, and then frustrates our expectations, ending the work bleakly.
Further reading
- Scriabin, Alexander. Complete Piano Sonatas. 1964 Muzyka score republished in 1988 by New York: Dover PublicationsDover PublicationsDover Publications is an American book publisher founded in 1941 by Hayward Cirker and his wife, Blanche. It publishes primarily reissues, books no longer published by their original publishers. These are often, but not always, books in the public domain. The original published editions may be...
. ISBN 0-486-25850-5.