{"id":11636,"date":"2022-01-31T11:31:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-31T10:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/?p=162574"},"modified":"2022-01-31T11:47:12","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T10:47:12","slug":"scriabins-messiah-complex-was-he-an-eccentric-or-simply-misunderstood","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/rss_feed\/scriabins-messiah-complex-was-he-an-eccentric-or-simply-misunderstood\/","title":{"rendered":"Scriabin\u2019s Messiah complex: was he an eccentric or simply misunderstood?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Daniel Jaff\u00e9\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Monday, 31 January 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Sc<\/span><\/strong>riabin appears today a perfect example as to why listeners should not confuse a composer\u2019s work with his biography. Once revered, then subsequently reviled both in his own country and abroad, his late Piano Sonatas \u2013 concise, intense and eerily atmospheric \u2013 are now recognised as extraordinary masterpieces ahead of their time.<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n

Did Scriabin<\/span> really believe he was the Messiah?<\/h2>\n

Scriabin<\/a><\/strong> is regularly regarded today, even by several aficionados of the composer, as an embarrassment. This is, above all, for his apparent delusion that he was the Messiah \u2013 a concept seemingly the more ludicrous given his effete, bourgeois appearance and the fact he stood little more than five foot tall.<\/span><\/p>\n

It does not help that by Russia\u2019s pre-Revolutionary Julian calendar (which, by the 20th century, ran 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar used in the rest of Europe), Scriabin was born on Christmas Day. His one-time close friend and biographer Leonid Sabaneyev added to the mythology by carelessly (or mischievously) claiming he died on Easter Day \u2013 Scriabin in fact died more than three weeks later. <\/span><\/p>\n

In 1904, while in Switzerland during his self-imposed exile from Russia, Scriabin admitted to preaching to Swiss peasants on the shore of Lake Geneva while he stood on a boat (having, some wags have added, failed to walk on water). In that same year, he confided to his friend Yulii Engel of his dream of creating an all-embracing Mystery<\/i> \u2018which could replace the old outdated Gospel\u2019. Scriabin, recalled Engel, elaborated: \u2018\u201cA special temple has to be built for it, maybe here,\u201d \u2013 and without looking he took in the panorama of mountains with an undefined gesture \u2013 \u201cbut maybe far from here, in India\u201d.\u2019 This, it appears, was his first confession of his ambition to write his notorious and never fulfilled final magnum opus.<\/span><\/p>\n

Less than a year later, Scriabin was reading HP Blavatsky\u2019s The Key to Theosophy<\/i> in French translation, a book which seemed to further fuel his ambition for his Mystery<\/i> project. Early in 1906, while in Bogliasco on the Italian coast, he met the Marxist philosopher Georgii Plekhanov, who had moved to Italy for the sake of his health. Plekahnov\u2019s wife, Rozaliya, witnessed a lively conversation between her husband and Scriabin during one of their walks; as they approached a bridge, which spanned a river much reduced by the warm weather, the composer claimed that he could jump off the bridge and, through \u2018power of will\u2019, not be dashed on the rocks below, but would float unharmed in mid-air. To which Plekhanov dryly responded, \u2018Try it!\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n

Scriabin did not oblige, though perhaps not simply due to pragmatism overruling a delusional idea. Scriabin and Plekhanov had, in the words of Rozaliya, held their discussions in a \u2018teasing\u2019 and \u2018jocular manner\u2019 and Scriabin\u2019s proposal on the bridge was a Symbolist concept \u2013 an example of the artistic\/philosophical movement by which emotions are expressed by metaphorical images and language. Much later, Plekhanov confessed: \u2018Our daily arguments at every meeting not only did not alienate us from each other, but even contributed a good deal to our mutual closeness.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Clearly there was a strong mutual respect, though their respective philosophies were utterly different \u2013 albeit, both in their different ways wished to find redemption for their fellow men. Plekhanov remembered: \u2018It was very pleasant to dispute with Alexander Nikolaevich [Scriabin] because he had the ability to assimilate his opponent\u2019s thought with surprising speed and fullness. When I met him in Bogliasco, he was completely unacquainted with the materialistic view of history of Marx and Engels. I drew his attention to the important philosophical significance of this view. When I met with him in Switzerland a few months later I saw that, while he had by no means turned into a supporter of historical materialism, he had managed to understand its essence so well that he could work with this doctrine considerably better than many \u201chard-boiled\u201d Marxists both in Russia and abroad.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

It is rather sad, if revealing, that such a testimony came from what might be thought a disinterested source, whereas the most damning portrayal originated from someone who had, for a time, wholeheartedly shared Scriabin\u2019s dreams and outlook in life. Leonid Sabaneyev was a close friend and associate of Scriabin\u2019s in the final five years of the composer\u2019s life, visiting him almost every day. Indeed, the pianist Alexander Goldenweiser, another friend of Scriabin\u2019s, described Sabaneyev as \u2018not just a passionate disciple but, so to speak, a Scriabinite prophet\u2019. <\/span><\/p>\n

A man of considerable intelligence who had had some compositional training, Sabaneyev was in a better position than most to understand Scriabin both as a thinker and as a composer. His biography, Reminiscences of Scriabin<\/i>, offers tantalising glimpses of the final work Scriabin had in mind but failed to commit to paper before his untimely death. This was not the long-planned Mystery<\/i>, which had threatened to overwhelm Scriabin\u2019s creative and intellectual resources, but the Preliminary Action<\/i>, an \u2018interim work\u2019 which his close friend, the symbolist poet Vyacheslav Ivanov, had suggested could be written as preparation for those who would participate in (not merely listen to) the Mystery<\/i>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Sabaneyev wrote: \u2018Alexander Nikolayevich began to play something new, \u201cdifferent\u201d, unfamiliar to me\u2026 It was, I recall, a fairly long episode of ineffable beauty, in the music of which I immediately caught something in common with that same famous prelude, Op.\u00a074 No. 2, which had left such a deep impression in me the previous season\u2026 There were mysterious, lingering harmonies, full of some otherworldly sweetness and sharpness, changing against the background of a static bass in fifths\u2026 The impression of this, perhaps the most powerful of all I had heard from Scriabin, was stronger even than the previous impressions of the Third Symphony, of the Sixth Sonata, of Prometheus<\/i>\u2026\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

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