Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin

Date/Place of Birth:

6 January, 1872 in Moscow, Russia.

Personality:

A slim, elegant and talented composer. He considered alcohol as poison since he drank so much when he was young that he stayed drunken for the rest of his life. Scriabin was obsessively religious and mystical.  Some of his strange habits are: washing hands compulsively; wearing gloves before touching money; spending long time at at the washroom (worrying about wrinkles and baldness).  Besides that, Scriabin's sexual desire was torrid; he left his wife, Vera and their children to live with another woman. He explained to Vera that it was "a sacrifice to art". In his late life, he was said to be insane. He became increasingly self-exalted. He claimed himself as God. He believed that he could fly and even tried to walk on water. His strange personality therefore influenced his own music.

Piano-Playing Style:

Scriabin was a talented virtuoso. Sensitive touch and pedalling was the hallmark of his playing. Unlike Rachmaninoff's clear and precise playing, Scriabin was more emphasized on the colourful kind of pianism and often played with great imaginations. The high demand of various finger touches from his etudes evidently reflects his extremely sensitive and virtuosic playing.

Music:

Scriabin's early works are strongly influenced by Chopin. He loved Chopin's works so much that his waltzes, mazurkas, etudes, preludes and nocturnes are undoubtedly romantic, lyrical and aristocratic - typical Chopinesque style.  However, as Scriabin's personality became increasingly complex, his music was getting more enigmatic and mysterious. His music is futuristic and sounds very dissonant due to his "mystic chords". In addition, it could be erotic sometimes - a long build-up to a sonorous harmonic climax. A typical erotic piece is "The Poem of Ecstasy".  In conclusion, Scriabin's music is termed as "incomprehensible", "enigmatic" and "bombastic" (this term was applied by Stravinsky).

Composing Habit:

During his youth, Scriabin composed his early works in a Chopinesque style. For his later compositions, he applied his self-developed "mystic chords" - C, F-sharp, B-flat, E, A, D.  As he probably suffered from synaesthesia where one could not hear music without seeing colours, he always put his favourite markings like "luminously", "more and more flashing". A typical composition showing his synaesthesic symptom is "Prometheus: The Poem of Fire" (piano, chorus, colour organ with the orchestra). The keys of the colour organ would flash its light in accordance to a particular note. Scriabin composed his Prometheus by using the colours as the following:      C              -  Red      C-sharp     - Violet      D              - Yellow      D-sharp     - Grey (like steel)      E               - Pearly white      F               - Dark red      F-sharp      - Blue      G               - Rosy orange      G-sharp      - Purple      A                - Green      A-sharp       - Grey (like steel)      B                - Pearly blue Other than his "mystic chords", he always put lots of accidentals, fearsome chords, incomprehensible harmonies, strange melodies and trills. He also emphasized that his music should be experienced with multiple senses like sound, sight, smell, feel, colours, religion etc. As a conclusion, Scriabin was undoubtedly one of the most original, mystical and enigmatic composers in 19th Century.

Scriabin's Quote:

"I am God! I am nothing, I'm play, I am freedom, I am life. I am the boundary, I am the peak." Scriabin's insane self-exaltedness "My Tenth Sonata is a sonata of insects. Insects are born from the sun...they are the sun's kisses...How unified world-understanding is when you look at things this way," Scriabin explaining his tenth piano sonata

Scriabin's Death:

On 27 April, 1915, in Moscow, Scriabin died from blood poisoning, and ridiculously, there was a carbuncle on his lip.