Sonata No. 3 (Scriabin)
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Sonata No. 3 in F# minor, op. 23 by Alexander Scriabin was completed in the summer of 1898.
[edit] Historic background
Scriabin had been married to a young pianist, Vera Ivanovna Isaakovich, in August 1897. Having given the first performance of his Piano Concerto op. 20 (written 1896) at Odessa, Scriabin and his wife went to Paris, where he started to work on the new sonata.
Some years later Scriabin invented a programme for this sonata and entitled it States of the Soul:
"[The first movement (Drammàtico) shows] the soul, free and wild, thrown into the whirlpool of suffering and strife. [The second movement (Allegretto) offers an] apparent momentary and illusory respite; tired from suffering the soul wants to forget, wants to sing and flourish, in spite of everything… But the light rhythm, the fragrant harmonies are just a cover through which gleams the restless and languishing soul. "[The third movement (Andante) can be compared to] a sea of feelings, tender and sorrowful: Love, sorrow, vague desires, inexplicable thoughts, illusions of a delicate dream. "[The finale (Presto con fuoco) is described by Scriabin] From the depth of being rises the fearsome voice of creative man whose victorious song resounds triumphantly. But too weak yet to reach the acme he plunges, temporarily defeated, into the abyss of non being."[1]
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 Pianos) before 1912. This recording includes some deviations from the printed music. The complete sonatas were also recorded by Scriabin’s son-in-law Vladimir Sofronitsky (1901-61).
[edit] Romantic traits
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 form 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 first movement, for example, is written in extraordinarily well-balanced sonata form. 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 properly modulates to the relative major, the exposition properly ends in A major and the recapitulation properly recapitulates F# minor.
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 (affect) is the use of a characteristic rhythmic motif which (not unlike in 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.’
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.’
A more Romantic idea is the use of cyclic form in linking the two last movements by a ‘pianissimo’ 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).
Not unlike Wagner, 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!"
[edit] Notes
- ^ Quoted after Lev Vasilyevich Danilevich, b.1912, Russian musicologist
