Lydia Jardon

On the verge of the ineffable: Scriabin's Études, between poetry and virtuosity

Born in 1872, Alexander Scriabin died prematurely in 1915 at the age of 43. He was Rachmaninov's pupil at the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied theory and composition with Serge Taneiev and Anton Arenski, and piano with Vasily Safonov. He taught there himself from 1898 to 1905. His life was interspersed with travel and stays, sometimes quite long, abroad. Between 1904 and 1908 he lived in France, Switzerland, Belgium and the USA. In 1907 he took part in Diaghilev's concerts in Paris, alongside several of his Russian contemporaries (Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, Rachmaninov, Blumenfeld). In Brussels he frequented theosophical circles, with which he found a community of ideas, being himself fascinated by spiritualist philosophies and striving to reach a mystical revelation, attitudes representative of Russian symbolism at the time; the same goes for his theories on the relationship between sounds and colours, which he experimented with in his symphonic poem Prometheus or the Poem of Fire, where a "keyboard of lights" is supposed to project onto a screen rays of colours that are supposed to correspond to the harmonies heard simultaneously. The evolution of Scriabin's musical language is directly related to his overall research and aspirations: to exacerbate perception through a maximum intensification of frequency vibrations, by elaborating harmonies that were hitherto unheard of (although direct beginnings can be found in Wagner and above all in Liszt's last works), which gradually abandon classical tonality in favour of a system that looks far ahead to the sound research of the 20th century. These were extended by the Russian avant-garde of the 1920s, with Nikolai Roslavets in the lead.

Scriabin is also an exception among Russian composers in his double refusal to resort to folklore and orientalism, which were two of the mainstays of Russian music, as well as in his lack of interest in vocal music in favour of piano and orchestra alone.

Starting out in a style directly inherited from Chopin and Liszt, Scriabin made extensive use of the small form, producing a series of preludes, etudes, mazurkas and other pieces. But he was also the one who revived the sonata, which had been little used since the middle of the 19th century, with ten works that evolved from the multi-movement form to that of the poem written in one piece.

Scriabin's etudes, grouped together in series, apart from a few isolated pieces or those included in other collections, mark the main stages of his life and his language. Like those of Chopin, and soon of Debussy, they are generally built on a technical and/or expressive formula, paraphrased and developed. Scriabin uses digital virtuosity as much as wrist virtuosity, multiplying rapid and perilous jumps, staccati and hammerings, arpeggios and chords with large gaps (even though he had small hands!), and increasing the difficulties by superimposing different rhythmic values (for example, quintolets in one hand and triplets in the other); this Scriabinian polyrhythm goes in the same direction as the complexity of his harmony, tending to break the established frameworks. Alongside this, a few but remarkable studies are, on the contrary, as with Chopin, devoted not to technique but to the quality of sonorities, phrasing and the enhancement of harmonic metamorphoses.

It is precisely with one of these non-virtuoso pieces that the list of Scriabin's etudes begins chronologically. This Andante in C# minor, Op.2 No.1 (the first of a small tryptic in which it is followed by a Prelude and an Impromptu), which by its gravity would be more akin to a nocturne, or even better to a meditation, is dated 1887. The composer is therefore a fifteen-year-old teenager, and knowing this, one is all the more struck by the promising richness of his harmonies.

Seven years later (1894), the series of twelve Études op.8 is the work of a young master already well into the first period of his creative life. In the meantime, the ten Mazurkas op.3, the Allegro appassionato op.4 and above all the 1st Sonata op.6 were composed. A cycle that immediately raises the question of his tonal path. Two particularities can be observed here: firstly, an equal number of pieces in major and minor, though without any alternation principle, and secondly, Scriabin begins, for the first six, to follow the circle of fifths in reverse (C#, F#, B minor, then B major, E, A), the tonal order becoming freer from the 7th on.

After the first study, Allegro, which is both well-paced and light, with triplets bouncing off their first two repeated chords, passing from the right to the left hand and set with counter-chants, the second, marked A capriccio, con forza, is all polyrhythmic, but its indication also reminds us that these interlacing chords should not be blurred but rather highlight their irregularity; The character of the piece is further accentuated by some surprisingly Hispanic turns of phrase, which are an exception in Scriabin. The swell of the 3rd Tempestoso, in which both hands work in staggered octaves around the pivot of the index finger, gives rise successively to a frenzied dance rhythm and then a soothing cantilena. Constant polyrhythm again in N°4 Piacevole, but in finer and more lyrical garlands than in N°2. One of the most seductive of the cycle, No. 5 Brioso in E major, with its very Chopinian accents, requires rapid and airy movements, before tightening in its second part on triplets. We remain in the wake of Chopin with the 6th Con grazia, in a sequence of sixths in the right hand. The anguished No. 7 Presto tenebroso, agitato, is an etude for the left hand, with broken arpeggio triplets, embracing large intervals, and dropping the right-hand chords on the last note; the slower middle section features a chorale blurred by muffled low octave rumbles. At rest is the Lento of the 8th in A flat major, a study in harmonies, whose chords become more linked and animated in the last part, which acts as a variation. The culmination of the cycle is the 9th Alla ballata, in D# minor, unforgiving for the performer's wrist, where everything is in leaps and cascades of octaves and chords, as perilous for precision as for the athletic endurance they require; as in No. 7, the central episode is in chorale, with the rhythm accentuated by the anticipation of the bass.

The 10th Allegro etude is not much easier, but it uses difficulties of a different nature, running thirds in the right hand and huge strides in the left. One may like to compare it with the studies similarly devoted to thirds by Chopin (op.25 No.6) and Debussy (No.2)... A second meditative pause is provided by No.11 in B flat minor, Andante cantabile, whose melody, with the falling fourth of its first incision, has prompted comparisons among some Russian musicologists with the intonations of popular song, which are nevertheless unusual for Scriabin. The crowning achievement is the famous etude in D# minor, Patetico, a brief epic ballad in which comparisons with Chopin once again arise, evoking both his Revolutionary etude and his 24th prelude in D minor.

As important in their place in Scriabin's oeuvre as the preceding cycle, the eight Études, Op.42, date from 1903, and immediately precede the 3rd Symphony Divin Poème in his catalogue. There is an evolution in the language, which accentuates the harmonic and dynamic procedures observed earlier, a lesser presence of Chopin's legacy, but sometimes, nevertheless, a look backwards, expressed in beautiful melodic inspirations of the best 19th century.

No. 1 Presto (D flat major) finds the author's signature superimpositions of rhythms. In a 3/4 bar, the right hand plays in eighth-note triplets and the left hand in quintuplets of quarter notes, all over wide intervals, with returns of altered notes on natural notes. The very brief No. 2 is unusual in that it has no verbal tempo specification, replaced by a simple metronomic indication: 112 on the quarter note; a motif initiated by a dotted rhythm is grafted onto quintuplets in the left hand. The enigmatic terseness of this page seems to announce Prokofiev's forthcoming Fugitive Visions. Also very short, but because of its rapidity (Prestissimo, F# major), No.3 is sometimes nicknamed "The Gnat": a quivering of measured trills, exchanged between the two hands, remaining constantly in the high register of the keyboard, in an impalpable finesse of texture - a real chiselled jewel! With No. 4, which remains in the same key, we find one of Scriabin's few lyrical studies (Andante), which in terms of content is somewhere between a romance and a nocturne. A welcome respite before attacking N°5 (Affanato, C# minor), the absolute summit of the cycle and perhaps of all the studies of the master, who frequently played it in his recitals. (Allegretto). It is an authentic poem, even more than an etude in the pedagogical sense of the term. Above a rumble of arpeggios, a restless, jolting, obsessive theme emerges, escaping in a few flights of fancy. In response, a magnificent melody rises, vibrant, passionate, and the emotional climate it creates suddenly brings Scriabin closer to his fellow student, his junior by a year, Serge Rachmaninov; this impression is further reinforced by the varied recapitulation, with an increase in sound density and the bell-like effect of the powerful swinging of chords in the bass. The 6th etude (Esaltato, D flat major) seems to contain in the contours of its theme some reminiscences of both the previous etude and the 2nd in this collection. The 7th (Agitato, F minor) is again a short page, probably less remarkable musically, and more specifically didactic: a continuous formula of arpeggios, in descending-rising sixteenth notes in the left hand, and another difficulty in the right hand, where triplets work on the spacing of the fingers (alternately two-fifths, thumb) around the intervals of sixths. The last etude (Allegro, E flat major), in ABA form, begins in the manner of an impromptu; between two parts of a rapid, repetitive movement, the central episode suddenly offers the contrast of a chorale, evolving into a very vocal melodic declamation, with a phrase that seems to come out of a hieratic opera arioso.

As if lost among two opuses that bring together pieces of various names, are the two very short Études op.49 N°1 (1905) and op.56 N°4 (1908). The first, with no tempo indication but marked 152 on the quarter note, offers the exception of a rigorous homophony between the two hands, on spasmodic cells of abbreviated triplets (two notes followed by a silence). The second, Presto, is quite simple in conception and is a race punctuated by bursts of rhythmic chords requiring rapid arpeggi.

Scriabin's final collection of etudes plunges us into the heart of his last period. After his symphonic poem Prometheus (1910), he wrote only for the piano. The three Études, Op. 65, completed in 1912, have the particularity of being composed from an interval, respectively the ninth, the seventh and the fifth. The first is one of the most dreaded because of the strain it places on the extensor muscles. It is known that its sequence of ninths made it unplayable for its author, whose hands were too small! It offers, as is common in Scriabin's work, a constant irregularity of speech, alternating dizzying surges and outbursts with slowdowns and pauses in the chords. A certain lightening is brought by the 2nd study, mostly maintained on piano nuances, but harmonically just as harsh, due to the omnipresence of the 7th major. The whole cycle can be likened to a short sonata in three movements, with an initial Allegro, a second movement (Allegretto) in half-tones, and then a Molto vivace finale, whose twists and turns soon unleash a power of energy, in leaps and fluttering chords, which reminds us once again of the extent to which the element of fire has always been organically linked to Scriabin's nature.

André Lischke