Alexander Skrjabin: Werk und Gedankenwelt (review)

Hard on the heels of the German translation of Leonid Sabaneyev's 1925 reminiscences of Skryabin (reviewed in Music & Letters, 87 (2006), 471-3) comes the influential study that originally preceded them, this one more focused on works and style than on the man. Together the two volumes are responsible for many of the received ideas about Skryabin, especially concerning the late works in the approach to the unrealized Mysterium, and although those ideas have long been overdue for critical reassessment, they are by no means the most far-fetched or fantastical in circulation. Indeed the most attractive side of Sabaneyev's writing is his refusal to idolize or demonize his subject, even if, for all its claimed stance of objectivity (p. 5, from the Foreword to the revised edition), the volume under review leans more heavily towards romantic hagiography than the later reminiscences. Implicit is the conviction that the author is acting as a mouthpiece for the composer, even if that occasionally entails preempting criticism by admitting to a degree of self-delusion on Skryabin's part.

Werk und Gedankenwelt is the translator publisher's addition; the original study was simply entitled Skryabin. The subtitle represents an understandable concern to bring focus to a study that ultimately has rather less to offer than its author's proximity to the composer in his later years would seem to promise. By modern standards there is a woolliness to Sabaneyev's thought that becomes the more infuriating as his florid assertions are repeated. His bolder generalizations regarding, say, Skryabin's indebtedness to, yet distinctness from, Chopin (pp. 9-11), or his discomfort with writing for orchestra (pp. 152-76), were doubtless thought-provoking at the time, but nowadays they register for the most part as little better than truisms. Worth drawing attention to, nevertheless, are his remarks on Skryabin's style of performance, some of which lie outside the chapter on 'Skryabin as Pianist', buried deep in the examination of 'Creative Principles' and not easy of access since there is no index. The comments on notation versus interpretation, rhythm versus metre, and above all Skryabin's consistent imprecision, may not be strictly verifiable or even all that valuable to performers in any prescriptive sense (one of Sabaneyev's unrealized dreams was an edition of the piano music with Skryabin's own dynamic nuances as performer added; p. 151). But they are worthwhile as pointers to the kind of small-scale freedom allied to longer-term strictness that one hears in some early Russian Skryabin recordings, and they are boldly (if somewhat cavalierly) linked to observations on phrase-structure and schematic large-scale design (pp. 94-9), as Sabaneyev steers towards his vision of Skryabin's art as perfection of complicated details allied to overall gem-like transparency and simplicity (p. 111).

The book's structure is again more elegant in prospect than in actuality. Sabaneyev's first chapter is a level-headed presentation of Skryabin's career, running chronologically through the major works. This is followed by a separate examination of the concept of the Mysterium, then by three chapters examining the background to that concept in more detail ('The Orphic Path', 'Synthesis of the Arts', 'Skryabin's Creative Principles and their Evolution'). A central chapter follows on Skryabin's harmony, setting out Sabaneyev's view of its derivation from the overtone series and its problematic relationship with equal-tempered tuning. The remainder of the book works upwards again via 'Skryabin as Pianist', through his piano and orchestral works to a separate discussion of the 'Light Symphony' (Prometheus), leaving the reader back at the threshold of the Mysterium. All well and good, except that the arguments along the way are so loose and discursive that one starts to sympathize with those Soviet critics on the proletarian wing in the mid-1920s whose attacks on Sabaneyev-directed at his elitist tastes, rather than his presentation of them-provoked him into permanent exile from 1926.

Sabaneyev concludes...