I agree with much of what you write here (though I can't go with you on Le Poème de l'Extase) especially the notion that Skryabin would probably have found new ways of dealing with the situation in which he found himself towards the end of his all too short creative life; the Op/ 74 Préludes seem to suggest as much - almost a new starting point, in fact. That said, I am very conscious that the influence of Chopin pervades all his work, not just the early piecs in which it is perhaps more obviously evident - but then that may in part be due to the fact that I recognise and value Chopin's influence as something rather more extensive than is generally given credit for...

Best,

Alistair

I was under the impression(as a slight defence, and for the record), though I am unable to get access to references at the moment (Wikipedia agrees with me anyway), that Vers la Flamme was initially conceived as the initial section of a sonata, but owing to pressure from his publisher he cut his plans short and published it as a stand-alone piece.

The Seventh Sonata is his greatest achievement as far as I'm concerned, though the Tenth comes not far behind. Both of these seem to me tighter in structure than the ones around them, and more interesting in their themes and figuration.

The Scriabin/Nemtin Universe certainly gives a taste of how his music might have expanded in form beyond the brief late piano pieces, although whether he would actually have got around to writing it himself, however much longer he'd lived, is to my mind questionable - it may be that the late pieces (that's interesting about Vers la flamme, I hadn't come across that before) were in the process of passing through some kind of stylistic bottleneck before some new insight into larger-scale organisation emerged (as in the aphoristic pre-dodecaphonic music of Schoenberg and Webern), which would have had little in common with the principles (such as we understand them) behind the body of work that actually exists.

I'm sure we can agree on other things, too - just not one particular one!

...and Albéniz, Medtner, Granados - and even - er no, let's not mention him...(!)

This is very true but, as you observe, given insufficient credence.

You're right about everything here (Schumann and Chopin were arguably as much at odds as anything else, although it never ceases to surprise me that Chopin seemed so incapable of appreciating what Schumann was doing, even if it did not actually appeal to him personally), except in the case of Liszt, on whom I think Chopin's work exerted a profound influence in his early days but which Liszt later outgrew - or rather grew away from; it is well known that Chopin was greatly excited by Liszt's playing of his Études, but I think that there has been rather less discussion of why it was that Liszt wanted to work at them and what he got out of the experience as a composer.

Yes, perhaps this is indeed the reason - or at least part thereof, as you suggest.

Yes, indeed - and the composer we'd better not mention had similar views about much of the blame here being ascribable to certain kinds of performer when presenting what he called "drawing-room-languishing" Chopin, which he found offensive.

Not by me, they're not! Indeed, one would surely have to have quite a remarkable set of cloth ears not to notice these, would one not?

What you write here is music to my ears! Chopin's music, of course! Whilst it is, of course, largely idle to speculate, since one cannot be certain, I suspect that, had he lived as long as did his near-contemporaries Liszt and Alkan, he would have gon on from the Cello Sonata and composed more chamber music (very pianocentric chamber music, naturally); I can almost imagine him writing a piano quintet in which these two aspects that you mention here are developed way farther - and what price the influence on Fauré then, one may well ask?!

There was a time years ago when I honestly believed this kind of desynchronisation to be both distasteful and unnecessary; whilst it has to be handled with great care in the most appropriate places only and never overdone, I have come to realise that it is in fact important. I remember Ronald Stevenson once gently berating me for my earlier view on this as being one of the more unseemly examples of the narrow-mindedness of the Urtext-fetishist; whilst my reaction was inevitably one of "ouch!", it was said with a broad grin and meant in good part and without malice.

I think you could perhaps copy it there rather than move it there, for it is of considerable relevance here but should be developed, if at all, in the Chopin thread which you started, after all!

Best,

Alistair

No! we do not see any of that. It starts and ends with the mere surface of the music! In respect of form what is really going on is the following.

Hegel said that quantity, growing indefinitely, transcends into quality. Scryabine frequently quoted this dictum to vindicate his theory of "catastrophism." It was for him not only a theoretical postulate, but a manifestation of inner experience. He felt in his own being how this tremendous tension continued to increase until it suddenly brought forth a new state qualitatively different from the preceding. Projecting his inner experience outwardly, he speculated that the entire history of the world also obeyed this evolutionary process of gradual accumulation and growth, that, upon reaching a degree of saturation, must terminate in a world catastrophe, leading in turn to a new evolution, a new increase in tension, and a new crisis. Scryabine associated this philosophy of life with the specific structure of his major works, which to him represented a series of gradual expansions systematically and logically evolving in the direction of a final ecstasy. Indeed, all Scryabine's works beginning with the Third Piano Sonata are built according to a uniform succession of states: languor, longing, impetuous striving, dance, ecstasy, and transfiguration. This outline is basically simple; it is built on a series of upswings, with each successive wave rising higher and higher toward a final effort, liberation, and ecstasy.

To whom was Scryabine closer, Apollo or Dionysus? By definition, all art must be Apollonian, for it requires regulation, rhythm, measure, and self-limitation, leading to a spiritual transfiguration. In this sense, Scryabine was a votary of Apollo Musagetes, the leader of the muses. Indeed, Scryabine was one of the most devout Apollonian builders of the temple of sounds; yet music is a Dionysian art. He possessed an extraordinary capacity for the formulation of his spiritual experience and a willingness to limit himself, to perform a psychological sacrifice, which is the conditio sine qua non of artistic creativity. He knew how to confine himself within fixed limits, to sweep away without pity all that was superfluous, even if artistically valid, for the sake of the symmetry and lucidity of sonorous edifices. Particularly significant in this respect are his last major works, whose fiery nature is contained within the boundaries of a rigid formal structure. In this respect his works are classical in the Hegelian sense of the word; the two elements that are analytically discernible in every work of art--form and content--maintain in Scryabine's music an almost perfect equilibrium, with formal configurations comprising the totality of the content, and with content in turn totally absorbed by form. Hence the extraordinary autonomy of his works, which, like all masterpieces, lead their own independent lives and even counterpose themselves to him, their creator, as separate phenomena. It is thanks to this perfection of form that Scryabine's works possess a transpersonal, superindividual quality.

I often draw fire for saying this, but in my opinion orchestration is definitely a very weak point with Scriabin. I don't mean there's anything bad or wrong about it, but (particularly from the 3rd symphony onwards) the harmonic material he's dealing with is so individual, and increasingly radical, that to me it sounds almost as if it had been "arranged" by another composer, of more conservative inclinations.

So they do in Busoni's Piano Concerto (well, principal trumpet, anyway), but I don't think anyone would accuse the orchestration in that work of sounding as though someone else besides its composer had "arranged" it...

Best,

Alistair