a

[antichrist]

Scriabin is God!Why not Scriabin! - a ps member

listen to his early music first , normally you won't understand his late music

[kay3087]

Understand what? One either likes what one hears, or doesn't. It's music, you shouldn't have to "understand" anything. Even Gould admitted that while he palavered endlessly on Schoenberg.

[viking]

One could view music as a means of speech, or communicating a multitude of different emotions, sensations, perceptions, situations, etc... and composers as different langauges.
Much like the similarities of certain languages or dialects, different composers have similar and different styles in varying levels of dissimilarity.
I suppose one who hears Schoenberg for the first time has an equal right not to understand as one who hears cantonese or latin for the first time, depending on the person's native language.

It would then be ignorant to assume that

One either likes what one hears, or doesn't. It's music, you shouldn't have to "understand" anything.

I suppose the first part of your sentence is actually true, but that can be said about any of the senses.
I like cookies, like smelling coffee, etc..
However, music is a language, spoken and written.  One unfamilliar with Berg would be ignorant to dislike the Sonata Op.1 just as one would also be ignorant to dislike good poetry in an unfamilliar language.

And for the record, Scriabin is God.

Best,

Sam

[weissenberg2]

Heh.  I'm a huge Richter fan (I've thousands of his wonderful recordings)... but I cannot share your enthusiasm for his Bach Preludes and Fugues.

Anyway...I can't understand how anyone fails to appreciate the colour in Horowitz's Scriabin.

His C-sharp minor from book 1 is magical.

For people who say Scriabin is God, is that in reference to how he thought he was the messiah?

[lontano]

His C-sharp minor from book 1 is magical.

For people who say Scriabin is God, is that in reference to how he thought he was the messiah?

When I first listened to Richter's WTC I had misgivings, but my (elderly) early and latter-day piano teacher begged me to obtain it for her (she loved it), and when I made tapes of the records for her (she wasn't able to fumble with LPs) and she was ecstatic. We went through the score (at the piano) as we explored her favorites. She taught me Bartok over Bach as a child, and now near the end of her life she was teaching me Bach via Richter, and via that exchange I too learned to love Richter and his WTC recording.

As for Scriabin and his grandiose beliefs that his music and ideologies would lift himself and all his followers to a new strata of human consciousness, it was a noble fantasy, and one, combined with musicians worldwide, that I hope could someday make a dent in humanity's constant violence against itself and the Earth that supports us. Scriabin had an idea, totally self-absorbed, but many musicians have worked on less grandiose efforts to some effect.

Just imagine if Scriabin had created his dream work up in the "mountains of Shangra-La". Would we all be worshiping Scriabin and his potential works of music? He was a fascinating and gifted composer, but if you read his biography (by Faubion Bowers), you see him as a rather poor yet upbeat character, virtually unknown outside Russia, especially in his latter years (and he died from an infected pimple at age 43 I believe!). A very interesting read, for sure, but it profiles the man as just that: a man, not a god, nor a widely respected musician until quite a few years after his death (alas, the legacy of may a great artist).

But I'm glad his music lives on!

Lontano