Thoughts on Scriabin's Sixth Sonata

[decryptox]

I basically joined the forum to talk about this piece of music. I feel like I needed to make this post because I cannot find a single piece of literature related to the Sixth Sonata. I am not suggesting that people play it, because I believe like others do that it indeed could be cursed as Scriabin said...if you want to read on please do, and if you do know of anywhere I can read more about the interpretations of the sonata, I would appreciate it!

I recently was introduced to the Black Mass Sonata(No. 9) by Scriabin. This guy walks into the banquet hall where I was practicing and asks if he can listen...after I finish playing he gets up to the piano and I sit down having no idea what he was going to play.

He plays this thing...to me that sounds like a slow swirling orb of fragments and broken glass/boards/metal. I could not hear any type of resemblance of a western voicing in the tune for the entire 10 minutes(dumbfounded!). He tells me it is Scriabin(whom I have never heard before). So later that night, with my mind still blown, I make way down to farmhouse in the middle of the woods I am house sitting for a friend and I start naively researching Scriabin Sonata No. 9. Which I found a recording of rather quickly and also got the sheet for. I am still intrigued at this point but I pass out I think and wake up the next day at the house and begin to research again.

I ended up finding a few different things but eventually stumbled on something that blew my mind even further than the 9th Sonata(keeping in mind that the piece already did a number on me). I am in the middle of the woods at about 6 am in this farmhouse, looking out across a field towards the water(which is about 1/2 a mile away) so plenty of field between me and the water. I am completely fearless about staying out here since I am very logical and strong-willed.

Anyways, I am looking out into this picturesque landscape investigating this new sonata and, keep in mind I practice about 5 hours per day, working on a rather hard Liszt piece at the moment, I study counterpoint, have skipped into Music Theory courses; I know music relatively and can follow passages with a strong intuition of what the composer was interpreting or writing about. Anyhow, the sonata starts with its almost arrogant, ragtimey multiplicative dissonant harmonization process. It sounds as if there is a spirit awakened a troubled one, a confused and ignorant person, or a territorial person with a very low self-image meandering about.

As the tune builds, the 'aura' around the multiple-species voicing(done completely and remarkably on piano) begins to pick up and the sanity level just never comes in, it stays to about an absolute zero, at unfortunately for me, frighteningly sociopathic levels of consciousness. I begin to understand more and more that I am listening to some really brutal material...on the piano ( previously I had thought that Trent Reznor's 'Downward Spiral' album was too dark, but this...).

I really start believe that I am hearing as what other people have described as 'inchoate darkness' (inchoate means undeveloped), and what that basically means to me through personification is that my mind pictures serial killer/Beowulf walking through fields slowly, at ease with his surroundings...completely unafraid and unaware of social precepts and caring about other people, completely bane...and monstrous...maybe beautiful in a childish, unaware
type of way. The only thing that this person is unaware of is how awful they are. This is my best description the type menacing darkness that the Sixth Sonata hints towards. I have experienced true fear from music...I did not believe this was possible. But I believe that this type of darkness, this slowly aimlessly meandering jazzy and visceral darkness that Scriabin created is depicts ultimate danger in more ways than one, and most probably more ways than that. I am completely horrified by this songs arrogance and yet somehow it is interesting...It sounds like the mind of:  literally what human beings would define as a monstrosity in human form.

If you feel this way too, please expand upon this post. I would like to deconstruct this song in order to understand why it inspires such great fear within me.

[philb]

According to popular belief, Scriabin himself was terrified of the 6th sonata and never played it in public, he did however play it often in private. Some believe that Scriabin wrote the 7th sonata to "exorcise" the 6th sonata. I'm not sure how accurate that actually is, but it seems somewhat credible. Interesting quote from Sabaneyev:

“Alexander Nikolayevich preferred the Seventh and played it more frequently. Of the Sixth, he liked to play the second theme and the gloomy, unsettling storm bells, adopting a terrified look on his
face and even expressing with gestures a certain shock, as though confronted by visions of ghastly phantoms”

Besides all that, the 6th is a marvelous work, but sadly often neglected. The greatest recordings I've found would probably be by Richter, as well as Sofronitsky. I would describe it as one of Scriabin's most mysterious works. Fleeting images of a darker, more primal plane of existence. I'd say it is the true "Black Mass" sonata.

[ahinton]

Our member Jonathan Powell's the person ideally suited to answering questons about this, so let's see if he does indeed respond; in the meantime, I moight mention that I heard him give a performance of all ten mnumbered Scriabin sonatas in chronological order, an experience which confers new pespectives on some of them, especially no. 6, since the whole almost comes across as a piece in its own right. Very few pianists have ever attempted this in public recital, however.

Best,

Alistair

[decryptox]

Wow cool thanks for the posts.  I think what I loosely understand about Scriabins late works and maybe some part of voice leading is that he is voicing theses dissonant 9 chords, which are made up of at least 1 or two tritone intervals 'devil in music'. From what I have read a couple places is that the Sixth Sonata voices uses the 'Elektra' chord. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektra_chord. The name stems from the envious Electra in greek mythology. Richard Strauss used the chord in a play also. The atonal voicing of this probably very strong dissonant chord, I think gives this song its horrifying eeriness. It makes me think of Stephen King also.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electra

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Lol I did an essay on this like a month ago for English class.

Have you tried listening to all 10 of his sonatas in order?  It's pretty interesting!  And after that you should try listening to his Poem of fire and his Mysterium.  He tried end the world when he was composing Mysterium.  It's a seven day work that he wanted to be performed on Mt. Everest. but he died of some rare illness that happens to like nobody before he could finish it.

His later works are soo cool!  But when it comes to the sixth, I heard he was afraid to play it.  When his friends would come over, someone would request that he play it, but after a couple of measures, he would freak out and recoil in fear.  So that's why he composed his 7th sonata!  This was supposed to be an exorcism against his 6th sonata, and it's supposed to depict overwhelming power taking flight.  That one is pretty creppy as well though! 

[magic_hands]

I too wrote a short essay on Scriabin, only mine was the semiotics behind the sonatas and how they relate to his own philosophy, specifically analysing his fifth sonata pretty much bar for bar. If you're interested, let me know and I'll send you it