Scriabin Piano Sonata No.5, Op.58

Alexander Scriabin (1871 – 1915) – Piano Sonata No.5

“I call you to life, mysterious forces!

Drowned in the obscure depths

of the creative spirit, timid

Embryos of life, to you I bring audacity!”

Like a mystical, primal force in the void darkness of the cosmos, a shocking sforzando explosion followed immediately by a veiled yet eccentric, rumbling sotto voce tremolo in the low register of the piano launches Scriabin’s Fifth Sonata into motion. A violent, bursting motif in the right hand accelerates and spirals uncontrollably upward as if it were sucked into a vortex and abruptly vanish into silence again. This opening is marked “Allegro. Impetuoso. Con stravaganza” - imprudent, unrestrained, extraordinary, with eccentricity.

Scriabin called the Fifth Sonata ‘a grand poem for piano’, with his original poetry explicitly prefixed to the score. Inspired by his recent orchestral composition, “Poem of Ecstasy”, this sonata creates rich sonorities and vibrant color worlds that are orchestral in scope and brings alive Scriabin’s visions of the unconscious mind, its sensuous longing, the raw mystical power of the spirit, and the transcendent experience of creating and recreating the universe from a state of dark desolation and languor to a thirst for life, to ultimately a brilliant, dazzling light of blissful ecstasy – all in an endless repeating cycle.

Scriabin’s usage of the term, poème, refers to the unity of music and verbal text, which he incorporates throughout the sonata. After the initial fantastical opening, tiny sparkles of color are born into the emptiness of the universe. Marked ‘languidly’, the tiredness and static inertia gradually give way to moments of sensuous desire, yearning, and life force energy. A rising motif is marked “with desire” and another falling motif is marked “caressingly, fawningly”. This increasing intensity accelerates quietly and suspends briefly in bar of rest, before launching into a brilliantly colorful presto con allegrezza, bubbling with joy of life and passion of the spirit. The staccato melody is constantly rising and urging to fly upwards with an uncontrollable lifting energy. After a climatic moment with trumpet calls marked “imperiously”, the forward motion relaxes to a sensuous “accarezzevole, caressingly” with pleading, seductive harmonies and chromaticism. A short motif “allegro fantastico” reintroduces the impatient, wild energy of the spirit, before launching into a presto tumultoso esaltato, “exalted, jubilant, rapturous, ecstatic happiness”.

The development builds off these themes to blossom in to a passionate statement of the “accarezzevole” material, and the recapitulation takes on the same cycle to arrive finally at a blissful, exuberant state of ecstasy. In its final moment, the music returns to the sweeping opening gesture and vanishes as abruptly as it began – creating an unresolved feeling as if the ending is a new beginning, perhaps illustrating the cyclical nature of creation. Scriabin’s imaginative and bold Fifth Sonata creates an overwhelmingly raw, powerful, mystical, transcendent, colorful, sensuous, frightening, wild, fantastical experience. He sets down in prose to aid the understanding of the Poème d’Extase:

“You have heard my mysterious summons, ye hidden powers of life, and now you stir; the wave of my being, light as a dream, has touched the world./ To life, to light! I awaken you to life with my acts of tenderness, with the mysterious attraction of my promises./ I summon you to life, ye secret drives submerged in the chaos of perceptions. Rise up from the mysterious depths of the creative spirit./ Like unto me shall you strive to help everyone and everything around you to supreme evolution. For everything is your creation, just as everything that exists is my creation. You and I – we are gods! We shall conquer hatred and death, boundless joy shall reign. Life shall flow onward like a shimmering and gleaming stream.”

Poetry at 3:15, music at 4:25