Alexander Scriabin

Russia, 1885–1915

Russian mystic composer. Moved from Chopinesque Romanticism to his own 'mystic' harmony and the synthesis of music, colour and light in Prometheus, with its part for light organ.

MusicRoots documents 5 artists who influenced Alexander Scriabin and 5 artists Alexander Scriabin influenced in turn. Every connection cites a published source.

Who influenced Alexander Scriabin?

• Frédéric Chopin — Chopin was the pianistic and harmonic model of early Scriabin, from which he launched toward his own mystical language.
• Franz Liszt — Liszt was the model of virtuosity and of the synthesis of the arts that influenced Scriabin's late mystical conception.
• Richard Wagner — Wagner's Tristan chromaticism runs through early-to-middle Scriabin — his Divine Poem pays explicit homage to Tristan on the road to the 'mystic chord'.
• Sergei Taneyev — Scriabin studied counterpoint with Taneyev at the Moscow Conservatory — the contrapuntal discipline beneath his later harmonic flights.
• Anton Arensky — Scriabin studied composition in Arensky's Moscow Conservatory class — though the two clashed, it was his formal compositional training.

Which artists did Alexander Scriabin influence?

• Nikolai Roslavets — Roslavets picked up where Scriabin left off — his 'synthetic chord' method extended Scriabin's mystic-chord harmony into a homegrown post-tonal system.
• Ivan Wyschnegradsky — Scriabin was Wyschnegradsky's 'spiritual master' — a Scriabin-inspired mystical experience compelled him to write in intervals smaller than the semitone.
• Arthur Lourié — Lourié's early piano pieces from 1908 take off from late Scriabin — the springboard for his march toward atonality and futurism.
• Bill Evans — The third, and the most harmonically restless of them.
• Carl Ruggles — The third, and the closest to Sun-treader's slow chromatic burn.