The Piano Sonata No. 5, Op. 53, is a work written by

Alexander Scriabin Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (; russian: Александр Николаевич Скрябин ; – ) was a Russian composer and virtuoso pianist. Before 1903, Scriabin was greatly influenced by the music of Frédéric Chopin and composed ...

in 1907. This was his first

sonata Sonata (; Italian: , pl. ''sonate''; from Latin and Italian: ''sonare'' rchaic Italian; replaced in the modern language by ''suonare'' "to sound"), in music, literally means a piece ''played'' as opposed to a cantata (Latin and Italian ''cant ...

to be written in one movement, a format he retained from then on. A typical performance lasts from 11 to 12 minutes. The work is considered to be one of Scriabin's most difficult compositions, both technically and musically.

Composition

After finishing his symphonic poem ''Le Poème de l'Extase'', Op.54, Scriabin did not feel comfortable living in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

. In early September 1907 he wrote:

Life is fearfully expensive, and the climate is rotten. The air in the areas where we could find an apartment big enough for us at a reasonable price is frightful ... you cannot make any noise. You have to wear house slippers after 10 at night.

Scriabin decided to go to live in Lausanne with his pregnant wife Tatyana,She would give birth to their son Julian in February 1908. since he found the place to be cheaper, quieter, and healthier, and only 7 hours away from Paris. Also, he had his music being printed there, as he had recently broken his long-term partnership with publisher M.P. Belaieff due to financial discrepancies.Faubion Bowers: Scriabin, a Biography, second edition. 1996. Pages 174 and following. In his new peaceful household in ''Edifice C Place de la Harpe'',Nowadays Avenue de la Harpe 14. Scriabin could play the piano without fear of complaints from neighbours, and soon began to compose again, alongside the revisions he was making to the score of ''Le Poème''. On 8 December, Tatyana wrote to a friend:

We go out a little, having caught up on our sleep. We begin to look normal again. Sasha even has begun to compose – 5th Sonata!!! I cannot believe my ears. It is incredible! That sonata pours from him like a fountain. Everything you have heard up to now is as nothing. You cannot even tell it is a sonata. Nothing compares to it. He has played it through several times, and all he has to do is to write it down ...

In late December, Scriabin wrote to Morozova about the imminent completion of his new work:

The Poem of Ecstasy took much of my strength and taxed my patience. ... Today I have almost finished my 5th Sonata. It is a big poem for piano and I deem it the best composition I have ever written. I do not know by what miracle I accomplished it ...

Although the actual writing took only six days, from 8 to 14 December 1907, some ideas had been conceived much earlier. The initial nine bars of the first theme of the

exposition Exposition (also the French for exhibition) may refer to: *Universal exposition or World's Fair *Expository writing **Exposition (narrative) *Exposition (music) *Trade fair * ''Exposition'' (album), the debut album by the band Wax on Radio *Exposi ...

, ''Presto con allegrezza'' ^{(mm. 47 ff.)}, can be found in a notebook from 1905 to 1906, when Scriabin was in Chicago.According to Bowers, this theme is related to the piece "Fragilité," Op.51 No.1, which acts as a preliminary study. Another notebook from 1906 contains the ''Imperioso'' theme ^{(mm. 96 ff.)}, while elements from the ''Meno vivo'' ^{(mm. 120 ff.)} can also be made out, as well as sketched-out passages for a few other sections.Valentina Rubcova, Preface to the Henle Urtext Edition, 2011.Known sketches according to Rubcova: Three leaves in two different notebooks from the years 1905 and 1906. Moscow, Glinka-Museum, Fond 31, nos. 92 and 93. Two leaves, probably from the year 1907. Moscow, Glinka-Museum, Fond 31, no. 21 Scriabin included an epigraph to this

piano sonata A piano sonata is a sonata written for a solo piano. Piano sonatas are usually written in three or four movements, although some piano sonatas have been written with a single movement ( Scarlatti, Liszt, Scriabin, Medtner, Berg), others with t ...

, extracted from his essay ''Le Poème de l'Extase'':Not to be confused with his Symphony No. 4 "Poem of Ecstasy", Op. 54. Original Russian text Я к жизни призываю вас, скрытые стремленья! Вы, утонувшие в темных глубинах Духа творящего, вы, боязливые Жизни зародыши, вам дерзновенье приношу! Original French translation Je vous appelle à la vie, ô forces mysterieuses! Noyées dans les obscures profondeurs De l'esprit créateur, craintives Ebauches de vie, à vous j'apporte l'audace! English translation I call you to life, O mysterious forces!'' Drowned in the obscure depths'' Of the creative spirit, timid'' Shadows of life, to you I bring audacity! Five months after its completion, Scriabin published the work himself in Lausanne, producing an edition with 300 copies. He later gave the autograph as a present to his pupil

Alfred La Liberté Alfred La Liberté (10 February 1882 – 7 May 1952) was a Canadian composer, pianist, writer on music, and music educator. He was a disciple and close personal friend of Alexander Scriabin. He was also an admirer of Marcel Dupré and Nikol ...

. In 1971 the pianist's widow gave the manuscript, along with various other documents, to the Scriabin Museum. The work was premiered on 18 November 1908 in Moscow by pianist Mark Meitschik.

Structure

The piece is written in

sonata form Sonata form (also ''sonata-allegro form'' or ''first movement form'') is a musical form, musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle ...

with an introduction. The structure of the work is described in the table below:

Harmonic language

According to Samson, unlike his later sonatas,According to Samson, in Sonata No. 6 and Sonata No. 7, formal tensions are created by the absence of harmonic contrast and "between the cumulative momentum of the music, usually achieved by textural rather than harmonic means, and the formal constraints of the tripartite mould." the sonata-form of this work still has some meaning to the work's tonal structure. That means the sonata is arguably in

F-sharp major F-sharp major (or the key of F) is a major scale based on F, consisting of the pitches F, G, A, B, C, D, and E. Its key signature has six sharps. The F-sharp major scale is: : Its relative minor is D-sharp minor (or enharmonically E-f ...

(owing to the initial key signature of six sharps), but the sonata could also be said to be

atonal Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a s ...

due to its lack of a definite tonal center. The work does not contain any

perfect cadence In Western musical theory, a cadence (Latin ''cadentia'', "a falling") is the end of a phrase in which the melody or harmony creates a sense of full or partial resolution, especially in music of the 16th century onwards.Don Michael Randel (1999 ...

, nor any consonant chord.Not including passing notes that create circumstantial consonant harmonies, arpeggiations, broken chords (i.e. a dissonant chord broken into consonant subsets) or inversions. There is no consonant tonic chord. The work features one of the strange occurrences of the complete

mystic chord In music, the mystic chord or Prometheus chord is a six-note synthetic chord and its associated scale, or pitch collection; which loosely serves as the harmonic and melodic basis for some of the later pieces by Russian composer Alexander Scriabin ...

spelled in fourths (mm. 264 and 268). Jim SamsonSamson, Jim (1977). ''Music in Transition: A Study of Tonal Expansion and Atonality, 1900–1920'', pp. 156–157. New York: W.W. Norton. points out that it fits in well with Scriabin's predominantly dominant quality sonorities and harmony as it may take on a dominant quality on C or F. This tritone relationship between possible resolutions is important to Scriabin's harmonic language, and it is a property shared by the

French sixth In music theory, an augmented sixth chord contains the interval of an augmented sixth, usually above its bass tone. This chord has its origins in the Renaissance, was further developed in the Baroque, and became a distinctive part of the musi ...

(also prominent in his work). The piece also contains an incipient instance of the mystic chord which helps illuminate its origins in tonal language; first appearing at m. 122, the set 2 4 6 Tis presented as a dominant chord with the flat fifth degree in the bass, later revealed to be an extended appogiatura to the tonic (m. 134), over which the same notes form a major 13th chord in root position. Compare this presentation with the 'mature' mystic chord, 1 3 5 7 9

Recordings

This is Scriabin's most recorded sonata. Pianist

Sviatoslav Richter Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter, group= ( – August 1, 1997) was a Soviet classical pianist. He is frequently regarded as one of the greatest pianists of all time, Great Pianists of the 20th Century and has been praised for the "depth of his int ...

described it as the most difficult piece in the entire piano repertory.

Bruno Monsaingeon Bruno Monsaingeon (; born 5 December 1943) is a French filmmaker, writer, and violinist. He has made a number of documentary films about famous twentieth-century musicians, including Glenn Gould, Sviatoslav Richter, David Oistrakh, Piotr Anderszews ...

: "Richter – Écrits, conversations," p. 172 . Notable recordings include those by Alexei Sultanov,

Vladimir Ashkenazy Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy (russian: Влади́мир Дави́дович Ашкена́зи, ''Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazi''; born 6 July 1937) is an internationally recognized solo pianist, chamber music performer, and conductor. He ...

Vladimir Horowitz Vladimir Samoylovich Horowitz; yi, וולאַדימיר סאַמוילאָוויטש האָראָוויץ, group=n (November 5, 1989)Schonberg, 1992 was a Russian-born American classical pianist. Considered one of the greatest pianists of all ...

Vladimir Sofronitsky Vladimir Vladimirovich Sofronitsky (or Sofronitzky; russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Софрони́цкий, ''Vladimir Sofronitskij''; – August 29, 1961) was a Soviet-Russian classical pianist, best known as an interpr ...

Michael Ponti Michael Ponti (29 October 1937 – 17 October 2022) was a German-American classical pianist. He was the first to record the complete piano works by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Scriabin. He made more than 80 recordings, around 50 of rarely play ...

Samuil Feinberg Samuil Yevgenyevich Feinberg (russian: Самуи́л Евге́ньевич Фе́йнберг, also Samuel; 26 May 1890, Odessa – 22 October 1962, Moscow) was a Russian and Soviet composer and pianist. Biography Born in Odessa, Feinberg ...

Glenn Gould Glenn Herbert Gould (; né Gold; September 25, 1932October 4, 1982) was a Canadian classical pianist. He was one of the most famous and celebrated pianists of the 20th century, and was renowned as an interpreter of the keyboard works of Johann ...

Garrick Ohlsson Garrick Olof Ohlsson (born April 3, 1948) is an American classical pianist. He is the only American to have won first prize in the International Chopin Piano Competition, at the VIII competition in 1970. He also won first prize at the Busoni Com ...

Marc-André Hamelin Marc-André Hamelin, OC, CQ (born September 5, 1961), is a Canadian virtuoso pianist and composer. Hamelin is recognized worldwide for the originality and technical proficiency of his performances of the classic repertoire. He has received 11 Gr ...

, Bernd Glemser,

Maria Lettberg Maria Lettberg (born October 28, 1970 in Riga) is a Swedish pianist, resident in Berlin. Biography and artistic work Lettberg is the daughter of a university professor of Russian literature and a mathematician. When she was seven, Maria's tale ...

Composition

Structure

Harmonic language

Recordings

Notes

References

External links