Do You Think Scriabin is Underrated?

[Simula]

I do. I think he was a composer of original creativity and uniqueness. Because his taste was so eccentric I think his genius has been smothered because people pay attention to the wrong thing. What do you think? 

[Parsifal]

His music is widely available and I think people who are aware of his music are perfectly capable of evaluating it.

I find the notion of an artist being "underrated" hard to justify.  I find it more plausible that there are artists whose works are not well known, for various reasons, and who's works deserve more exposure. Hard to claim this for Scriabin, since is major works are all available in multiple recordings from major artists.

[Simula]

His music is widely available and I think people who are aware of his music are perfectly capable of evaluating it. I find the notion of an artist being "underrated" hard to justify.  I find it more plausible that there are artists whose works are not well known, for various reasons, and who's works deserve from more exposure. Hard to claim this for Scriabin, since is major works are all available in multiple recordings from major artists.

You're an insider, insider appreciation doesn't count.

[Parsifal]

You're an insider, insider appreciation doesn't count.

?

[Mandryka]

I do. I think he was a composer of original creativity and uniqueness. Because his taste was so eccentric I think his genius has been smothered because people pay attention to the wrong thing. What do you think?

What's the wrong thing they pay attention to?

Just thinking of the piano music, IMO  all the music before the 5th sonata is overrated.

[Simula]

What's the wrong thing they pay attention to?

His mysticism. His strange spiritualism.

[Mandryka]

His mysticism. His strange spiritualism.

Why do you think he called his music things like "black mass"? I mean communicated something mystical was a part of what he was trying to achieve maybe. In fact I've never thought about this question before - but I'd quite like to know how the music ties in with the ideas in the titles.

I confess to being really quite interested in Blavatsky, how she seemed to influence so many people, poets and musicians.

[North Star]

Why do you think he called his music things like "black mass"? I mean communicated something mystical was a part of what he was trying to achieve maybe. In fact I've never thought about this question before - but I'd quite like to know how the music ties in with the ideas in the titles.

I confess to being really quite interested in Blavatsky, how she seemed to influence so many people, poets and musicians.

Scriabin called the 7th Sonata 'White Mass', and someone else called the 9th 'Black Mass', apparently Scriabin approved the nickname, though.

Then there's the 'Insect Sonata'

"My Tenth Sonata is a sonata of insects. Insects are born from the sun [...] they are the kisses of the sun."

[Spawnofsatan]

Scriabin is boring

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

There are many many recordings available of his music, many performances and also quite a lot of scholarly writings on him and his music. Underrated? You be the judge. I am happy there is so much Scriabin stuff that has been published. It'll keep me busy for a long time.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Scriabin is boring

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Well I haven't a strong opinion on the question, I don't think he is as highly praised as a lot of the other composers of that time eg. Schoenberg or Debussy for example.
He does seem quite popular in small circles of pianists but I can't say I hear of his music been performed much (outside of those circles and the recordings available)
Somebody I think is extremely underrated is Sorabji. He continued on from where Scriabin left off, but with a lot of the compulsions of Mahler and Ives, though harmonically like Scriabin.

Yes, Scriabin's piano Sonatas, Etudes and Preludes have kept me busy from time to time, as With Prometheus and Poem of Esctacy 

Well my post of course is in comparison to dreadfully underrated composers who get so little recognition that they don't really even get many performances of their music at all (talking about thatfabulousalien)

[PerfectWagnerite]

I don't know you think Scriabin is underrated. His reputation ranks right up there with any composer outside of the obvious top 10-20 or so.

[Cato]

Well I haven't a strong opinion on the question, I don't think he is as highly praised as a lot of the other composers of that time eg. Schoenberg or Debussy for example.
He does seem quite popular in small circles of pianists but I can't say I hear of his music been performed much (outside of those circles and the recordings available)
Somebody I think is extremely underrated is Sorabji. He continued on from where Scriabin left off, but with a lot of the compulsions of Mahler and Ives, though harmonically like Scriabin.

Yes, Scriabin's piano Sonatas, Etudes and Preludes have kept me busy from time to time, as With Prometheus and Poem of Esctacy 

Sorabji was a grand eccentric in the tradition of both Scriabin and Ives.

There is speculation that Wyschnegradsky followed "where Scriabin left off."

See e.g.

http://www.gavindixon.info/Ivan_Wyschnegradsky.htm

The long shadow of Alexander Scriabin hangs over all of Wyschnegradsky's work. Scriabin's influence on Russian musicians in the years leading up to the Revolution and beyond is difficult to overestimate. He combined the maniacal keyboard virtuosity of Liszt with a dark mysticism: Satanic Poem and Black Mass are names that appear amongst his piano works. Just as significantly, his music extended the harmonic palette available to the pianist to the point where traditional tonal harmony faded into the background, making way for a musical vocabulary based more on psychologically powerful, if functionally ambiguous, harmonic colours. Wyschnegradsky and Scriabin were of a similar personal temperament, both saw music as capable of manifesting mystical and other-worldly states of consciousness, and while both wrote for a variety of ensembles, the focus of each man's art was the piano keyboard.

[Simula]

Scriabin is boring

It is clear to me that this is not a reflection on the composer.

[Monsieur Croche]

Scriabin is boring

Other than those few symphonic works which are so over the top eccentric, The Poem of Ecstasy and Prometheus, or The Poeme of Fire from 1908 and 1910, respectively, with his most 'advanced' harmony, I find the rest of only academic interest and that quite agrees with your opinion, 'Boring.' His other works, piano, orchestral, sound like Chopin approached with a later developed vocabulary, The piano concerto and other earlier symphonies are painfully dull as ditch water second-tier late romantic pieces of which there is, generically, an overabundance. (Of course, that is, to me.)

Too, the musical 'vocabulary' was already something very much in the air, and I doubt if Scriabin's influence brought much to bear on the composers of the Pierrot Lunaire of 1912 or Le Sacre du Printemps of 1913, i.e. these were the big game changers. There may be more similarities, ergo 'influence' upon Stravinsky and what we hear in his Firebird of 1910, while it is always important to keep in mind all the other 'advanced' harmonic ventures and usage of the immediate years surrounding these works as done by others, as often enough some trends of innovation seem to pop up simultaneously in very different locales without the creators being at all aware of the works of others.

I think Scriabin is assessed "by the establishment" (and the general listening public), like so many others, in pretty much exactly the right degree and 'rank.'  I.e. he is of some interest, and had a small influence without saying that changed the direction of the general tide.


Best regards.

[Daverz]

His overheated style is generally not my thing.  Also, I think the piano was his metier, but I'm not much of a pianophile.

[Monsieur Croche]

Well I haven't a strong opinion on the question, I don't think he is as highly praised as a lot of the other composers of that time eg. Schoenberg or Debussy for example.
He does seem quite popular in small circles of pianists but I can't say I hear of his music been performed much (outside of those circles and the recordings available)
Somebody I think is extremely underrated is Sorabji. He continued on from where Scriabin left off, but with a lot of the compulsions of Mahler and Ives, though harmonically like Scriabin.

Yes, Scriabin's piano Sonatas, Etudes and Preludes have kept me busy from time to time, as With Prometheus and Poem of Esctacy 

Sorabji is at least as boring -- if not even more so than Scriabin.  I mean, music as affected, synthetic, pretentious and severely dated (as in has not aged well, at all) as the pseudonym he chose by which he is known to us is about as academic and sterile as it gets.  Big whoop, he wrote a lot of it and it is one of those Mt. Everests (the piano works) that many a performer will climb "Because it it there." lol.

[Simula]

Yes, there are lots of composers, but not lots with the quality of Scriabin.

[Mirror Image]

I'll be honest and say the only work by Scriabin that really affected in me was his Symphony No. 3, "The Divine Poem". The first movement alone is a masterpiece. I also do enjoy his Piano Concerto a lot as well.