Scriabin, his circle and his influence

[midlope]

One might add, Boris Pasternak, and his small offering. A personal friend of Scriabin himself, briefly inspired to compose.


Pushing it, M.K. Ciurlionis. The music isn't as obviously Scriabinesque as, say, Sabanayev, young Julian Scriabin, or Pasternak, but I feel there is a decided influence, combined with not too dissimilar viewpoints, albeit with profound differences. In Faubion Bower's biography of Scriabin, a meeting between the two is given cursory mention. The meeting may have been art-related, of course, since Ciurlionis was a painter and Scriabin (I'm stretching my memory here) was a friend with another Lithuanian painter (my memory is not flexible enough to stretch for his name) and tended to associate more with artists at the time, but, I imagine there was some talk of music. Ciurlionis' music, interesting of its own accord to me, might be something more along the lines of Surrealism's "fellow travelers"--while not entirely of the type/class, not antagonistic to it.

Wyschnegradsky, in my opinion, definitely belongs on the list. On a radio interview (available from archive.org, I believe, after a "Wyschnegradsky" search), Wyschnegradsky mentions going to a party that Scriabin was at, and basically being in utter awe. Their verbal interchange, as one could imagine, wasn't the most profound, between the idol and the very young aspirant, but it's apparent Wyschnegradsky reflected fondly upon Scriabin, even in his advanced age, a Scriabin who left his mark, even in microtonal works.

[isokani]

Some more
Oren

Might it be worth at this stage to ascertain which of Sabaneyev's pieces have been scanned? I have a feeling that everything up to op.16 has been done. I, however, have some Preludes without opus number! These are early pieces -- is there a need for me to preserve them digitally for posterity, or has someone beaten me to it? It would be quite nice to have a CD of his piano music one of these days. It would make a rather strange CD, I think, but rather a good one!

[caostotale]

Three cheers for the return of this thread, which was likely one of the most exciting and illuminating ones from the last Pianophilia. At a time when I didn't really know much about Russian music from the 1910s-1930s, that string of posts, shares, and composer lists set my interest in this music ablaze.

I'll repost my scan of Vytautas Bacevicius' assorted preludes, which previously appeared on Alfor's page on the old forum. Bacevicius was a Lithuanian piano-composer who was influenced heavily by Scriabin, as well as by Debussy and Szymanowski. Over the course of his career, he wrote many piano poems (Poème astral, Poème contemplation, Poème mystique, Poème cosmique) that indicate no small debt to Scriabin's compositional style and cosmism. As well, he dabbled in folk music and futurist experiments. A large amount of his piano and organ works have been compiled into volumes available at the Lithuanian Music Centre ( http://www.mic.lt ), but these works (and the Lithuanian Dances mentioned elsewhere...stay tuned) were amongst a small amount of contemporary works that were published by the short-lived Paragon publishing house in NYC. Studying his work (and the equally-excellent works by his sister, Grazyna Bacewicz) in greater detail is something I've had on the back burner for some time now.

Bacevicius - Preludes Op. 3, Op.38, Op. 40 (1946).pdf

[midlope]

Here's a new one for me. I have never heard of him and can't find much information on him, but I ran into his name in a bibliography, from an essay by Allende-Blin (in German, which I don't know) in a collection about Scriabin-influenced composers/music. His name is Mikhail Matjusin (Matusin/Matyusin). He appears to have composed a spectacle called (in translation) 'Victory Over the Sun' (costumes by Malevich, a staging described at a German site as 'elecro-mechanical').


Has anyone heard of him/his works? Other than the Allende-Blin association of him with Scriabin, the only mention of him I've found have been under "cubist" and "futurist" tags.

[Hexameron]

...I would select the above for not being particularly (or at all) influenced by Scriabin...

I think there are some early piano pieces from Polovinkin and Weprik that sound scriabinesque: Polovinkin's Events Op. 5 (1922) and Weprik's Piano Sonata No. 1 (1922) oozes Scriabin's influence in my opinion. I don't suppose anyone has scores of those works?

[fredbucket]

I think there are some early piano pieces from Polovinkin and Weprik that sound scriabinesque: Polovinkin's Events Op. 5 (1922) and Weprik's Piano Sonata No. 1 (1922) oozes Scriabin's influence in my opinion. I don't suppose anyone has scores of those works?

I have two of the the Polovinkin Op.5

polovinkin - Op. 5 two pieces( #2 & #3).pdf

Regards
Fred

[klavierelch]

Here's a new one for me. I have never heard of him and can't find much information on him, but I ran into his name in a bibliography, from an essay by Allende-Blin (in German, which I don't know) in a collection about Scriabin-influenced composers/music. His name is Mikhail Matjusin (Matusin/Matyusin). He appears to have composed a spectacle called (in translation) 'Victory Over the Sun' (costumes by Malevich, a staging described at a German site as 'elecro-mechanical').


Has anyone heard of him/his works? Other than the Allende-Blin association of him with Scriabin, the only mention of him I've found have been under "cubist" and "futurist" tags.

Matjusin was mainly known as a painter and as a painter he was associated with Russian Futurism. Thus he we be a worthy candidate for midlopes new "Composers' Forays into the Visual Arts" thread.
If I am not mistaken I have at home two volumes from the German musicological series "Musik Konzepte" about Scriabin and Scirabinists with a lot of articles about different composers, among them something by Allende-Blin if memory serves right. I will look it up and post information about Matjusin as a composer in case I find something.

[klavierelch]

Damn, I have only Volume 1 at home, and there isn't any mention of Matjusin. Must have been in Volume 2 which I seem to only have borrowed from the library some years ago...

[midlope]

There's a seller at abebooks.com selling both volumes for a reasonable price. The article by Boris de Schloezer on Obukhov in it might be interesting, especially with a relative paucity of literature on an intriguing composer. Thanks for that info, Klavierelch. The only sites where I could find any info on Matjusin were art/design pages--although, oddly enough, they only made mention of that lone musical spectacle, and not any visual works.

Perhaps with the 'Visual Arts Forays' thread I subconsciously knew that Matjusin was a painter? (cue 'X-files' theme music)

[Hexameron]

Thanks, Fred, for the Polovinkin.

I have just acquired physical copies of some scores relevant to this thread.

-Roslavets' Violin Sonata No. 4, Cello Sonata Nos. 1 and 2 published by Schott and copyrighted 1991.

-Wyschnegradsky's 24 Preludes in Quarter-tones Op. 22 published by Belaieff and copyrighted 1979.

Am I right in assuming it would be illegal and frowned upon to post scans of these here?