Skryabin, Philosophy and the Music of Desire by Kenneth M.

Smith (review)

Inessa Bazayev

Notes, Volume 71, Number 2, December 2014, pp. 275-277 (Review)

Published by Music Library Association

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/not.2014.0138

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/561699

Access provided at 3 Jan 2020 09:31 GMT from UZH Hauptbibliothek / Zentralbibliothek Zürich
Book Reviews
of absolute music,” and perhaps even their
personal friendship likely prevented the
critic from dismissing Dvořák’s program
music altogether, showing that Hanslick
did not always employ a dogmatic mode of
criticism.
Hanslick saw himself as an educated
bourgeois individual who belonged to the
German Bildungsbürgertum, and as Lauren
Freede points out, his Jewish heritage never
comes to the fore in his autobiography.
This is evidenced in David Brodbeck’s
study of Hanslick’s opinion on the music
of Carl Goldmark, whose musical “Jewish-
Orientalism” prevented Hanslick from ap-
proving his music wholeheartedly. All the
same, racial attacks from Wagner and esca-
lating Viennese anti-Semitism after 1897,
when the Christian Social mayor Karl
Lueger took office, likely made it impossi-
ble for Hanslick to ignore his Jewish her-
itage. This, in part, helps to explain Hans-
lick’s generally positive attitude toward
Mahler’s music on a personal if not musical
level. Regardless of Mahler’s Wagnerian
musical language and nonconventional
uses of forms, Hanslick identified himself,
as David Kasunic argues in his article, with
the “belonging-while-not-belonging” aspect
of the tradition-bending symphonies and
lieder of Mahler, who was of Jewish origin.
Despite his cerebral approach to listen-
ing that seems to defy feelings at times,
Hanslick was ultimately moved by humanis-
tic qualities such as moral freedom,
learnedness, and universality, which to him
were encompassed in the expressive power
of absolute music. Also, as Nicole Grimes
suggests in her article, Hanslick saw the
serene instrumental postlude that takes
place after the abject conclusion of
Hölderlin’s poem in Johannes Brahms’s
Schicksalslied as exemplifying the transfigur-
ing power of instrumental music. In that
sense, Schicksalslied is similar to Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony in that it demonstrates in-
strumental music’s capability to break free
of the confines of text and fulfill a higher
expressive potential.
Timothy R. McKinney’s article on
Hanslick and Hugo Wolf sheds light on the
strenuous relationship between a con-
tentious young critic who would rather
compose and an established critic.
Curiously, this detail-filled article conveys
the impression that prior to 1894, the year
275
Hanslick finally reviewed Wolf ’s music with
grudging respect in the Neue freie Presse, the
elderly critic’s earlier silence toward the
youngster’s pugnacious comments about
him stemmed from a lack of interest rather
than calculated reservation. This article in-
forms the reader more of Wolf ’s struggle
than Hanslick’s opinions.
In conclusion, taking Hanslick’s 1854 On
the Musically Beautiful as a starting point,
Rethinking Hanslick is a noteworthy volume
that opens new doors to future studies on
Hanslick’s stance as an aesthetician and
critic in the appropriate sociocultural con-
text. The book also succeeds in presenting
numerous complex issues surrounding the
general output of Hanslick in a coherent
manner without making them repetitive, a
strength that is sometimes lacking in simi-
lar scholarly compilations.
Yung-Hsiang Wang
Bach Society Houston
Skryabin, Philosophy and the Music of
Desire. By Kenneth M. Smith. (Royal
Musical Association Monographs,
no. 19.) Farnham, Surrey, Eng.: Ash-
gate, 2013. [xi, 161 p. ISBN
9781409438915. $99.95.] Music exam-
ples, illustrations, bibliography, index.
Kenneth M. Smith’s monograph provides
an interdisciplinary study of Aleksandr
Scriabin’s music through Scriabin’s own
philosophy of desire (as well as philoso-
phies that he was exposed to), semiotic-
psychoanalytical theory, and music analysis.
While there is already a great body of ana-
lytical work on Scriabin’s music, there are
fewer works that try to shed light on
Scriabin’s music through his own philo-
sophical ideals. Smith’s book addresses this
important gap; he examines Scriabin’s mu-
sic through extramusical interpretations,
which he ties to selected musical works.
The book provides an important intersec-
tion between the composer’s ideology and
his art, something that is often overlooked
in the scholarly world.
The book is organized into five chapters
(and a short introduction). Each chapter
begins with quotations largely drawn from
Scriabin and Leonid Sabaneev (Scriabin’s
close friend and biographer), expressing
276
Scriabin’s idiosyncratic ideas on tonal
eroticism, polarity of the sexes (masculine/
feminine), and musical sensuality (pp. 1, 6,
46). In the introduction to his book, Smith
criticizes previous writings on Scriabin’s
music. By dividing them into two cate-
gories, he identifies those who have tried
but failed to link Scriabin’s philosophical
beliefs to his music (Alfred Eaglefield Hull,
Scriabin: A Great Russian Tone-Poet [London:
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1918];
Leonid Sabaneev, Vospominaniia o Skryabine
(Reminiscences about Scriabin) [Moscow:
Klassika XXI, 2000]; Alfred Swan, Scriabin
[New York: Da Capo Press, 1969]; among
others) and those who have mainly focused
on Scriabin’s music, neglecting his philo-
sophy altogether (Varvara Dernova,
Garmoniia Skryabina (Scriabin’s Harmony)
[Leningrad: Izd’vo Muzyka, 1968];
James M. Baker, The Music Of Alexander
Scriabin [New Haven: Yale University Press,
1986]; George Perle, “Scriabin’s Self-
Analyses,” Music Analysis 3, no. 2 [ July
1984]: 101–22; and Peter Sabbagh, The
Development of Harmony in Scriabin’s Works
[U.S.: Universal Publishers, 2003]; among
others). Thus, through an interdisciplinary
approach, Smith attempts to present a
more complete understanding of Scriabin’s
music—music that is generated through
the composer’s readings and understand-
ing of different philosophical writings
(Russian and Western) and Scriabin’s own
writings and views on theosophy, the origin
of the universe, and human desire. Smith
also goes on to apply a psychoanalytical ap-
proach to some of Scriabin’s ideas on sen-
suality and sex. (This mostly resonates with
post-Freudian psychoanalysis, largely drawn
from Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva’s
approaches.)
In chapter 1, Smith immediately turns
the reader’s attention to Scriabin’s interdis-
ciplinary interests. He closely examines
some of the poetry that Scriabin wrote for
his works. In discussing Sonata no. 4, Smith
notes that the work is Scriabin’s “earliest se-
rious attempt to musically capture this
blithe and vivacious spirit of flight as a cre-
ative act of will” (p. 8). He ultimately draws
parallels with Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond
Sunrise, which focuses on the same imagery.
Smith discusses the imagery in Scriabin’s
poem (e.g., “longing,” “engulfing,” “ec-
stasy,” and “divine creative flight”) and its
manifestation on the musical surface
Notes, December 2014
through the tempo indications (from
Andante to Presto volando) and upward
pianistic gestures (pp. 8–11). Chapter 2 fo-
cuses on various discussions of womanhood
from the Russian symbolist writings of
Vyacheslav Ivanov to Jacques Lacan’s theo-
ries of male fantasy. Further, Smith tries to
firmly establish the importance of the fe-
male in Scriabin’s philosophical thought
and her importance in his musical creative
process (pp. 51–59). This important medi-
tation on the female gender paves the
way to the central chapter of his book
(chapter 3), which synthesizes the philo-
sophical discussion in the previous two
chapters with lengthy music analyses, espe-
cially that of Vers la flamme, op. 72 (pp. 86–
96).
Smith considers Scriabin’s music against
the backdrop of his writings in chapter 3,
especially poems dedicated to specific
pieces (e.g., Poème de l’extase and Prometheus,
among others). This chapter also integrates
Scriabin’s philosophical beliefs and applies
them to the examination of Vers la flamme
(pp. 86–96). Smith writes that Scriabin’s
sonatas can be approached from a gen-
dered perspective and that Vers la flamme
(although not titled as a sonata) fits into
that category (p. 86). The analysis of the
piece is rather provocative, for Smith
interprets it through the lens of Helena
Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine (1888), her mag-
num opus on theosophy. (Scriabin knew
the work very well and was very much in-
spired by it.) One of Blavatsky’s points fo-
cuses on the importance of gender in the
evolution of the universe: “Evolution flows
maternally from the inside to the outside”
and becomes disturbed by the outside pa-
triarchal order (pp. 74–75). This “patriar-
chal order” is often described in Blavatsky’s
doctrine as a ray of light, which ultimately
becomes an important symbol in Scriabin’s
music. Smith also draws parallels between
Blavatsky’s idea of “outside” and Lacan’s
idea of the “other” (p. 87). Further, the
analysis explores harmonic, melodic, and
motivic projections of pitch class F  that
serves as this so-called “other.” The analysis,
although very provocative, is problematic.
First, the French augmented sixth chord
(E–G  –A  –D), which begins the piece, is in-
terpreted as a maternal, unstable sonority;
and the F  that stands out from the musical
surface implies a masculine stability, or
tonality, as an F  triad (p. 87). Second,
Book Reviews
Smith tries to defend this rather sexist read-
ing of the piece by reminding us of
Scriabin’s philosophical convictions about
the “mystic” chord as a “chord of nature”
(p. 88). Here, Smith takes liberties while in-
terpreting this “chord of nature” as consist-
ing of masculine and feminine elements:
“Vers la Flamme thereby divides nature into a
masculine (paternal) symbol of tonal au-
thority and a feminine (maternal), nebu-
lous, whole-tone chord” (p. 88). Aside from
the obviously gender-skewed approach,
there is an important technical problem
with the analysis. Pitch class F  , which
Smith views as an “outer” or “other” ele-
ment is in fact part of a larger collection,
namely Scriabin’s “mystic” chord (C  –D–
E–F  –G  –A  ). Although the F  stands out
from the musical surface at m. 3 (which
perhaps prompts Smith’s reading of its
“otherness”), it is very much present in the
inner voice (alto) at the pickup to m. 4. In
order to support his reading of the work,
however, Smith conveniently ignores the
presence of this F  in the inner voice.
Whether or not one is convinced of
the above analysis of Vers la flamme, in the
hermeneutic subsection of the analysis
(entitled “Musico-Dramatic Symbolism”),
Smith’s gendered and philosophical read-
ings come together (pp. 93–96). Smith de-
scribes the recapitulation of the piece (be-
ginning at m. 97) as a center stage of
“masculinized fourths” and the maternal
“mystic” chord (p. 93). He writes that the
principal extramusical symbol lies in the
very title of the piece itself—Vers la flamme
(or “toward the flame”)—and is expressed
through trills, tremolos, and other musical
means to convey “light and heat” (p. 94).
(For a fascinating analysis of Scriabin’s
literal projections of light in his music,
see Anna Gawboy, “Alexander Scriabin’s
Theurgy in Blue: Esotericism and the
Analysis of Prometheus: Poem of Fire op. 60”
[Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2010].) By ref-
erencing Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine, Smith
synthesizes masculine and feminine polari-
ties within the work: “The subject, moving
from a preternatural material economy to-
wards the luminescent world of the symbol,
returns to its maternal roots in the final sec-
tion, notwithstanding the very ultimate dis-
solution into the masculine Symbolic
world” (p. 95).
Chapter 4 focuses on harmonic analysis
of Poème de l’extase against the backdrop
277
of the accompanying poem written by
Scriabin (pp. 97–100). Smith also tries to
synthesize different philosophical ideas, in-
cluding Hegel’s “force,” Schopenhauer’s
“will,” and Freud’s drive theory, to explain
the unresolved dominant seventh chords
that open the piece (pp. 108–9). These
dominant sevenths are described as having
a “libidinal charge” (pp. 109–10). Smith
eloquently ties this analysis together with
Lacan’s graph of desire, showing how this
harmonic motion can be explained
through a signifying chain. One of the most
interesting points of the analysis involves
the very conclusion of the piece: its final
sonority articulating a C-major triad. Smith
explains this strange harmony (within a
seemingly atonal work) as the “other” and
brings back his earlier discussions about
Lacan’s “other,” for it is “the viewpoint
from which the harmonic drives are to be
seen (or heard)” (p. 118). Chapter 5 ties
together all the philosophical threads dis-
cussed throughout the book, which include
Freudian, Lacanian, and Kristevan models.
This chapter emphasizes earlier points in
the book; Smith shows Scriabin as a deep
thinker on theosophy who tries to repre-
sent its ideas through his music.
Kenneth Smith superbly brings together
philosophical and psychoanalytical
approaches to Scriabin’s music. He under-
lines the importance of Scriabin’s philo-
sophical convictions and their manifesta-
tions within his music and, ultimately,
applies them to interpretation of the music
(p. 151). In short, Smith offers a fresh way
of thinking about Scriabin’s music that is
long overdue. It is an important book for a
music scholar or a performer alike who
wants to truly understand the multidimen-
sional spectrum of Scriabin’s music.
Inessa Bazayev
Louisiana State University
The Aesthetic Life of Cyril Scott. By
Sarah Collins. Woodbridge, Suffolk,
Eng.: Boydell Press, 2013. [xxxi, 248 p.
ISBN 9781843838074. $95.] Music ex-
amples, illustrations, list of library
sigla, bibliography, index.
Proponents of Cyril Scott (1879–1970)
have been delighted with the publication
of new recordings and scores of his music
during the past fifteen years. Much credit