The Piano Sonata No. 5, Op. 53, is a work written by Alexander Scriabin in 1907. This was his first sonata 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.[1]
After finishing his symphonic poem Le Poème de l'Extase, Op.54, Scriabin did not feel comfortable living in Paris. 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.[2]
Scriabin decided to go to live in Lausanne with his pregnant wife Tatyana,[nb 1] 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.[3]
In his new peaceful household in Edifice C Place de la Harpe,[nb 2] 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 ...[4]
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 ...[5]
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, Presto con allegrezza (mm. 47 ff.), can be found in a notebook from 1905 to 1906, when Scriabin was in Chicago.[nb 3] 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.[3][6][nb 4]
Scriabin included an epigraph to this piano sonata, extracted from his essay Le Poème de l'Extase:[nb 5]
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![7]
Five months after its completion, Scriabin published the work himself in Lausanne, producing an edition with 300 copies.[3] He later gave the autograph as a present to his pupil Alfred La Liberté. In 1971 the pianist's widow gave the manuscript, along with various other documents, to the Scriabin Museum.[6]
The work was premiered on 18 November 1908 in Moscow by pianist Mark Meitschik.[3]
The piece is written in sonata form[8] with an introduction. The structure of the work is described in the table below:
According to Samson, unlike his later sonatas,[nb 7] 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 (owing to the initial key signature of six sharps), but the sonata could also be said to be atonal due to its lack of a definite tonal center.[8]
The work does not contain any perfect cadence, nor any consonant chord.[nb 8]
The work features one of the strange occurrences of the complete mystic chord spelled in fourths (mm. 264 and 268). Jim Samson[9] 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 (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 [0 2 4 6 T] is presented as a dominant chord with the flat fifth degree in the bass, later revealed to be an extended appoggiatura 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, [0 1 3 5 7 9].
This is Scriabin's most recorded sonata. Pianist Sviatoslav Richter described it as the most difficult piece in the entire piano repertory.[10]
Notable recordings include those by Alexei Sultanov, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Vladimir Horowitz, Sviatoslav Richter, Vladimir Sofronitsky, Michael Ponti, Samuil Feinberg, Glenn Gould, Garrick Ohlsson, Marc-André Hamelin, Bernd Glemser, Maria Lettberg, Igor Zhukov and Pietro Scarpini.