Alexander Scriabin. Skryabin Alexander Nikolaevich Young musician and composer

Alexander Nikolaevich Scriabin is a Russian composer, a unique person, whose work was a great success. Scriabin was admired; he really was a good composer.

Alexander Nikolaevich was born in December 1871, in Moscow. His father was a lawyer and later worked as a Russian consul in Turkey.

Grandfather was a military man. The composer's mother was an outstanding pianist, but she died a year after the birth of her son. His father, who served as a diplomat in Turkey, far from Moscow, rarely saw Sasha.

The boy's upbringing was mainly done by his paternal grandmother Elizaveta Ivanovna. Grandmother, like all normal grandmothers, doted on little Sasha. She really loved her grandson.

By leaving, Elizaveta Ivanovna managed to protect Scriabin from adversity that could have affected Alexander for the worse.

From an early age, Alexander showed a love for music. The little boy's favorite musical instrument was the piano. They say that Sasha became interested in the piano at the age of four.

At five he was already playing it, even trying to compose something, “fantasizing music.” Another childhood hobby of Alexander Scriabin was theater.

He had a folding children's theater, which he liked to spend his free time playing. In this theater, he staged various sketches.

At the age of 11 he was sent to study in the Cadet Corps. Military education taught Alexander Nikolaevich to discipline and order.

While studying, he did not forget about his musical hobbies. After graduating from the cadet school, he entered the Conservatory. He graduated from it in 1892, and six years later, he taught “piano playing” at the conservatory, with the rank of professor.

Scriabin's early works were distinguished by a certain sophistication, harmony and melody. Although many experts note that these very first works of his were marked by imitation of Chopin. Alexander Nikolaevich managed to overcome the influence of Chopin on his work with the help of the works of Wagner and Liszt. After some time, he will create his own unique and incomparable musical style.

With the beginning of the twentieth century, Scriabin conceived new works. Creates the “First Symphony”, then the second. After some time, he left the Moscow Conservatory, because he could not combine teaching with his creative activity.

In 1904, with the money of patrons, he went abroad to Switzerland. Here Alexander Nikolaevich creates the “Divine Poem” (Third Symphony) and the “Poem of Ecstasy”. This was a new stage in creativity. He has now finally gotten rid of the influences of musical geniuses, and has shown his true individuality.

In 1910, Scriabin wrote “The Poem of Fire.” It was a completely new experience, not only new sounds, but also the use of color music. His music is perceived in a very contrasting way. The work of the Russian composer is love, which was reflected in his music.

Scriabin’s personality intertwined many thoughts and experiences that are so characteristic of a Russian person. On April 14, 1915, the Great Russian composer Alexander Scriabin passed away.

- Russian composer and pianist of the early twentieth century, a romantic dreamer who expressed his, sometimes fantastic, ideas through music. Scriabin's music is very original, you can feel nervousness, impulsiveness and mysticism in it. He was close to images associated with fire, the combination of color and sound. After all, it was he who used light and music for the first time in history.

Alexander Nikolaevich was born on January 6, 1872 in Moscow, into a poor noble family of a diplomat. Shurinka's mother, as she called him, was a talented pianist who graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory. But a year after the birth of her son, she died of consumption. After the death of his wife, Sasha’s father marries an Italian citizen Olga Fernandez for the second time, leaving little Shurinka to be raised by his grandmother in the Novgorod province and his sister Lyubov Alexandrovna.

Sasha Scriabin as a child

Since the age of five, Sasha has shown great interest in playing the piano. But according to family tradition, he is sent to the 2nd Moscow Cadet Corps. However, his love for music overpowers him, and after graduating from the cadet corps, he decides to devote himself entirely to music.

In 1888, Scriabin entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he successfully studied with Safonov, Taneyev, and Arensky. In 1892, having successfully graduated from the conservatory, he gave concerts in Russian cities. And in 1895-96. tours throughout Europe.

In 1904 he moved to live in Switzerland, but soon again traveled around France, Italy and America.

In 1910, he returned to live in Moscow, without stopping touring with his own concerts in European countries, such as the Netherlands, Great Britain, France and Belgium. In Moscow, while continuing his concert activities, he does not stop composing.

Photo of A. Scriabin, donated by the composer’s great-great-nephew and namesake – Alexander Scriabin

The composer mainly writes piano and symphonic music. He creates his own sound world and his own system of images. His music is the pathos of struggle and the exultation of victory; it glorifies the power of the human spirit. At the same time, it feels sophistication and romance.

The composer gave his last concerts throughout 1915. After unsuccessfully squeezing out a boil in the nasolabial triangle, he developed a carbuncle, and then sepsis, as a result of which the composer died. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

The house in which the composer lived with his family in Moscow has operated as the State Memorial Museum of A.N. since 1922 and to this day. Scriabin.

The composer's work is diverse: etudes, waltzes, mazurkas, sonatas, impromptu, individual piano concertos.

Mystical creations of Scriabin

On April 14, 1915, Alexander Nikolaevich Scriabin died suddenly in Moscow. The composer was in his 44th year, his music was heard all over the world. Konstantin Balmont was one of the first to respond to the death of Scriabin: He felt symphonies of light, he called to merge into one floating temple - touches, sounds, incense and processions, where dancing is a sign...

A close friend of Scriabin, Balmont knew about the plans of the mystical musician, who was going to carry out a synthesis unprecedented in the history of art. The components of Scriabin’s “Mystery” were to be not only traditional arts (music, poetry, painting, architecture, dance), but also not yet existing, fantastic ones.

Biographer of Scriabin L.L. Sabaneev reproduced in his book “Memories of Scriabin” (Moscow, 1925) the composer’s words about how he imagined his music.

Symphony of light. “I want there to be symphonies of lights... The whole hall will be in alternating lights. Here they flare up, these are tongues of fire, you see, just like there are fires here in music... Light should fill all the air, penetrate it to the atoms. All music and everything in general should be immersed in light waves, bathed in them.”

A symphony of smells. “Everything is there, a symphony of light, and a symphony of aromas, because these will be not only pillars of light, but also aromas.”

Symphony of taste. “I will also have taste sensations in “Action.”

A symphony of touches. “By the end of the mystery, we will no longer be people, but we will become weasels ourselves.”

A symphony of views. “We need to fix not only the line of gestures, but also the gaze. These are the gliding glances, how to record them? This is a very special feeling if, for example, the gaze follows one’s own gesture, as if caressing it.”

A symphony of mental images. “I want to bring into Mystery such imaginary sounds that will not sound in reality, but which must be imagined.”

The involvement of all organs of human perception was, of course, not an end in itself, but only part of Scriabin’s grandiose plan to transform the Universe. In his opinion, our civilization is on the disastrous path of technotronic self-destruction: humanity can perish without awakening the divine energies sleeping within itself - psychic forces.

The composer decides to build and implement an alternative path of evolution. According to his plan, in distant India, on the shore of an enchanted lake, a temple should be built from precious stones, incense and sunset colors to perform the “Mystery”. He, Scriabin, will give only the first impetus to the inclusion of fantastic cause-and-effect chains. Mystical bells will ring in the sky over the Himalayas, and in response to their call, all the peoples inhabiting the Earth will go to India to take part in the performance of the majestic symphony of the Transfiguration. On the seventh day of the grandiose synthetic action, the combined power of the mental field of the peoples was supposed to break through the screen of the world Illusion. In artistic ecstasy, humanity would break free from the snares of matter.

The idea of ​​“Mystery” came to Scriabin back in 1903 and finally crystallized two years later, after becoming acquainted with the works of Helena Blavatsky. From that time on, all his work became preparation for the world holiday of the Reunion of Spirit and Matter. Absorbed by his plan, the composer willingly told his friends about it, made detailed plans and wrote a large number of sketches for the future magical act (in essence, all of Scriabin’s later works are sketches for it). The last full-scale sketch of the “Mystery” was supposed to be the “Preliminary Action”, about which the composer said:

“It won’t be a “Mystery” yet, but in that spirit, and there will be a synthesis of arts in it, and it will already be esoteric.. It’s still a work of art, although it will be completely different, there will be a lot of real magic ... It will have mysticism diluted with some symbolism, and this will precisely determine the possibility of repeated performance.”

Scriabin began work on “Preliminary Action” in the winter of 1913, two years before his death, but no one except his closest friends ever heard this mysterious opus. Music died with him - this is not an isolated incident in the musical world, but in the fate of Scriabin it acquires symbolic significance.

It seemed that all the circumstances of Scriabin’s life prevented him from completing the magical score. In recent years, the composer has been deprived of the support of patrons of the arts and is forced to frequently and for long periods of time go on tour with solo concerts. But the reason for the death of Scriabin’s main work was not financial difficulties or the burden of family problems. Three days after the funeral, the composer’s student Mark Meichik wrote:

“He did not die, he was taken from people when he began to implement his plan; it is not for nothing that there is a saying that in heaven they make sure that trees do not grow into the sky. Through music, Scriabin saw a lot of things that are not given to man to know, and he wanted to introduce people to this much... He boldly wanted to introduce people into the very kingdom of the gods and therefore had to die!

Indeed, many events of the composer’s earthly life in the context of his plans acquire a transcendental connotation, and not in the realm of legends, but as real events.

Scriabin repeatedly demonstrated the ability to clairvoyance in space and time: he could find a person in a crowd without knowing his face, he talked about the history of long-lost civilizations. I could look at the sun at its zenith without blinking, and then easily read the small print. He had the ability to put his listeners into a hallucinatory state and could change the structure of sound in space, which is why many wrote about the “fantastic, non-piano” timbres of the works he performed. He signed a contract for the lease of his last apartment on April 14, 1912 for a period of three years - exactly the day of his death. The mystical beginning manifested itself even in the dates of Scriabin’s life. He was born on Christmas Day (December 25, 1871, old style), and died on the second day of Easter.

“Music is the path of revelation,” said Scriabin. “You cannot imagine what a powerful method of knowledge this is.” Everything that I think and say now, I know all this through my creativity.” In his latest works he transforms musical structures into magical symbols. He describes his piano miniatures as “living organisms” (energy-informational structures endowed with a “blind thirst for life,” that is, independent existence) and sees in them the “habitat” of creatures from parallel worlds. The composer argued that “music enchants time and can stop it altogether.”

Sabaneev, one of the few who was lucky enough to hear “Preliminary Action” from the author in a piano version, recalls:

“These were mysterious, full of some kind of unearthly sweetness and sharpness, slow harmonies... A delicate, fragile sound fabric, in which some kind of sharp, painfully sultry mood sounded... It seemed that I was in some kind of enchantment, a sacred kingdom where sounds and lights somehow merged into one fragile and fantastic chord. And in all this there was a flavor of some kind of ghostliness, unreality, sleepiness - such a mood, as if you were seeing a sound dream.”

Neither during the composer's lifetime, nor in the many years that have passed since his death, has his musical world been resurrected in its original form. Until now, Scriabin's ideas were perceived superficially and were reduced mainly to attempts at a light and music production of Prometheus (his only score with a fixed light line). Unfortunately, the author's instructions were minimal, and almost all experiments were limited to the play of colored rays on one or several screens of various configurations. Meanwhile, Scriabin himself needed “moving forms, so that the incense would form these forms and so that the light would illuminate them.” In the score of “Prometheus”, stored in the Paris National Library, Scriabin’s hand includes descriptions of the visual images of “The Poem of Fire”: “lightning”, “stars”, “swell of light”, “sparkles and circles on the water”, “luminous figures”, “ streams of light”, “cascades of lights and sparks”, “sharp shapes”, etc.

Today it is obvious that the composer was trying to embody in his art other “ways of measuring” reality, accessible only to a few people with paranormal abilities. Scriabin believed that these talents are hidden in every person and his music is the key to their awakening. “In general,” he said, “we do not know many of our hidden capabilities. These are dormant forces, and they need to be brought to life... And music, which contains innumerable rhythmic possibilities, is thereby the strongest, most effective magic, only refined, refined magic, which does not lead to such crude results as sleep or hypnosis, but to the construction of certain refined states of the psyche, which can be very diverse.”

The author of the “Poem of Fire” believed that people create the surrounding physical reality with their ideas about it. It is obvious that, freed from the burden of negative emotions that destroy the psyche, a person will gain the strength to see new worlds, other ways of being in himself and the world around him.

In Scriabin's philosophical notes one can find predictions of many scientific discoveries and technologies of the twentieth century, and computer science occupies not the last place here.

Contemporaries called Alexander Scriabin a composer-philosopher. He was the first in the world to come up with the concept of light-color-sound: he visualized a melody using color. In the last years of his life, the composer dreamed of bringing to life an extraordinary performance from all types of arts - music, dance, singing, architecture, painting. The so-called “Mystery” was supposed to begin the countdown of a new ideal world. But Alexander Scriabin never had time to implement his idea.

Young musician and composer

Alexander Scriabin was born in 1872 into a noble family. His father served as a diplomat in Constantinople, so he rarely saw his son. The mother died when the child was one year old. Alexander Scriabin was raised by his grandmother and aunt, who became his first music teacher. Already at the age of five, the boy was performing simple pieces on the piano and selecting melodies he had heard once, and at eight he began composing his own music. The aunt took her nephew to the famous pianist Anton Rubinstein. He was so amazed by Scriabin's musical talent that he asked his family not to force the boy to play or compose when he did not have the desire to do so.

In 1882, according to family tradition, the young nobleman Scriabin was sent to study at the Second Moscow Cadet Corps in Lefortovo. It was there that the 11-year-old musician made his first public performance. At the same time, his debut compositional experiments took place - mainly piano miniatures. Scriabin's work at that time was influenced by his passion for Chopin; he even slept with the notes of the famous composer under his pillow.

Alexander Scriabin. Photo: radioswissclassic.ch

Nikolai Zverev and students (from left to right): S. Samuelson, L. Maksimov, S. Rachmaninov, F. Keneman, A. Scriabin, N. Chernyaev, M. Presman. Photo: scriabin.ru

In 1888, a year before graduating from the cadet corps, Alexander Scriabin became a student at the Moscow Conservatory in composition and piano. By the time he entered the Conservatory, he had written more than 70 musical compositions. The young musician was noticed by director Vasily Safonov. According to his recollections, the young man had “a special variety of sound”; he “possessed a rare and exceptional gift: his instrument breathed.” Scriabin was distinguished by a special manner of using pedals: by pressing them, he continued the sound of previous notes, which were superimposed on subsequent ones. Safonov said: "Don't look at his hands, look at his feet!".

Alexander Scriabin strived for performing excellence, so he rehearsed a lot. One day he "outplayed" his right hand. The disease turned out to be so serious that the then famous doctor Grigory Zakharyin told the young man that the arm muscles had failed forever. Vasily Safonov, having learned about his student’s illness, sent him to his dacha in Kislovodsk, where he was cured.

The senior courses in free composition were taught by professor of harmony and counterpoint Anton Arensky, who was close to lyrical chamber music. His student, Scriabin, on the contrary, did not like strict composer canons and created strange, in Arensky’s opinion, works. During the years 1885–1889, Scriabin wrote more than 50 different plays - most of them have not survived or remained in unfinished form. The creativity of the young musician even then began to break out of the narrow framework of the academic program.

Due to a creative conflict with his harmony teacher, Scriabin was left without a composer's diploma. In 1892, he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory only as a pianist in the class of Safonov. Scriabin received the Small Gold Medal, and his name was included on the marble plaque of honor at the entrance to the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory.

Composer of the Silver Age

Alexander Scriabin. Photo: classicalmusicnews.ru

Alexander Scriabin. Photo: scriabin.ru

The young pianist played a lot. And soon after graduating from the conservatory, his illness in his right hand worsened. To continue performing, Alexander Scriabin wrote works for the left hand - “Prelude” and “Nocturne. Opus 9". However, the illness affected his mental balance. It was then that he began to reflect on philosophical topics in his diary.

The first serious failure in life. First serious reflection: beginning of analysis. Doubt about the possibility of recovery, but the gloomiest mood. The first reflection on the value of life, on religion, on God.”

At this time, the composer wrote the First Sonata, which also reflected personal experiences. In his diary, he compared “the composition of the 1st sonata to a funeral march.” However, Scriabin did not give in to despondency: he began to follow all the doctors’ recommendations and developed his own exercises that developed his injured arm. He managed to restore the mobility of his hand, but his former virtuosity was lost. Then the pianist began to pay attention to nuance - the ability to emphasize the subtlest fleeting sounds.

In 1893, some of Scriabin's early works were published by the famous Moscow publisher Peter Yurgenson. Most of the works were musical miniatures - preludes, etudes, impromptu, nocturnes, as well as dance pieces - waltzes, mazurkas. These genres were characteristic of the work of Chopin, whom Scriabin admired. In the early 1890s, the composer also wrote the First and Second Sonatas.

In 1894, Vasily Safonov helped 22-year-old Scriabin organize an author's concert in St. Petersburg. Here the musician met the famous Russian timber merchant Mitrofan Belyaev. The entrepreneur was fond of music: he created the music publishing house “M.P. Belyaev”, established and financed the annual Glinka Prizes and organized concerts. Belyaev soon published the works of the young composer in his publishing house. Among them were etudes, impromptu, mazurkas, but mainly preludes; in total, about 50 of them were written during this period.

Since then, Belyaev has supported the musician for many years and helped him financially. The patron organized Scriabin's big tour of Europe. They wrote about the musician in the West: “an exceptional personality, a composer as excellent as a pianist, as high an intellect as a philosopher; the whole thing is an impulse and a sacred flame.” In 1898, Scriabin returned to Moscow and completed the Third Sonata, which he began writing in Paris.

In the same year, Alexander Scriabin took up teaching: he needed a stable source of income to support his family. At the age of 26, he became a professor of piano class at the Moscow Conservatory.

I don’t understand how you can write “just music” now. After all, this is so uninteresting... After all, music receives meaning and meaning when it is a link in one, unified plan, in the integrity of the worldview.

Despite being busy at the conservatory, Scriabin continued to write music: in 1900 he completed a large work for orchestra. The composer neglected musical traditions: the First Symphony has not four, as usual, but six movements, and in the last one the soloists sing with the choir. Following the First, he completed the Second Symphony, even more innovative than his previous works. Its premiere caused a mixed reaction from the music community. Composer Anatoly Lyadov wrote: “Well, what a symphony... Scriabin can safely shake hands with Richard Strauss... Lord, where did the music go... From all corners, from all the cracks, decadents are creeping in.”. Scriabin's symbolist and mystical works became a reflection of the ideas of the Silver Age in music.

“Tongues of Fire” music by Alexander Scriabin

Alexander Golovin. Portrait of Alexander Scriabin. 1915. Museum of Musical Culture named after M. I. Glinka

Alexander Scriabin. Photo: belcanto.ru

Alexander Pirogov. Portrait of Alexander Scriabin. XX century Russian Academy of Sculpture, Painting and Architecture named after I.S. Glazunov

In 1903, Scriabin began working on the score of the Third Symphony for a huge orchestra. It revealed Scriabin's skill as a playwright. The symphony, called the “Divine Poem,” described the development of the human spirit and consisted of three parts: “Struggle,” “Pleasure,” and “Divine Game.” The premiere of “The Divine Poem” took place in Paris in 1905, and a year later in St. Petersburg.

God, what kind of music was that! The symphony continually collapsed and collapsed, like a city under artillery fire, and everything was built and grew from rubble and destruction. She was completely overwhelmed by the content, insanely developed and new... The tragic power of what was being composed solemnly stuck out its tongue to everything decrepit, recognized and majestically stupid, and was bold to the point of madness, to the point of boyishness, playfully elemental and free, like a fallen angel.

Boris Pasternak

Russian musicologist Alexander Ossovsky recalled that Scriabin's symphony "produced a stunning, grandiose effect." It seemed to the listeners that the composer with this work was “heralding a new era in art.”

In 1905, Alexander Scriabin's patron, Mitrofan Belyaev, died, and the composer found himself in a difficult financial situation. However, this did not stop him from working: at this time he began to write “The Poem of Ecstasy.” The author himself said that the music was inspired by the revolution and its ideals, so he chose the call “Get up, rise up, working people!” as the epigraph of the poem.

At this time, Scriabin gave a lot of concerts and in 1906 he went on tour to America for six months. The trip turned out to be successful: the concerts were a great success. And in France in 1907, some of Scriabin’s works were performed in the cycle of “Russian Seasons” by Sergei Diaghilev. At the same time, the composer completed the “Poem of Ecstasy.”

In 1909, Alexander Scriabin returned to Russia, where real fame came to him. His works were played at the best venues in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and the composer himself went on a concert tour of the Volga cities. At the same time, he continued his musical searches, moving further and further away from traditions. He dreamed of creating a creation that would unite all types of art, and began writing the Mystery symphony, which he conceived in the early 1900s.

In 1911, Scriabin wrote one of his most famous works - the symphonic poem “Prometheus”. The composer had color hearing, giving a sense of color while performing music. He decided to translate his visual perception into a poem.

I will have light in Prometheus. I want there to be symphonies of lights. The entire hall will be in variable light. Here they flare up, these are tongues of fire, you see how there are fires here in music. After all, every sound corresponds to a color. Or rather, not the sound, but the tonality.

The composer constructed a color wheel and used it when performing the poem, and wrote the part of light in the score as a separate line - “Luce”. At that time, it was technically impossible to carry out a light-color-symphony, so the premiere took place without a light part. The production of the poem required nine rehearsals instead of the usual three. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, the famous “Promethean chord” sounded like the voice of chaos emerging from the depths. Everyone was delighted with this start. Sergei Rachmaninov asked: “How does that sound to you? It’s quite simply orchestrated.” To which Scriabin replied: “Yes, you should put something on top of the harmony itself. Harmony sounds". Prometheus was the first draft of the Mystery to use a synthesis of the arts.

Scriabin became increasingly captivated by the idea of ​​the future “Mystery”. The composer built its contours for more than 10 years. He planned to present the mystery of an orchestra, light, aroma, colors, moving architecture, poetry and a choir of 7000 voices in a temple on the banks of the Ganges. According to Scriabin's idea, the work was supposed to unite all of humanity, give people a feeling of great brotherhood and begin the countdown for a renewed world.

The composer never managed to stage “Mystery”. Scriabin had to give concerts to earn a living. He traveled to many cities in Russia and performed abroad more than once. At the beginning of the First World War, Scriabin gave charity concerts to help the Red Cross and families affected by the war.

In 1915, Alexander Scriabin died in Moscow. The composer was buried in the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent.

The ideas about the transition to a new world, now popular in narrow circles, remind me of the unfulfilled project of the great composer Alexander Scriabin - his grandiose Mystery. Below are excerpts from the article by A.I. Banduras "Alexander Nikolaevich Scriabin - the mysticism of creativity and the magic of light and sound."

The life of this brilliant composer, who amazed audiences at the beginning of the century with unheard-of fantastic sound images that came as if “from another world,” is shrouded in an atmosphere of irrational, disturbing mystery. Scriabin's art manifests on the physical plane the reality of the composer's spiritual world, as mysterious and incomprehensible as his very personality, which many contemporaries perceived as a phenomenon that goes beyond the boundaries of earthly reality. “There are geniuses,” wrote K.D. Balmont, “who are not only genius in their artistic achievements, but are genius in every step they take, in their gait, in all their personal imprinting. You look at such a person - this is a spirit, this is a being of a special wildness, a special dimension. Of all... special people who were already non-humans or, in any case, who have repeatedly and deeply looked into the inhuman, into what does not happen in three dimensions, the most complete feeling of genius, in which the state of genius is continuous and in a radiant outflow inexhaustible, Scriabin gave me."
At some point in his composer's evolution (apparently, it coincided with 1903 - the end of the Fourth Sonata), Scriabin suddenly realized that he had managed to touch the great secret of his art. He discovers in music a magical secret energy that can change human consciousness and, consequently, the entire material world (which, according to Scriabin, is an illusion - a projection of human consciousnesses and the materialization of their phenomena). From that time on, the composer took on the mission of the Demiurge - the author, inspirer and organizer of the Last Accomplishment, freeing the world from the power of matter. In his imagination the idea of ​​"Mystery" - a grandiose synthetic work of art - is born. All inhabitants of the Earth were supposed to participate in this liturgical action of universal proportions - and precisely as performers, and not spectators. In a spherical temple, smoothly changing shape (the composer spoke of “fluid architecture” and “columns of incense”), dances and processions would be combined with symphonies of aromas and touches, and the recitation of sacred texts would be combined with the magic of Light and Sound. India was chosen as the place for the implementation of the “Mystery,” where all of humanity would gather to the call of the bells “suspended directly to the sky.” Seven days of magical action would, according to Scriabin, embrace millions of years of cosmic evolution, and at the end of the seventh day there would come a moment of universal ecstasy, destroying existence and the manifested world in the bosom of the One Eternal Absolute. Scriabin wrote about this “moment of Truth”:

Let's be born into a whirlwind!
Let's wake up to the sky!
Let's mix feelings in one wave!
And in luxurious splendor
Last heyday
Appearing to each other
In the beauty of the naked
Sparkling souls
Let's disappear...
Let's melt...

In essence, his entire future career was devoted to working on “Mystery.” Piano and symphonic works were for him only a prelude to “high flight”, a kind of preparatory exercise for the implementation of the main work of his life. “I am doomed to perform the Mystery,” Scriabin asserted, sometimes hinting that its idea was “revealed” to him by something (or someone) external. However, the composer avoided such explanations (“I can’t say everything and I don’t have the right to say everything”), and spoke about “Mystery” itself exclusively in a lowered voice, in a half whisper. At the same time, Scriabin tries to understand and comprehend the events that took place in his inner world. He actively studies philosophy and related sciences and makes a large number of original philosophical conclusions. The French translation of The Secret Doctrine, which is covered with numerous notes by the composer, becomes his reference book.
At the end of his life, Scriabin became convinced that he was fulfilling the mission entrusted to him by the Great White Brotherhood of the Mahatmas. “In the teaching of the initiates,” writes his closest relative B.F. Schlözer, “who are messengers of higher powers on earth, directly revealing to them the hidden truth in its successive aspects for the enlightenment of humanity, in this teaching he found an explanation and justification for his mission on earth, for he also considered himself directly, initiated from above, a member by birth of a wondrous brotherhood - the “White Lodge” - which, he believed, existed somewhere on earth, for now secretly, and was waiting for him. All his thoughts were directed towards distant India, the legendary Shambhala, where, according to Scriabin, he “needed to find out something.” The truth that came from the East was apparently closest to the cosmic laws found by the composer in music, and the appearance of Reality in ancient esoteric teachings largely coincided with the features of the world discovered by Scriabin. “We Europeans,” the composer said, “know and feel the East more than those in the East. I am more Indian than real Indians.” The life and mysterious untimely death of Scriabin at the age of 43 are a unique example of the living embodiment of a myth, a semi-legendary existence at the junction of different realities, in which we can comprehend and understand only that part that is addressed to our world.
“He was not of this world, both as a person and as a musician,” wrote Scriabin’s biographer L.L. Sabaneev. “Only in moments did he see his tragedy of isolation, and when he saw it, he did not want to believe in it.” K.D. Balmont recalls a strange feeling during a Scriabin concert, when the composer for a moment seemed to reveal to the listeners the features of an inhabitant of another world: “Scriabin near the piano. He was small, fragile, this ringing elf... This was some kind of light horror. And when he began to play, a light seemed to emerge from him, an air of witchcraft surrounded him... It seemed that this was not a man, even a genius, but a forest spirit who found himself in a strange human hall, where he, moving in a different environment and according to different laws, feels awkward and uncomfortable.” It is significant that this fantastic appearance of a creature with other goals and meaning of existence arose only in the sound haze of the mysterious, hypnotically effective late Scriabin works, which truly opened windows to other worlds, of which the composer himself became a part. Scriabin, like Lama Govinda, and the Indian magician Don Juan of Castaneda, was convinced that the visible world is just the result of a certain description: an understanding instilled in childhood. Therefore, Scriabin’s microcosm, like human consciousness, is not reduced to a summary reflection of the macrocosm of the Reality given in experience. The most significant features in it are those that allow, overcoming invisible barriers, to move into other ideological systems, adapting, as is typical for a living being, to new living conditions. Therefore, the “specific gravity”, the significance of the external appearance of the world, on the one hand, and the thought living in this world, on the other hand, turn out to be equivalent for Scriabin. “You need to understand,” writes the composer, “that the material from which the universe is created is (our) imagination, (our) creative thought, (our) desire, and therefore there is no difference in the sense of material between the state of our consciousness that we we call it a stone that we hold in our hand, and another called a dream. The stone and the dream are made of the same substance and both are equally real." In a certain, “quantized” material world there is no dynamics of movement, and in a “wave” of thought blurred throughout space there is no fixed object of attention - a specific phenomenal manifestation**. This peculiar reflection of the principle of particle-wave complementarity suggests that the basis of both phenomena is a certain Essence of a higher order - the source of radiation of an all-encompassing field that “switches off” a person into the world and creates for him the space of myth - the only possible habitat for an intelligent being.
According to V.I. Kornev, these grandiose world “Illusions” are myths of “historical” or “prophetic” (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) and “natural” (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism...) religions, formed by the combined energy of millions of human consciousnesses, represent a certain distortion of Reality, which therefore turns out to be inaccessible in its “pure form” to the thinking subject. Scientific and artistic knowledge about the world, belonging to a certain culture, thus reflects only one of the facets of Reality, which in the consciousness of a representative of a given culture “grows” into the whole Universe. Attempts to expand the Universe of consciousness are associated with overcoming the boundaries of “one’s” myth and going beyond its limits.
Scriabin himself repeatedly emphasized his “independence” from traditional interpretations of Reality. “The world that lived in the imagination of my ancestors,” writes the composer, “I deny you. I deny you, the entire past of the universe, science, religion and art, and thereby let you live.” Scriabin perceives the structure of the force field of myth, which determines the traditional image of the world, as the “vibration frequency” of the mental waves that make up this field - their “rhythmic pattern”, located above the consciousness of the subject and forming the structure of this consciousness, which also takes part in the “collective creativity” of the mythological space: “I (as a phenomenon) was born and begin to unconsciously repeat the same rhythmic figure that all my ancestors repeated. I create the world as they created it, not knowing about my creativity and thinking that I perceive something existing outside of me. For “Everyone’s world was the way he (everyone) wanted it (unconsciously).”

Scriabin defines consciousness as the last and only reality of the world - the main “source of radiation” of the mythological field (“Everything is phenomena born in the rays of my consciousness,” which forms the human Universe - what he can perceive and comprehend in the world: “I know the world as a series of states of my consciousness, from the sphere of which I cannot leave." For the composer, the limitations of such a vision of Reality are obvious ("... Existence for me is, on the one hand, my experience, and on the other hand, the world external to this experience... The Universe for I have an idea, part of it is in the field of my consciousness, it is an object of experience. The universe is an unconscious process that is perceived by me, a part of it illuminated by my consciousness,” but since, writes Scriabin, “I cannot leave the sphere of mine, included in my brain. , consciousness,” then “the entire world I perceive can be the creative activity of this consciousness.” The ability to create, thus, becomes the main condition for expanding the boundaries of Reality in consciousness. “Recently, man,” writes Scriabin, apparently referring to himself, “recognized himself as the creator of everything that he called his sensations, perceptions, phenomena. What he considered outside himself turned out to be in his consciousness and only in him ".

Thus, knowledge of the Universe comes down to knowledge of “the nature of free creativity.” Creativity, according to Scriabin, has “conscious” and “unconscious” sides. “Unconscious” creativity corresponds to a person’s “involvement” in myth: “With the unconscious side of my creativity, I participate in everything. The Universe is the unconscious process of my creativity.” The “conscious” side, on the contrary, consists in overcoming the framework of the traditional picture of the world - “images of the past”. “The stronger the image of the past,” notes Scriabin, “the faster it takes possession of consciousness, the greater the rise is necessary to exclude it from the sphere of consciousness... On the part of consciousness, I have an experience of something different, new, on the other, everything else is in its desire to take over my consciousness The rise in this struggle determines the qualitative content of the state I experience.”

The composer defines the desire to go beyond the boundaries of his myth - the traditional vision of Reality - as “separation” from it, “denial” of the type of consciousness formed by its structure: “the environment for me, like a link in the family chain, is a habit. I want what I have no, I want to create. To deny anything means to rise above it. Denial is the height of dissatisfaction, combined with the desire for the new, the unknown, it is already creativity.” Creative ecstasy, which goes beyond the limits of myth, reveals to the Conscious One the limitations and inexhaustibility of Reality, from which the veil of Illusion has been removed. The composer realizes that the world is immeasurably wider than human ideas about it - although its familiar appearance is also real. “Don’t be afraid of this bottomless emptiness!” exclaims Scriabin. “It all exists, everything is what you want, and only because you want it, because you are aware of your strength and your freedom? You want to fly, fly like you want and wherever you want, there is emptiness around you!”

The feeling of “complete freedom” when going beyond the boundaries of myth, the state of “divine intoxication” with the omnipotence of one’s consciousness is reflected in the pathos of Scriabin’s statements such as: “I am an absolute being... I am God.” The composer believes that his consciousness is completely autonomous, free from any mythological model of Reality: “If there is nothing but my consciousness, then it is one, free and exists in itself and through itself. This means that it is the master of the universe and can expel at will one or the other of its states." Overcoming the mythological illusion, according to Scriabin, is the crown of development of the entire history of human perception of Reality. “The beliefs of each era in human history,” the composer writes, correspond to the fermentation of human consciousness in that era. We are already saying that the imagination of the ancients populated the forests with fantastic creatures, and for them these creatures were real; many even saw them. Their creativity ( consciousness) did not rise to the order and calm that it is now. They searched as artists search when sketching." Scriabin, apparently, is sincerely convinced that he managed to synthesize all the mythological pictures of the world: “Peoples sought liberation in love, art, religion and philosophy; at those heights of ascent that are called ecstasy, in bliss that destroys space and time, they came into contact with me... You, feelings of torment, doubts, religion, art, science, the whole history of the universe, you are the wings on which I soared to this height.”
The work of the great mystic composer took place on the plane of the subtle worlds, which explains many mysterious events in his life. The terrible signs that Scriabin saw to his left while playing the Sixth or Ninth Sonata - were they not something more than an artistic fantasy? And how can we explain that death overtook the composer precisely at the moment when he was ready to write down the score of the “Preliminary Act” - a kind of working model of the “Mystery” - on music paper? It was no coincidence that this work died along with the author - after all, what in our world was a chord of a complex structure, in a parallel world could produce the effect of a nuclear explosion. In this case, one can explain the appearance at the bedside of the dying composer, in his words, of “ghosts, the content and meaning of which are incomprehensible” - emissaries of another world. “He did not die,” wrote Scriabin’s student M. Meichik three days after the funeral, “he was taken from people when he began to implement his plan... Through music, Scriabin saw a lot of things that are not given to a person to know... and therefore he had to die!" Scriabin's secret has not yet been revealed. No one can claim to have comprehended the mystery of the structure and content of the composer’s works and the meaning of his life and work. Was this life just another dialogue between man and the Cosmic Mind, or did it embody one of the unrealized cosmic programs for the development of mankind, “curtailed” at the time of the death of its prophet? The time to answer these questions has not yet come. But the magical meaning discovered by Scriabin in his composer’s activity, his desire to materialize the Spirit in Sound and dematerialize the Sound (together with the entire Universe) in the Spirit does not seem today to be self-deception or delusion. “Pure spirit,” wrote E. I. Roerich, “can manifest itself or be comprehended only through the cover of Matter, which is why it is said that outside of Matter, pure Spirit is nothing. The mystery of differentiation and merging together is the greatest Mystery and Beauty of Existence.”
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