Piano Sonata No. 5 (Scriabin)

After finishing his symphonic poem Le Poème de l'Extase, Op.54, Scriabin did not feel comfortable living in Paris.

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.

[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.

[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.

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.

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.

[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!

Original French translation Je vous appelle à la vie, ô forces mysterieuses!

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.

[nb 8] The work features one of the strange occurrences of the complete mystic chord spelled in fourths (mm.

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).

Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915)
Avenue de la Harpe 14, Lausanne, Switzerland, where Scriabin lived between 1907 and 1908. Here he revised the score of his Poème de l'Extase and composed his Fifth Piano Sonata.
Cover page of one of the first editions of the work. Russischer Musikverlag , 1910. The engraving is by Ivan Bilibin
Mm. 1–3. Allegro impetuoso theme. All the notes belong to a diatonic scale, but there is no clearly discernible tonality.
Mm. 13–24. Languido theme. All the harmonies are related to an F ♯ -dominant chord.
Mm. 47–53 and 68–69. Presto con allegrezza theme. In its first appearance it is harmonized as a dominant eleventh chord. Later it is restated over a tonic pedal.
Mm. 96–99. Imperioso and sotto voce misterioso affanato motifs. The first features an angular melody over an arpeggiated dominant chord. The second is built on block french sixth chords
Mm. 114–117. Quasi tromba motif, built on an Eb major seventh chord in first inversion. It is followed by a C-dominant ninth chord, that prepares the second theme.
Mm. 120–124 and 134–135. Meno vivo theme. In its first appearance it is harmonised as a dominant chord. Later it is restated over a tonic pedal.
Mm. 140–148. Allegro fantastico motif followed by presto tumultuoso esaltato theme. The first features major seventh chords. The second is built on motifs from the first theme and ends in the quasi tromba-imperioso motif and a seventh B ♭ major tonic chord.
Mm. 166–171. Literal restatement of the languido theme transposed a major second up.
Mm. 185–197. First theme interrupted several times by imperioso theme.
Mm. 227–230. Passage derived from the presto tumultuoso esaltato theme.
Mm. 247–248 and 251–252. Parodies of the trills theme and the languido theme.
Mm. 271–273. Fragmentary statements of the meno mosso theme.
Mm. 281–284. The meno mosso is interrupted by the allegro fantastico theme twice.
Mm. 289–293. Passage based on the allegro fantastico theme.