## Scriabin: Sonata No. 9, Op. 68 > [!tip] Piece at a Glance: Sonata No. 9, Op. 68 >- Composer: Alexander Nikolayevich **Scriabin** (1872-1915) >- Year Composed: 1912-1913, published 1913, premiered 1913 by Scriabin himself >- Period and Style: Modernist, Russian symbolist >- Nicknames and Subtitles: *Black Mass* (*Messe noire*) >- Tonality: Atonal with ambiguous "tonic" chord >- Length: $8$ minutes >- Movements: $1$ (Moderato quasi andante, roughly in sonata-allegro form with coda) The Ninth Sonata, Op. 68, is the most popular of Alexander Scriabin's late sonatas. Among the ten numbered sonatas, the Ninth is the shortest;[^1] furthermore, the musical horror of the piece is not difficult to bring out, making it more likely to appear on concert programs, even if the audience is not familiar with Scriabin's late-era works. At this point in the composer's life, Scriabin was a mystic. Among other unorthodox beliefs, such as believing he could walk on water,[^2] Scriabin believed that art was divine: the roots of these ideas were found in his First Symphony, Op. 26, and this snowballed to his desire to end the world via his unfinished *Gesamtkunstwerk,* titled *Mysterium*. Indeed, he intended for the entire world to witness *Mysterium*'s premiere in the Himalayas, and he believed that after its week-long(!) performance, humanity would be ascended to a higher plane of existence. Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for Scriabin, *Mysterium* was left unfinished, and this was not for a lack of trying: he died suddenly in 1915, at the height of his career. The only thing we have of this massive unfinished work is a sketch to a $72$-page prelude, titled *Prefatory Action,* which the composer Alexander Nemtin (1936-1999) orchestrated over the course of $28$ years. In addition to *Mysterium*'s relevance to us in understanding the compositional context of Scriabin's late works we find that in the *Prefatory Action,* Scriabin takes ideas from his late sonatas. Therefore, it seems as if Scriabin intended his last works to be preliminary sketches for *Mysterium,* thus giving us an interconnectedness between the five last sonatas. The Ninth Sonata was written in the winter of 1912-1913, and Scriabin was working on the Eighth and the Tenth Sonatas simultaneously. Due to his struggles with the Eighth Sonata, Scriabin seemed to have finished this trio of sonatas in reverse numerical order, with the Tenth first and the Eighth last. These other two sonatas are cosmic works: the Eighth Sonata, Op. 66, deals with silent tragedy, while the [[Scriabin Sonata 10|Tenth Sonata]], Op. 70, is a work of pure divine bliss. In contrast to the Eighth and the Tenth, which have clear tonal centers (A and F respectively), the Ninth Sonata can be said to be purely atonal. There is a "tonic" chord in the Ninth Sonata, in the sense that the piece opens and closes with this chord, namely the pitch class set $\{\mathrm B, \mathrm C\sharp, \mathrm F, \mathrm G\}$, but other than the secondary nature of the $\mathrm C\sharp$, the pitches of this four-note chord all contend for primacy. Furthermore, the Ninth Sonata deals with the theme of humanity's corruption instead of anything cosmic or divine; indeed, all we find in the Ninth Sonata is a rejection of divine knowledge which we find received in the Tenth Sonata. For this reason, the nickname *Black Mass,* which was not coined by the composer,[^3] is, in this pianist's opinion, an inaccurate reduction of the Ninth Sonata. Rather, it is the Sixth Sonata, Op. 62, that seems to be the true "Black Mass," being the counterpart of the Seventh Sonata (the *White Mass*); the Ninth Sonata is not overtly ritualistic or liturgical in comparison. Instead, some have suggested that the Ninth Sonata is themed around divine punishment: humanity's failure to unite with what Scriabin thought was the divine led to their ultimate destruction.[^4] Therefore, it seems that Scriabin's purpose for writing the piece was *prophetic* — he believed in humanity's imminent doom should his ideas not be realized by all people. The piece opens by immediately introducing the listener to the suffocating darkness of the first theme. Nonetheless, the second theme of the exposition is limpid, unaware of what came before it. According to Scriabin's musical colleague, Leonid Sabaneyev (1881-1968), Scriabin called this second theme the "slumbering shrine," being a refuge from the darkness outside. In the development of the sonata, humanity takes a second visit to this shrine, only to find that corrupt forces have infiltrated into the serenity of the temple.[^5] It is at this point in the development where the fate is sealed for mankind, and the rest of the sonata depicts the zombification of humanity, which is perfected in the grotesque funeral march into the coda, which can only be described as the bloody annihilation of the world. Finally, the piece closes the same way it begins, with a mist of shrouded forces in the background, this time taking all of mankind with it. #scriabin [^1]: Depending on the choice of tempo, the Fourth Sonata, Op. 30 may be shorter, being also around $8$ minutes long. However, the form of the Fourth Sonata is broader, possessing two movements and a complete recapitulation in its second movement. [^2]: The tale goes that Scriabin stood on the shores of Lake Geneva (Switzerland), and claimed to those around him that if he really wanted to, he could walk on water, thus replicating the Biblical miracle. According to some accounts, when he was asked to attempt it, Scriabin adamantly refused. Other accounts say that his attempt was (obviously) unsuccessful, but instead, he decided to preach to the poor fishermen on the lake. [^3]: It should be noted that Scriabin did *approve* of this nickname. But unlike the Seventh Sonata, Op. 64, which Scriabin explicitly titled *Messe blanche* (*White Mass*), the Ninth bears no such designation. [^4]: See Stefanie Seah's seminal dissertation on the late sonatas (2011), p. 90. [^5]: In the music, Scriabin gives the French command, *avec une douceur de plus en plus caressante et empoisonnée*, that is, "with an increasingly caressing and poisoned sweetness."