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Hello and welcome to Sticky Notes, the classical music podcast. My name is Joshua Wylerstein, I'm a conductor and I'm the Music Director of the Orchestra National Delille and the chief conductor of the Aalborg Symphony. This podcast is for anyone who loves classical music, works in the field, or is just getting ready to dive in to this amazing world of incredible music. Before we get started, I want to thank my new Patreon sponsors, William, Jeremy, Bill and Tina, Mary, Jeffrey, Ronald, Martin and Rob, and all of my other Patreon sponsors for making season 10 possible. If you'd like to support the show, please head over to patreon.com stickynotespodcast and if you are a fan of the show, please take a moment to give us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. It is greatly appreciated. Onto the show. The universe is embraced in flames. Spirit at the summit of its being, feels and perceives endless tides of divine power, of free will emboldened. That which was pestilent is now seduction. That which, frightened gives you pleasure also. The bites of the panther and hyena are new caresses, as the serpent's sting is but a burning kiss. Thence the universe resounds with a joyful cry. I am. Those are the final lines of Alexander Scriabin's epic Poem of Ecstasy, a 300 line long poem that takes nearly 10 minutes to read aloud and is one of the most surreal texts I've ever read in my life. Scriabin wrote a poem of ecstasy in text and a poem of ecstasy in music simultaneously. Both are absolutely wild, with the musical poem of Ecstasy being a 20 minute thrill ride that alternates between languid, sinewy, seductive music and some of the loudest, most over the top and dramatic music that could possibly exist. I've always been fascinated by Scriabin and so this week's episode is an opportunity to talk about his wild and I'm going to be using that word a lot today, life and the eclectic philosophy behind Scriabin's works, as well as to take you through this masterpiece of musical sensuality. Scriabin not only doesn't shy away from sensual aspects in music, but instead he fully embraces them. In fact, the original title for this piece was Orgiastic Poem. Thankfully, since the piece probably never would have been performed with that title, Scriabin changed the name to Poem of Ecstasy and the piece has stayed in the repertoire of most big orchestras ever since. And big is the key word here, because this piece is written for an absolutely massive orchestra, like a Mahler Symphony. The Poem of Ecstasy is an event which, whenever it is performed, simply from seeing the sheer size of the orchestra on stage. When you see this piece live in concert, it's truly an overwhelming experience to listen to this piece, and I can't wait to share it with you this week. Coming right up on Sticky Notes. Scriabin was born into an aristocratic Russian family in 1871 and died at the age of just 43 in 1915. He always followed an unconventional path in his life, with two aspects being particularly relevant for the Poem of Ecstasy. The first was Scriabin's approach to harmony in music, which caused accusations of madness to regularly be leveled at him. In his early career, Scriabin's music sounded much more conventional than, say, the poem Vechsi does, but he was already pushing the bounds of what tonality was early writing, stacked chords that feature an incredible amount of richness. Forgive a little theory lesson here, but it's important for the entire aesthetic of the Poem of Ecstasy, and it gives it its mysteriously sensual and seductive character. A normal chord is a triad, let's say C major. A very common addition to a normal chord is the seventh note from the root. In this case A, B over the top of the root, C. You can play around with this with C minor, C major, C diminished, C augmented chords, and then the sevenths can also be played around with seventh chords are ubiquitous in classical music. Then you can go further and add a ninth. And even further and add elevenths and thirteenths. Do you hear how unstable these chords are getting? Well, Scriabin, like a lot of jazz composers, loved to use 13th chords, as well as altering the spelling of these chords so that parts of them were minor and parts of them were major, parts of them diminished, augmented, etc. But then he used those chords as a dominant chord. A dominant chord is the chord that resolves to the tonic. The main harmony, for example, G major, is the dominant of C major. So a normal dominant to tonic resolution would sound like a G major seventh chord followed by a C major chord. But a Scriabin dominant might sound like that. Tonal experimentation marked Scriabin's early work, and it only became more and more unusual from there. And a lot of it had to do with those dominant chords getting more and more complex until there wasn't really a feeling of resolution at all. This might sound like I'm saying that Scriabin wasn't really a tonal composer, but that's not really the case. Scriabin's tonality was just unlike anyone else's. When his music is tonal, as you'll hear in the Poem of Ecstasy, it is tonal. But when his music is not tonal, it's not the Schoenbergian stereotype of atonality either. It's more of an extending of musical tension that creates a wonderfully suspended feeling underneath gorgeous melodies and passionate musical ideas. This is perfectly described by the so called mystic chord. This is a term Scriabin never used himself to describe this chord, but has become a kind of stand in for what it represents. Here it is. There's a lot of complex theory you can get into if you want to know about this chord, but for the purposes of this show, I'll just say that this chord's power is its ability to go wherever it wants and its intense and unresolved tension. Scriabin himself called the scale that makes up this chord synthetic harmony. And if you listen to that scale, it makes sense, since it sounds like fragments of multiple scales put together. So why is it called the mystic chord? Well, that was a term coined by the English music critic Arthur egglefield Hull in 1916, and it had a lot to do with the fascination people had with Scriabin's philosophical beliefs, which are an integral part of his music and are the second thing I want to introduce to you before we start the journey onto the poem of ecstasy. Maybe the best way to start to describe Scriabin and his beliefs would be to share with you his own description of this mystic. It was designed to afford instant apprehension of that is, to reveal what was in essence beyond the mind of man. To conceptualize its preternatural stillness, was a gnostic intimation of a hidden otherness. Okay, you see what you're getting into now. Scriabin was deeply interested in the rich philosophical discussions that were taking place near the end of the 19th century, and was heavily influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and others. Though his main interest, though not without reservations, seems to have been Theosophy, a religious movement that actually came out of the United States, though it was founded by a Russian woman, Helena Blavatsky. Theosophy mixes together many of the world's religions, but I think it's best if I let the theosophical society in America describe exactly what Theosophy is, rather than me try to explain it. Here it we humans know that we could be much more than we ordinarily are. But what is this? What potential do we have that we could develop more fully? And who could tell us what this potential is? There is a body of knowledge that answers these questions. It provides theory, practice and techniques that enable us to free ourselves from the limitations of ordinary life and achieve greater happiness, wisdom and peace. This knowledge has gone by many, the ancient wisdom, the perennial philosophy, the wisdom tradition. Because it is universally true. It is found all over the world, but it takes many different forms, depending upon the time and circumstances and the people it is addressing. One version of this ancient wisdom in recent times is Theosophy. Derived from Greek roots meaning divine wisdom, it is a body of knowledge that tells us about our place in the universe and why the world is the way it is. Although it agrees in many respects with scientific theories, it goes past them in addressing unseen realities that we all experience but often don't understand. It answers many questions that people have such why am I here? What is the purpose of the universe? Is there a God? Why does there seem to be evil and injustice in the world? How can I have a purposeful and meaningful life? This ideology enraptured Scriabin, and many of his works are directly inspired by the questions that theosophy tried to answer. In fact, just before his death, Scriabin was planning a surreal work entitled Mysterium. A week long work, yes, a week long that would be performed in the Himalayan mountains, that would usher in the end of the world and a transformation of humans into nobler beings. That's a fairly ambitious task for a composer, I would say, and just a small insight into the intensity of Scriabin's beliefs and the lengths he was willing to go to promote them and to integrate them into his music. Scriabin believed fully in the idea that music was the highest form of art and said that the purpose of music is revelation.
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And there's just one more element of Scriabin that I'll mention here before we start, because it's also so relevant to this Scriabin's love for the sensual side of music and of life. He wrote once, I definitely know that in myself, the creative urge has all the signs of sexual stimulation. And there is certainly a, let's say, suggestive side to much of his music, not least the poem of ecstasy. This element is also an integral part of the poem that Scriabin wrote to accompany the poem of ecstasy. Here's just one example. And then I promise we will start talking about this incredible music. All of you is one single wave of liberty and joy. Multiplicity has created you. Legions of feelings have elevated you. Oh, pure desires I create you this complex unity, this sentiment of bliss capturing you Completely. I am the instant of illuminating eternity. I am the affirmation. I am ecstasy. So how does all of this, the unusual tonality, the mysticism, the eroticism, present itself in the poem of Ecstasy? Well, it starts from the very first chord in music that is marked to be played in a languid way. You don't need to know anything about theory or sevenths or ninths or elevenths, etc. To understand that there is something suspicious spended about that harmony at the start, and that this is music full of mysticism and a special atmosphere. The other thing about it is that every resolution just resolves to another, somewhat unstable chord. These are the introductory bars of the piece, and Scriabin is shrouding everything in mystery, though not of an anxious or ominous kind. This is more sensual, more like Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, than the beginning of the Rite of sp. We then hear the outline of a theme that is going to become extremely important, played by an instrument that will be extremely important later, the trumpet playing a theme that sums up everything we've been talking about. Scriabin marks it to be played imperiously, and it is a theme of great beauty, but again, also harmonic instability. It ends the introductory measures and brings us to the main theme of the A section of the piece. This main theme in this A section will be played first by the clarinet. It is another languid theme marked to be played smoothly or sweetly. And it is all that. But it is also played over yet more unstable harmonies, though at this point we're just about accustomed to them. There's nothing displeasing about them to the ear. In fact, there's something almost psychedelic about them. One of the things about those unstable harmonies is not only their lack of resolution, it's also how long Scriabin will stick on them without moving. This is very unusual in classical music, where the passage of harmony, the movement of harmony, is one of the major driving forces of the line. But here Scriabin doesn't want drive, he wants that sense of languid calm. Now, Scriabin didn't mean for the poem he wrote to be read alongside the music, but I think it fits too perfectly. At certain moments to avoid reading it to you, listen to the beginning with the text of the poem. Spirit winged with the thirst for life, is summoned into flight to the epitome of negation. There, under the rays of its chimera, emerges a mysterious world of heavenly forms and feelings. Spirit touching, spirit desiring, spirit creating all with a reverie abandons to the bliss of love Amid the rising cosmos it dwells in languor, then from the heights of inspiration, calling each being to blossom inebriated while soaring as it is ready to sink into oblivion. Scriabin was very much a Russian composer, but to me this music really has a French feel to it, in its orchestral colors, in the way that Scriabin uses French for his more unusual expressive indications, and really in its entire character. The end of this first section is a perfect example of this, as he ends the phrase on a chord that wouldn't be out of place in any of the great French impressionist composers works. A lot of commentary about this piece says that this music is in sonata form with an exposition where two main themes are laid out, a development where those themes are manipulated, a recapitulation where the main themes come back, and a coda where everything is summed up. There is some truth to this, I think, but the way this music works obscures that form. Though I'll mention it here if it helps you orient yourself in this music which defies orientation. We've just heard the main first theme and we now arrive in music that I would consider to be transitionary. It is a radical change from the languid voluptuousness of the first section. Scriabin marks the following music to be played. Flying. The tempo picks up and we really do feel as if we've been taken up onto the wings of a dynamic bird. But interestingly, this music is actually made up of the same intervals as the opening of the piece, just played at about quadruple the speed. This is how this wildly disparate music makes sense, even though it feels completely new. Subconsciously, we understand that Scriabin isn't actually inventing something here. In fact, it is something we've heard before. This volando, or flying music lasts only about 45 seconds before we return back to the A music and back to the languid character of before. The solo violin plays a huge role in this music, winding itself over these static harmonies, as Scriabin says to play as if the music is being caressed. This is an extremely thickly scored piece written for a massive Mahler sized orchestra featuring eight French horns, five trumpets, a huge percussion section and even an organ. The wind sections aren't small either, and of course Scriabin asks for a very large string section. This giant orchestra allows him not only to create massive amounts of sound, and don't worry, we're going to get to that, but also to make beautiful combinations of chamber, like moments as well, like here, where the violas and cellos play high up in their registers, playing a countermelody to the woodwinds, all of this is going on. While shimmering accompaniments come and go in, the rest of the strings and the basses move with their glacial harmonies through the texture. And now we begin the B section of this so called exposition. The tempo picks up and I think the following music might correspond to this moment in the poem. Hence, suddenly, trembling presentiments of dark rhythm break brazenly into this enchanted.
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Four of the eight French horns play this anxious fanfare, and the trumpet begins to pick up that theme I mentioned earlier. Now we really begin to take flight. Scriabin marks the following music to be played with a noble and sweet sense of majesty. And to me, this corresponds to the next part of the. Nevertheless, only for an instant, with light increasing, magnifying divine will, it dispels the abominable flesh phantoms. Then it attained singularly a coveted victory over itself. Listen once just of the theme, and then I'll point out something that you might easily miss. Okay, I'm now going to point out when the harmony actually changes underneath this big tune. Change. Just one time. This is music that is taking flight, but is also firmly in this spiritual world of suspended animation. And as if to emphasize that, Scriabin slows the tempo again, but not as slow as the beginning for a section based on this flying theme mark to be played with delight. The music is full of sign gestures, along with echoes of the introductory measures of the piece. If you're thinking this isn't going anywhere, you're not wrong. It takes real skill to make this feel like the enjoyable experience that Scriabin wants it to be. Rather than giving off a feeling of stasis, this is music that needs to be played, but also kind of listened to while in a trance. As this section develops, Scriabin tells the orchestra to play in a perfumed way. As the winds start to play huge arpeggios leaping through the texture in a way that has to sound excited, but not frantic. There is such an indulgent vibe to this music, though it is based in real, rigorous, worked out orchestration. All of this music is based on things we have heard before. And those static harmonies are doing a lot of work keeping us in this state of near delirium. And in fact, delirium is exactly what the orchestra is asked to do. As Scriabin writes, for the orchestra to play with an ever increasing intoxication, and then, literally, almost deliriously, the Harmonies here are the most dissonant we have heard so far, though through Scriabin magic, we don't perceive them that way. Instead, that delirium is transmitted to us if we are willing to take it in. You do have to be in the right frame of mind to hear this music, which, as I think you're figuring out, is unlike anything else on the planet. Scriabin comes the closest so far to using his full orchestra. As the trumpet breaks in at that climactic, delirious moment, a second signal always that something important is happening in the piece. And that important moment is that the development section is beginning for the second time. The trumpet tune appears, and this begins the first real, explosive moment of sheer sound in the piece. This is actually based on the flying music from that earlier transition. And amazingly, in the accompaniment, Scriabin has that music appearing in its original tempo, though underneath the slowed down version in the trumpet, Scriabin is actually making time flow in two layers, adding another bout of instability and delirium to this music. But notice one other important the harmony underneath all of this just never changes. The suspended animation, the extending of that dominant chord, it never stops. Scriabin is holding back on any sense of resolution, and the best part of that is that we barely notice until later. Now Scriabin suddenly marks the music to be played tragically. These are the storms of the development section and also the storm of the poem. This section could correspond to this text with a whole gamut of sensations. They feel tormented, wearied, ready to sink into oblivion. Although suddenly, again, from mysterious wombs, the spirit awakens, confused, like a formless host of savage terrors. It rises wrathfully with menacing waves which threaten all to submerge. But soon we begin to take flight again, and this leads us to the first major climax of the piece. Over those same static eb, Scriabin begins to stop the motion and start the motion again, as if the flying character is being buffeted by these strong winds and waves. But then, as if to support the imperious trumpet, the violins start to join in the fight. Marked to be played voluptuously, they begin to reach the top of the mountain. Suddenly, the whole orchestra is present in all of its gigantic form. And the harmony, for the first time in what feels like ages, begins to move like giant blocks of sound until we reach the top, not only of the mountain, but really of the world.
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And amazingly, this music now continues to fly, using all of the themes we have already been exploring. Again, I have no idea if Scriabin meant for this text to be corresponding to this moment in the piece. But to me it fits perfectly. Again, victory again, intoxication and rapture. With this increasing rhythm throbs the pulse of stronger life. Oh, my world, my life, my blossoming, my ecstasy, your moments. Each by each I create by negation of an earlier experience. I am forever negation again and ever anew more powerful, more tender, new sensual torture and fresh beatitude. Delighting in this dance, suffocated by its vortex, unmindful of goals and beloved ambitions, Spirit of lust is surrendering to this playful insobriety. On powerful wings, it speeds into realms of new discovery of ecstasy. But right at the moment we think perhaps we have arrived, Scriabin turns away and actually brings us right back to the beginning. We have not reached the culmination yet. In fact, we've only arrived at the recapitulation. We're exactly halfway through the piece, and what a journey we've already been on. It feels longer than the nine or ten minutes it takes to play, and I mean that in the best way possible. This music feels timeless on purpose. The recap is probably the most conventional part of the piece, in that Scriabin generally repeats what he's done in the exposition, but always slightly changing the orchestration so that it sounds like it's being heard in a slightly different lens. The same flying music returns, as well as the return to the main theme right after it. From this moment, we feel like we are on perhaps our first firm ground of the entire piece. But then something new begins. The B music appears, and it's here where we actually get a lot of variation in performance practice. This is possibly the beginning of the coda, though some commentators and analysts place it later on. It is definitely based on the A music, but it is much more passionate and features interjections from the trombones that remind us of the B section. In some ways, this is quintessential coda music. The problem is that in a 20 minute piece, we're only about 14 minutes in, which means the coda would be quite lopsided, though I don't put anything past Scriabin. Anyway, the tempo that Scriabin writes is molto piulento, much slower. Here is how some conductors take it, including the performance I've been using with Evgeny Svitlanov and the USSR State Symphony Orchestra, one of my favorite recordings of the piece. And then there are those who, let's say, indulge a bit.
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It really depends on how you see this moment structurally. Is it an indulgent memory of the opening melody or the beginning of one of the most thrilling codas in all of music. I tend to prefer the Svetlanov way, trying to whip this music up into a passionate cry. Either way you do it. This leads to another appearance of that now well loved trumpet melody. And it seems as if we are headed to another unbelievable climactic moment. But as the trumpet begins to fly again, Scriabin suddenly pulls away and writes music literally to be played in a charming way. It's like he can't quite let go of this music and it dies away one final time. This is where many analysts say the coda actually begins. And it makes sense. We are about to begin the final ascent to the end of the poem. Why does this version suddenly feel like the end? It's the harmony. Listen to how the harmony now begins to change underneath the trumpet line. Before, we were in those constantly static dominant chords, but now Scriabin moves the harmony in gigantic blocks, each one sounding more resolved than the last. He even brings back the flying music as well as an accompaniment. But he's not quite done. There's one more buildup to go, and Scriabin makes it explicitly clear what he wants. He tells the orchestra to play with a voluptuousness that becomes more and more ecstatic. This passage is very tricky, though. As we return for a moment to that static sense from earlier on, just at the moment where it seems we've been promised the ending, all the themes come back, trading off with that increasingly ecstatic feeling. And this increasing energy leads us to the final few minutes of the piece. I'll just explain what happens and then I'll let you listen to it, because it would be a crime to interrupt it. The faster flying music returns the trumpet as well. But instead of the trumpet leading the final bars, he gives the trumpets a triplet ostinato, a repeated figure, while the eight French horns take over the big tune in a majestic and slow tempo that seems to stretch time out beyond its normal processes. A huge bell accompanies them every other bar, while the rest of the orchestra sits on those static harmonies from before. But they've never felt more alive. Each resolution of harmony extends the instability and frankly, the ecstasy. Sorry, it's hard not to be a little bit graphic or suggestive when talking about this piece until finally, everything stops. From there, Scriabin writes a few sighing gestures, a massive crescendo, and finally, finally, we reach C major in one of the most satisfying resolutions of harmony ever written down on paper. Alright, here we go. The coda of the Poem of Ecstasy. I really don't have much to add to that. Hearing the Poem of Ecstasy live is quite an experience, as you heard in that reaction to that performance. It's so loud, so overwhelming, so eye poppingly characterful that it really feels like the all consuming experience Scriabin wanted his listeners to have listening to his music. This is what makes this piece so successful. Slowly and yes, seductively, it makes its way into our mind using those unstable harmonies with such abandon that we become completely used to them, allowing us to fully embrace Scriabin's sound world in 20 minutes of music. Scriabin creates music that seems to last a lifetime and is absolutely unforgettable for every listener. And that's exactly what Scriabin wanted. He once told a friend, when you listen to the Poem of Ecstasy, look straight into the eye of the sun. Thanks so much for listening to Sticky Notes today. This episode was mixed by Charlie Kozella, so a huge thank you to him. We'll have some more exciting stuff for you in a couple of weeks, so don't miss our next episode. If you like what you heard today, please feel free to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It really helps the show and gain more visibility. And please send any questions to stickynotespodcastmail.com if you'd like to support the podcast monetarily, just head over to patreon.com stickynotespodcast thanks and I'll talk to you again after a while.