UCLA

Alexander Skryabin was a composer, poet, and mystic philosopher who sought to unify these three endeavors in his artistic works. He sought means of influencing and enlightening the human spirit through multimodal artistic expression, with his ultimate goal being the enactment of an omnisensory performance called The Mysterium that was to bring about the apocalypse by raising the spiritual consciousness of all humankind beyond our earthly forms. The music and writings that Skryabin produced have mystified audiences and critics for over a century due to their highly idiosyncratic construction. This dissertation seeks to bring the music and mysticism closer together, and explore their complex interrelationships.Skryabin’s philosophical outlook is difficult to discuss due to its ever-shifting nature; Skryabin frequently wrote and stated contradictory beliefs in sometimes shockingly close proximity. This dissertation argues in favor of understanding Skryabin’s philosophy as an ongoing work-in-progress that is nonetheless structured by a handful of core ideas that underpin all of the changing superstructure. This dissertation seeks to understand Skryabin’s music and mysticism by analyzing it through the lens of phenomenology, as this methodology allows for analysis of far more musical characteristics than only looking at harmony or form. The phenomenological method outlined here focuses particularly on the experience of musical time, musical space, and the embodied motions of the pianistic performer. Skryabin was a pianist-composer who primarily wrote for and at the piano, and this dissertation finds myriad connections between Skryabin’s philosophical outlook and the ways that he encourages a pianist to move. A recurrent theme throughout this dissertation is a distinction between the exoteric and esoteric, which is most readily apparent in the two primary musical analyses – Prometheus: The Poem of Fire (1910) and Piano Sonata No. 10 (1913). Prometheus is a grand, exoteric expression of Skryabin’s philosophy intended to communicate outward with the masses, while in contrast, Piano Sonata No. 10 is an inwardly-focused esoteric expression of hierophantic ritual.