Above: Detail from Odilon Redon’s Pandora.
On November 2, 3 and 4, the Houston Symphony welcomes renowned conductor Bramwell Tovey back to Jones Hall for The Seven Deadly Sins, a playfully provocative program of works by Strauss, Scriabin and Weill. Learn more about the spiritual and sensual sides of Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy in this post.
Mysticism is one of the most fascinating phenomena in human culture. For those who undergo them, mystical experiences defy the rational mind with feelings of ineffable bliss, ecstasy and oneness with the universe or the divine. In The Varieties of Religious Experience of 1901-1902, William James described such experiences as “illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance,” and wrote that a person who has had one “immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words.” But if mystical experiences cannot be conveyed in words, might they be conjured through music?
This question became an obsession for the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin. At the dawn of the 20th century, the Western world was increasingly aware of the rapid advance of science and the rationalization of society. As many began to question more traditional religions and ways of understanding the world, some sensed that the forward march of progress was leaving humanity’s spiritual needs unfulfilled. Influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wagner and Theosophy, Scriabin believed that art—and especially music—had the power to fill this void.
Despite the ineffable nature of mystical experiences, mystics from many different traditions have tried to communicate their experiences through comparisons with more earthly phenomena, including birth, death, awakening, and even sex. The connection between mysticism and the erotic was central for Scriabin, especially in his most popular work, The Poem of Ecstasy, which he originally planned to call Poème Orgiaque (Orgiastic Poem). Scriabin’s score contains many unconventional expression markings, including “very perfumed,” “with a feeling of growing intoxication,” and “with a sensual pleasure becoming more and more ecstatic.”
Musically, Scriabin broke new ground in pursuit of his expressive ambitions, taking Wagner’s intensely chromatic harmonic language a step further. The Poem’s harmonies are full of yearning and tension that remain unresolved until the final note. Likewise, though Scriabin calls for an enormous orchestra, he only unleashes its full power in the exultant finale. Leading to this, the music is full of delicate, sensuous textures, featuring prominent parts for solo violin and trumpet. Constructed from a web of interrelated melodic motifs, waves of sound envelop the listener as the piece unfolds:
After a languid opening, we hear faster, fluttering music marked “volando” (“flying”). A churning, tempestuous middle section then leads to a reprise of the opening and flying music. The work concludes with a truly ecstatic ending. —Calvin Dotsey
Don’t miss Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy on November 2, 3 and 4, 2018! Get tickets and more information at houstonsymphony.org.
