Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Anybody know about Julian Scriabin?

Listening to some very short but delightful works by a 10 year old Julian Scriabin who lived until he was 11. His Prelude Op 2, and 2 preludes op 3 and another from 1919.

The liner notes state that he "drowned in the river Dnieper in circumstances which have not been fully explained." Usually this type of language is diplomatic language for something we don't want to talk about. Like Alexander Scriabin drowned him out of jealousy or something like this.

Does anybody know under what circumstances this young genius died?

Amazing short opus of works from such a young person. What a loss.

Julian drowned AFTER his father died (in 1915). The pieces he penned are indeed, remarkable, and incredibly precocious.

koji (STSD)

koji, are you implying that Alexander returned from the dead just to drown his son? Man, that's pretty messed up.

where can we find these works??

I have a copy issued through the Scriabin Society, but am not sure if those pieces have been published by a sheet music distributor.

koji (STSD)

Try Google search. At least you should be able to listen to some of the compositions. Here is one of them:

http://www.musicweb.uk.net/classrev/2000/sept00/scriabinpreludes.htm

Oh, I was referring to Julian Scriabin, I have heard lots of Alexander Scriabin's works

nm, I was confused by the title. Would be very interesting to find some sheet music of his though!

I found a website that says he was drowned in a boating accident... the body was never recovered.

Not that this information clears anything up.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=9796706&pt=Julian%20Scriabin

Seems that only his four Preludes, op.2. survive. I wasn't able to find a recording or sheet music of any of them online, hopefully something will turn up at my school's music library!

I am listening to Julian on a CD by Danacord (Denmark, company www.danacord.dk) DACOCD 619 which is titled Rarities of Piano Music at "Schloss vor Musum" from the 2003 recital. It has four different pieces by Julian Scriabin - prelude op 2 (1918), 2 preludes op 3 (1918) and prelude (1919).

Bought it at Tower Records in NYC.

Not that the Scriabin is to die for, there is other interesting music on the CD as well worth listening to, but it is awesome for a 10 year old.

I enjoy using fragments of rare or obscure melodies or motives in my neo-romantic works, which is why i had a particular interest in them. For instance, I did a waltz on a theme from a set of waltzes chopin did, where althought they were lost in a fire, the first four measures of each were preserved from his sister's catalogue! In fact i'm going to post a recording and score of that very waltz up here shortly.

I don't know why that kind of stuff interests me.. a fascination for the hidden jewels of classical music i suppose.

Great stuff kcoul058...

Please publish your work to the forum so we can hear or play it. Sounds very interesting.

BTW - is that my man Maurice in your ID Glyph?

indeed it is! probably my #1 influence, AFAIC he was the last major composer to push the boundaries of consonance while maintaining a smoothness in form and structure one would associate with classicism.

I can't help but say my ultimate goal as a composer is to try and pick up where he left off; and I know, it is a lofty one. But like him, I believe that in order to break new ground and honour tradition at the same time (essentially building on top of the old without rejecting any of it, to build the pyramid even taller instead of starting a new one), one must be capable in composing in the likeness of almost all major styles, certainly including music of the renaissance, classical, and romantic periods, and of course of his defining impressionist period as well. And from this vantage point we can also throw the better half of the contemporary sound into the mix too, and draw from it.

So in that effect, while I study I am essentially composing my way through the 19th and early 20th centuries, being sure not to plagiarize style and to learn better than any other way how the music developped the way it did, and hopefully discover in the end what might have been if it hadn't suddenly "switched". Maybe had Scriabin's son not drowned, things might have turned out differently?

Again, much like Ravel (his earliest works were in fact primarily fugues!), I also strongly believe composers should have a significant ability in composing contrapuntally even if they don't end up using it very much in the long term, like him I plan on writing alot of fugues while i study (albeit not in the baroque style, more like the one from his tombeau de couperin), in order to conquer the ultimate manifestation of polyphony.

If i can i'll put the recording up tonight and the score soon after that.

The International Music Score Library Project has what appears to be a manuscript copy of his 4 Preludes. Some of the accidentals are a little difficult to read. The same file is at Wikipedia Commons.
http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Scriabin,_Yulian
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Julian_Scriabin_-_Preludes.pdf

It would be great if someone would take the trouble to transcribe these properly.

There is a better copy of Op. 3, No. 1 at Wikimedia. It appears to be professionally published. Fitting the image onto a single page produces something a little small for my eyesight, but if you cut the image in half, paste each part onto a separate page in MS Word, then stretch the images, you get a perfectly readable result.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Scriabin_Julian_Prelude_op.3_n1.jpg

The history of eldest daughter Ariadna Scriabin no less fantastic, although not related to music.