Scriabin: Piano Sonata No. 9, Op. 68 Practice Notes

Happy Birthday, Aleksandr Nikolaevich!

Improving my practice approach is the main task for the next concert.

So this time, before even touching the piano properly, I decided to look at the overall structure of the piece first, and to listen to many different recordings. Just feeling it. Getting a sense of it.

And yes, Scriabin.

I have wanted to play this sonata for ages, but the more I look at it, the more I find myself thinking,

What is this exactly?

I try to understand how the piece is built before practicing, but I cannot move past the very first theme. At all.

It is a sonata, so the theme is crucial.

So I try to figure out what is going on. Structurally, I can follow the harmonic logic and the motivic construction, but it still does not make musical sense to me.

I have feelings about phrases.

I like certain sounds.

I think, this color is nice.

But nothing takes shape as music.

It feels like I am talking to an invisible person.

Since this was going nowhere, I shifted to feeling the harmony, and that is when it hit me

.Everything sounds the same, because it is built from the same type of diminished sonority, constantly transformed.

With Granados, the harmonies are decorated differently every time, and my head starts spinning.

But Scriabin feels as if everything is the same, and yet, thanks to accidentals, it looks completely different.

The sonorities are subtly different, but closely related.

Humanity as one family.

Tears.

Before throwing an impossible question at my personal assistant, Chat-kun, ( AI-powered searches), I did a quick Google search and found someone who had analyzed the piece.

Octatonic scale.

Yes, I have taught that before.

But now, reading about stacked augmented fourths and similar explanations, I realize that these are things I can understand on paper, but they do not yet rise as sound for me.

So I give up on reading and start playing, asking myself,

what is going on here?

What chord is this?

What is this interval?

Little by little, things start to come into view, and I find myself sighing.

So this is how he composed, like building intricate inlay work.

That such density and complexity coalesce into a singular work of art is probably why he is a great composer.

But still…..

I do not understand this A.

The last note of the first theme.

It has a tenuto. Which means, this matters.

That A feels completely out of place.

Like putting chili oil on sushi.

By accident, I play the A with pedal, asking myself who you are and where you came from, and then continue straight into the first measure.

I freeze.

This piece is in A minor?

I almost fall off my chair.

There is no key signature.

But from the beginning, sharps and flats are mixed freely.Enharmonic spellings everywhere.

I thought this piece was atonal.

I actually say, wait, what.

Proof?

Nope.

Just a feeling.

But I was so stunned that I wrote it down on the spot, just so I wouldn’t lose it.

Two days already.

Am I okay?