# Favorite Scriabin piano sonata



## Dim7

Because there just wasn't enough "favorite" polls!


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## brotagonist

I don't know. I think I've only ever heard the Black Mass, back in the mid-'70s. I am just beginning to get to know his symphonies.


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## JACE

I like all of them! 

Forced to pick just one, I think I'd go with the *Third*.


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## Mandryka

All of them after 5. The ones before 5 are horrible. 10 is a particular favourite because of the insect noises.


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## Bulldog

Mandryka said:


> All of them after 5. The ones before 5 are horrible.


I can't consider any solo piece of Scriabin's to be horrible or even not too good. The Scriabin police force will be watching you carefully.


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## Dim7

Mandryka said:


> All of them after 5. The ones before 5 are horrible. 10 is a particular favourite because of the insect noises.


Even the fourth?? It might be my favorite. It's like a happy Tristan und Isolde prelude on piano. Or maybe not.


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## clavichorder

Mandryka said:


> All of them after 5. The ones before 5 are horrible. 10 is a particular favourite because of the insect noises.


Why do you think that? 4 is my favorite!


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## Mandryka

The 4th is irredeemable. It's like mood music for a hotel room.


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## clavichorder

Mandryka said:


> The 4th is irredeemable. It's like mood music for a hotel room.


Well, at least we agree on English Renaissance music.


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## Mandryka

Bulldog said:


> I can't consider any solo piece of Scriabin's to be horrible or even not too good. The Scriabin police force will be watching you carefully.


Même pô peur. ....


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## Couchie

Mandryka said:


> The 4th is irredeemable. It's like mood music for a hotel room.


I prefer "The Poem of Ecstasy" for my hotel rooms.


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## clavichorder

Mandryka said:


> The 4th is irredeemable. It's like mood music for a hotel room.


Do you have similar feelings about Poeme op 32 no 1?


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## Bulldog

Mandryka said:


> The 4th is irredeemable. It's like mood music for a hotel room.


Since Scriabin's music is often highly erotic, that hotel room sounds like a great idea.


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## MoonlightSonata

I've only heard #2, so I can't vote, but by the sound of it I really need to hear the Black Mass.


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## Dim7

MoonlightSonata said:


> I've only heard #2, so I can't vote, but by the sound of it I really need to hear the Black Mass.


Keep in mind that you're too young to hear either 4th or 5th! R18 stuff


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## DeepR

"Mood music for a hotel room". I think you got confused with Debussy (PetrB is still banned, right? :devil.
My favorites are 2, 3, 8, 10. 
I voted for 8 because it's my current favorite.


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## Janspe

Number nine, by far. It left an unforgettable impression on me when I first heard it. The repeated note motif still makes me feel uncomfortable...

Of the early sonatas, I like the second and fourth quite a bit!


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## DeepR

How fantastic is the second movement of the 2nd sonata. Those chords near the end really strike like thunder. I also like how in this particular recording Richter ends it quietly.


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## Dim7

No vote for the fifth yet? (edit: now there is) I thought it was the most popular. I like the balance between "atonality" and "tonality" in that one.


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## Bulldog

DeepR said:


> How fantastic is the second movement of the 2nd sonata. Those chords near the end really strike like thunder. I also like how in this particular recording Richter ends it quietly.


Wow! Richter is absolutely dynamite - a performance worthy of only the best hotels in Mandryka's world.


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## Richannes Wrahms

I don't know, maybe No.9? What seems clear to me is that by far the most interesting aspect of them is rhythm.


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## Chronochromie

DeepR said:


> "Mood music for a hotel room". I think you got confused with Debussy (PetrB is still banned, right? :devil


But I'm not! *Blasphemy!*


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## violadude

I like Scriabin's 1st sonata and I love the rest of them (Ya, even the fairly unpopular #6). I couldn't possibly choose one favorite.


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## Vaneyes

Tucking into a Denny's Grand Slam with *Scriabin 3* in the foreground's gotta be Utopia...or just another stupid coincidence.


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## Mandryka

violadude said:


> I like Scriabin's 1st sonata and I love the rest of them (Ya, even the fairly unpopular #6). I couldn't possibly choose one favorite.


What makes you say that 6 is unpopular?


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## Dim7

I've got the impression that #6 is among the later style sonatas least popular but I'm not sure from where I've got that impression.


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## Selby

If I was to order them it would start something like 8, 2, 10, 9, 3. 

I find his second to be the most charming; his eighth to be the most compelling; his ninth to be the most intense.


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## clavichorder

Duplicate post..............


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## clavichorder

Curious that the fourth hasn't gotten much praise, and was actually written off as cheap by one poster. I'm reiterating what I already said in saying that it is my favorite. It is of just the right length, and has that very interesting slow-fast form. And its themes really carry through to the end. But also, I find it to be a very good example of my favorite Scriabin period; his middle period. Very ecstatic mood.


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## violadude

Mandryka said:


> What makes you say that 6 is unpopular?


Usually no one talks about the 6th, even those that really like Scriabin.


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## Il_Penseroso

Sonata No.3 for me...


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## Gaspard de la Nuit

I picked 4, but I will say this - once I was listening to the radio (like, 7 years ago), and a very self-indulgent, dramatic romantic piano work came on.......I was so astonished with just the first two minutes of it, that I decided then and there that it was among the greatest music I had ever heard. It had so much fire, drama and power that even an ardent Wagner-listener would have been astonished.

Turns out it was the first movement of scriabin's first piano sonata in f minor.


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## DeepR

Here's a nice performance of the 8th, apparently played on Scriabin's Bechstein at the Scriabin Museum in Moscow:


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## Cosmos

Each one has great qualities, and each one has it's own unique character. The ones I love the most are 3, 5, and 8, with 8 being my favorite


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## Pimlicopiano

Voted for No. 5, but also love no. 2 as have learnt the luscious first movement and am tackling the second movement. 4 feels like prototype for the ecstasy of the 5th. But as many have said each has it's own special character. Some days the 6th is just what I want, others, the 8th or 9th. Thankful that there is so much variety to be discovered.


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## Dim7

For fans of Scriabin's piano sonatas I have to recommend Berg's Piano Sonata. It's classified as "tonal" but is only barely more tonal than Berg's 12-tone music (which is on the hand rather "tonal" for 12-tone music).


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## Guest

I've just got the set.

Ask me in a few months.


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## violadude

dogen said:


> I've just got the set.
> 
> Ask me in a few months.


Lucky you!.....................


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## Mahlerian

Dim7 said:


> For fans of Scriabin's piano sonatas I have to recommend Berg's Piano Sonata. It's classified as "tonal" but is only barely more tonal than Berg's 12-tone music (which is on the hand rather "tonal" for 12-tone music).


What does this mean????

If it's tonal, it's tonal, period. There's no "less tonal" and "more tonal" unless you can say "this passage is tied to a home key, and these are not," which is not possible for something like the Berg Sonata, in which all of the harmonies are related to keys and resolved, eventually, to triads.


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## Dim7

I think it's safe to say that for example Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is more tonal than Berg's Piano Sonata. Why would it be such a binary thing? Extreme chromaticism does weaken a sense of tonality, while not necessarily destroying it. I'll freely admit that my assessment of the degree of tonality in Berg's Piano Sonata was totally amateurish and subjective though...


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## Mahlerian

Dim7 said:


> I think it's safe to say that for example Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is more tonal than Berg's Piano Sonata. Why would it be such a binary thing? Extreme chromaticism does weaken a sense of tonality, while not necessarily destroying it. I'll be free to admit that my assessment of the degree of tonality in Berg's Piano Sonata was totally amateurish and subjective though...


No, I'd say Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is just as tonal as Berg's Sonata. They are both pieces tied to the system of functional tonality, and thus tonal. You have to realize that I don't consider his later music as something _opposed_ to tonality, though, just something that developed out of it.

Look at it this way: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star may use the fundamental relationships of triadic tonality in a simple repetitive way that reinforces those relationships, but the Berg Sonata uses those same relationships, plus others allowed by functional tonality. Why should something that uses a wider variety of the devices allowed by a system be considered _less_ a part of that system?


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## Dim7

So do you think there's such a thing as "tonal ambiguity" at all? Wouldn't that concept imply some kind of middle ground between tonality and lack of it?

But okay, let's rewrite the sentence: The chromaticism in Berg's Piano Sonata op.1, which to my ears sounds a step more extreme than say the chromaticism in Tristan und Isolde or Verklärte Nacht (I might be wrong about this though), combined with the passionate character of the piece, makes me want to recommend it to the fans of Scriabin's piano music.


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## Mahlerian

Dim7 said:


> So do you think there's such a thing as "tonal ambiguity" at all? Wouldn't that concept imply some kind of middle ground between tonality and lack of it?


Are we speaking of identifying the key a passage is in, or of whether or not that passage is in a key? Yes, there is such a thing as tonal ambiguity. It is something that can be found in passages of Mozart and Beethoven as well as Berg. Do you find it makes sense to say that Mozart's music is less tonal than his contemporaries'?

And something can be completely unambiguous and also not tonal. Take much non-Western music over a drone, for example.


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## Pimlicopiano

You don't let the little things go do you. Poor old Dim7 for having the temerity to suggest another piece to Scriabin lovers. I guess in your world he deserves a public mauling for having used a musical term that doesn't accord wholly with your view. It would have been fine if he'd stopped at the first sentence of course. I don't know the piece but I'm going to listen to it now, whether it's tonal, atonal, modern, post-modern, avant garde, progressive, regressive or whatever.


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## Mahlerian

Pimlicopiano said:


> You don't let the little things go do you. Poor old Dim7 for having the temerity to suggest another piece to Scriabin lovers. I guess in your world he deserves a public mauling for having used a musical term that doesn't accord wholly with your view. It would have been fine if he'd stopped at the first sentence of course. I don't know the piece but I'm going to listen to it now, whether it's tonal, atonal, modern, post-modern, avant garde, progressive, regressive or whatever.


I'm not trying to shame anyone. The Berg is a great piece, and I think he's probably right that it would appeal to fans of Scriabin who want something a bit different in a similar vein. It's just that I feel the word atonal has done a lot to hurt music and confuse people, and avoiding it (and similar things, such as "more tonal") could help us to talk more intelligently about what actually is happening in the music.


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## Dim7

dogen said:


> I've just got the set.
> 
> Ask me in a few months.


Better like them... You've got some redeeming to do, for liking Webern (12-tone stuff that is, liking Passacaglia and Im sommerwind is more than acceptable) and not liking Mozart (if I recall correctly).


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## dwindladwayne

I like all of them but the first that I've heard is the *first sonata* and since then its insane mixture of Chopin's refinement with Russian Wodka imprinted my ear for eternity.


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## DeepR

<insert list of positive superlatives>. I think what I like most of all about his late sonatas is that they are like an organic brew of some kind. This sonata has an unstable, volatile atmosphere but it doesn't burst into thunder and lightning. It's more like little bubbles, boiling, growing, bursting, like sparks of life in a primordial soup. It's still a rather gentle sonata compared to the others. Some of the other late sonatas consist of a more violent mixture, even thunderous at times, but they all share the same organic qualities.


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## Brian Rin

My order of preference:

5, 6, 9, 4, 7, 8, 10, 2, 3, 1


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## Cosmos

DeepR said:


> <insert list of positive superlatives>. I think what I like most of all about his late sonatas is that they are like an organic brew of some kind. This sonata has an unstable, volatile atmosphere but it doesn't burst into thunder and lightning. It's more like little bubbles, boiling, growing, bursting, like sparks of life in a primordial soup. It's still a rather gentle sonata compared to the others. Some of the other late sonatas consist of a more violent mixture, even thunderous at times, but they all share the same organic qualities.


Omg fun fact, that's my video! Haha


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## Ukko

I'll go with #3. He was on the trapeze, but hadn't fallen off yet.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

I'm a bit surprised by the results so far (even though it's definitely a small sample size). Voted for 10 btw, but could just as easily have voted for a couple of others.


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## Rogerx

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> I'm a bit surprised by the results so far (even though it's definitely a small sample size). Voted for 10 btw, but could just as easily have voted for a couple of others.


Perhaps after this resurrection the vote will continue.


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## DeepR




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## flamencosketches

Not going to vote because there are too many choices. My favorites are probably 2 "Sonata-Fantasy", 3, and 9 "Black Mass".


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