1' 33" of Pure Genius: Scriabin Feuillet d'album (Album Leaf) Op 45 no 1

[00:00:05][music] [music] Hello and welcome back to the independent pianist. I'm your host Cole Anderson and today I'm talking about one of my favorite miniatures. This is a little gem of a piece by Alexander Scriyabin, the album leaf opus 45. A quick note on the title, Album Leaf.

[00:00:50]This might be a little bit of a strange title for a lot of modern viewers. What does that mean, an album leaf? Well, in the 19th century, there was a bit of a custom where music lovers would have a little album that they might keep and their friends who were composers could uh copy pieces into the album. Kind of like a little gift that they they could give to someone if they stayed with someone, for example. Maybe they as a little gift, they might write out a piece. So, there are many versions of short pieces by Shopan, for example, which exist or sometimes only exist in the albums of his patrons and friends.

[00:01:23]So, the title of an album leaf is supposed to suggest that even if it didn't, this piece didn't actually start life in this way. It's a little bit of the same thing like saying that it's a, you know, a little thought of the moment, just a little inspiration of the moment of some kind. And that's the way this piece is. It's only a couple pages long and it's over in little little more than a minute. Having said that though, this is really a masterwork. Grabin has put every little uh tiny bit of perfection when it comes to his piano writing and his compositional magic into this piece. So, it's a really beguiling beauty. Has this kind of charm and it goes right to the heart. Before I [clears throat] go on as well, I have to explain I have a little bit of a cold right now. So, if you're noticing my voice is kind of stuffed up. Hopefully, I'll be able to make it through this introduction without sneezing. Um because I've just been feeling pretty sick today. But, uh I have all this open time so I really want to talk about this piece. So uh this album leaf comes right at the point where Scrabin was uh starting to work out certain things in his style which would lead to his late compositional style. So the kind of um we could call it kind of a tonal style where he really created a new musical language to replace standard tonality.

[00:02:37]And we really see that fully blossoming in the fifth piano sonata. But then also in all the later sonatas 6 through 10 on the later pieces after opus 53 or so we really see that that happening where gradually although there's always a kind of tonal centricity going on kind of gradually does away with the usual dominant tonic relationships from tone tonality standard tonality and replaces it with something of his own. Uh so when we analyze the harmony of this little gem of a piece and particularly the interplay between harmony and melody so the way in which Scrabin handles counterpoint in other words you can really clearly see the sort of directions that he would take in his later works. You can see them in incipient form. So not only does he alter and expand the typical tonal harmonic patterns uh he does this by using all kinds of extensions. So things like ninths, 11ths, 13ths. Uh he also does lots of interesting substitutions and um omissions from chords as well to create very interesting sounds and kind of elusive sounds in the harmony. So he not only does that, but he also frees the melody from typical restrictions of consonants and dissonance that were taken for granted up to this time. So for instance, it used to be a norm in most music from the 17th through the 19th century to have dissonances always resolved by steps, almost always. And when you had a dissonance which was not resolved by a step, it was usually because there was some very special thing happening in the music. Um, but for Scarabin, that seems to be no longer a matter of leading importance.

[00:04:13]Sometimes he uses leaps to resolve dissonances so often that it starts to become a little bit of a motivic element in his style and we can see that in this piece uh quite clearly. So for example, take this opening phrase.

[00:04:37]These first two B naturals that we have [music] are dissonant against the implied underlying harmony. And each time Screen resolves the dissonance with a swooping kind of leap upwards. [music] I've talked at times in the past about Scrappen's tendency to indulge in these sort of floating rising figures as if the music is vanishing upwards in a kind of ecstasy or something. And here that's counterpointed in the left hand by this kind of elusive baseline that avoids the typical arrival points for these sort of harmonic patterns. And it's wonderful to kind of reduce what Scribbin has written here back to its essentials. If we go all the way back to what really is at the root of this passage, we get a very simple kind of credential 64 pattern. So let's say that I simplified this opening melody to make it more normal, the way it would sound by someone written a hundred years previous perhaps. Then it might sound like this.

[00:05:59]So much more prosaic, much more boring, but that's kind of what's behind this passage. So if we just heard the harmonies, it would be something like So what does he do to change this? Well, first off, instead of going to a B flat. In the second bar, he puts an A natural, what's called a chromatic neighbor tone in the bass at this point, and only resolves it back to the B flat at the very end of the measure.

[00:06:38]So we get a very interesting and weird harmony, kind of a half diminished seventh harmony, but it's really replacing just a standard 64.

[00:06:55]And we can kind of see that clearly if we if we look at the senority that's created when you just take the third beat. [music] After that, instead of keeping the baseline the same when he has the five chord, he drops the bass down to the third inversion of the chord, which has the A flat. Also, he omits the B flat. That's really kind of striking. Instead of having, he doesn't have the B flat. And he also changes one note. He gives a sixth above the bass, what would normally be the uh the root of the chord.

[00:07:36][snorts] So we get this very odd chord.

[00:07:38]It's it's built on a trionee and a fourth, which is very precient of Scrabble's later style. [music] And you can hear it still suggests the sound of a dominant 7th, but it's a little altered and a little bit more vague and elusive.

[00:07:57]>> [music] >> And then finally we do resolve to the one chord, the E flat major chord, but in the first inversion, kind of a weaker sounding inversion.

[00:08:12]And then with the melody, with the alterations in the melody, with these dissonant uh B naturals, that makes it even more odd and kind of perfumed in sound.

[00:08:32]So, what is Scrabin doing? He's destabilizing this famous progression.

[00:08:36]He's finding a new way to dress it up, but he's also uh removing some of the qualities that made it really stable or made it feel really strong and predictable to our ear. So that's probably why this piece feels so delightfully alien and so kind of exotic to us in a in a really pleasant way because it avoids all these normal tropes of tonal progressions which are still common in a lot of music to the present day. Another note about that third bar with the um dominant chord, part of the reason why it still feels like a dominant chord even though the root of the chord is missing, the B flat is missing, is because the trionee [music] A flat to D, that's really the essential dissonance in a dominant chord. And as long as we hear that dissonance resolving outwards, it does kind of signal that dominant tonic progression.

[00:09:30]It's much more ambiguous, but it still has that sound to it.

[00:09:41]So, probably this will be reminding some of my viewers of jazz harmony. In jazz harmony, rootless voicings are common enough, and it's kind of fun to see how this piece and Scriyabin's kind of middle period style is a subtle forerunner to that kind of music making.

[00:09:58]Now, uh, we should also mention even though this is a very small piece, scrabbin does very tightly hold things together motivically. So, this little falling second idea [music] is motivic and it's going to come back uh later on in the piece and it's already kind of echoed to in the baseline which has this kind of falling a lot of falling seconds in it. If we go on to the second phrase, we can see some more examples of really kaleidoscopic ways that scribban finds to recompose some of the harmonies. So for instance, if we take the second half of this opening eight bar phrase.

[00:10:37][music] Well, first we get a little bit more of a normal dominant tonic progression there at the end.

[00:10:50]a little bit more normal sounding, but we get a very interesting chord uh right there at the end of that line.

[00:10:59]So, if we analyze this, it's it's very much a kind of improvised style of structure because if we take the left hand by itself, that's all the notes you'd need for the F dominant seventh chord.

[00:11:14]Just it's omitted. the um the C is omitted, but that would be the five of five in the key of E flat major. So, a normal enough place to go in the um consequent phrase.

[00:11:28]What muddies the waters is what uh Scrabin has in the right hand.

[00:11:34]So, what's going on here? Well, this really is explained explicable in terms of voice leading. So if we look at the right hand and then the very next note is the B natural and the D are the kind of dissonant notes against the underlying harmony the F7. They both resolve inward to an octave on C.

[00:11:59]So this is kind of like a double dissonance.

[00:12:03]And in the score I also marked the way you could uh interpret it as kind of a jazz style chord. The B natural is the sharp 11. The D is the 13th above the bass.

[00:12:18]But in this case, Scrapan does resolve normally by step, but it's such a a weak resolution that that chord makes a very strong effect in and of itself as as a separate entity.

[00:12:36]and only at the last second does he actually resolve it. So when we get on to the next phrase, which starts kind of a fantasylike part of the piece, this piece is still basically in a three-part form, even though it's so short. So after the initial opening two-part phrase, there's kind of a fantasy, a free fantasy-like passage, and then a very short recap of the theme at the end. So in this kind of fantasy-like passage, we get again some very typical improvisational protojazz style voicings. So check out these voicings in this line. If you just take the left hand, [music] this is kind of a half diminished seventh sority, [music] but with one note left out, and it slides down by half step. [music] And what's going on in the right hand almost seems to not quite connect with what's going on in the left hand.

[00:13:40]That last one, the right hand notes really do fit into the chord. Uh, but before that, it's not always fitting normally.

[00:13:50][music] So again, the B natural is not in that half diminish seventh chord and neither is the F.

[00:13:59][music] So it creates a very interesting kind of senority over that. And we only get the C that belongs in the chord at the end of the bar.

[00:14:12][music] So again, it's it's a little bit backwards. It almost feels a little bit backwards because this dissonance is resolving by a leap to the C.

[00:14:23][music] This one fits a little bit better, but it reverses the pattern because the C is not at the end of the bar is not actually a consonant note with the underlying harmony.

[00:14:41]And then it feels a little bit more grounded here precisely because he's obeying a little bit more obeying the normal kinds of voice leading rules. The C is the dissonance [music] resolving to B flat and then the G is in the chord.

[00:15:03]These are very unstable harmonies though to begin with. So it still feels kind of restless and a little bit esoteric.

[00:15:15]Then we get this beautiful flowering of the melody where it has this very interesting kind of convoluted shape to it.

[00:15:32]>> [music] >> and it kind of falls away to almost nothing. And then we get a recap, a very short recap of the main theme. So, if we're breaking this apart just a little bit, we can see once again that there are normal progressions hiding in the background here uh that Scriaban is basing this on, but he's just changing so many things around on the surface that we can barely discern those structures. But again, if we take just the left hand here, this is really, this is like a dominant ninth chord or a dominant seventh chord with a D flat added as a as a minor 9th.

[00:16:20]So that would be the five of two in the key of E flat major. And then we do get a two chord in the next bar. [music] Now, it's the two chord that belongs to E flat minor, the key of E flat minor instead of E flat major, but nonetheless, it works. And then the next bar we get a five chord, [music] particularly a five chord going to one.

[00:16:54]However, it's the stuff that Scrabin puts in the right hand that really makes this incredible. First off, we can see that there is another leap to a dissonance. So if this chord, the first melody note is in the chord, the D flat, although it is a very dissonant note already.

[00:17:14]You know, a a classical or an earlier romantic composer would have resolved that note by step for sure before going on. Maybe it would have sounded more like [music] So both of those dissonances, the B, the D flat and the A natural would be resolved by a step. But in this case, Scram just jumps between two dissonant notes. The D flat right to the A natural. Then finally we get a a consonant note, but then there's a leap upwards.

[00:17:52]And this A flat is another dissonance.

[00:17:54]So, it's a huge apachura up to this A flat which only resolves at the end of the bar.

[00:18:08]So, it's a really outlandish kind of gesture and so expressive the way that he emphasizes this huge leap and holding that dissonance. And then we get another kind of motivic thing here. where we get a double apagura on the next bar.

[00:18:28]So both the G and the B flat are dissonant to the to the underlying harmony. The underlying harmony is an F half diminished seventh chord.

[00:18:39]>> [music] >> So remember if we go back to that passage from the beginning, [music] it's that same pattern with a double apostra that resolves.

[00:18:59]There's so much dissonance there that it really makes it wonderfully ecstatic in in sound. It's so expressive, especially coming after the previous bar, which was already pretty extravagant in its use of dissonance. And then we get the same thing, but this time down a step to finish off this little um 251 cadence.

[00:19:21]But this doesn't I mean, this really doesn't sound like any 251 we've ever heard before, does it? I mean, a normal 251 might sound like, right? But this one and with all the dissonances in the melody, [music] all the extra things that Scrabin puts in, it makes it really wonderfully wild to the ear and so beautiful and kind of there's a kind of almost eroticism to it which is just incredibly attractive. So that bit that I just played is another really fascinating little compositional point uh you might hear immediately after this.

[00:20:15]So it's the reverse of that motive we've already had three times. So we've had that double apagura [music] only now it's going outwards and it's in the middle of the texture.

[00:20:32]So it has a a very kind of complimentary balancing effect. But it's surprising because we don't expect it to be in that rhythmical position in the bar. It's kind of strikingly out of place.

[00:20:49]>> [music] >> But it still comes from the exact same idea we've already had. Then to wrap up this kind of free fantasylike passage uh where the melody kind of reaches this high point, Scriyabin extends a dominant chord. Again, just a regular old dominant chord, but he uses some very interesting chromatic writing in the upper voice featuring falling seconds, of course. So, if I play this for you in the original manner, you can hear that hidden in there, there is this chromatic line.

[00:21:32][music] >> [music] >> which extends for half an octave and just trails away right before we get back to the first note of the melody, the original melody. So that's a very lush kind of way of bringing this all together. He uses that motive of falling seconds which we've been hearing all along again to bring us back. Then there is the final cadence. Um, so by the way, I should make a little note about the text. So the text that I'm using is the original edition of this piece. And there's a few notes though that people generally play differently. There's some things that are probably mistakes in the addition. So if we look at the very beginning here at the third bar in the original edition, the third measure has a B flat. So it would sound like this.

[00:22:38]And it's just possible that that is correct. I doubt it myself. There's a couple of reasons why I don't like that note as a flat. One reason is because it makes it more normal because then we actually do hear the B flat of the dominant seventh chord there in the third bar.

[00:22:55][music] And even if it's only for a moment, we hear that kind of normal [music] somewhat more normal um sority, which to my mind kind of messes up the ambiguity, the wonderful ambiguity of this passage. So I prefer it with the B natural. Um also because it's motivic that we have these [music] these half steps descending. That seems important to keep that. But then also when this phrase comes back at the end, uh, Scriyabin writes it as a half step the second time as well.

[00:23:35]And since that seems to be a pretty obvious quotation, I mean, in every other respect, that's exactly the same as the melody of the first four bars. It seems like it should still be a B natural in the third bar. So, most later editions correct this. They changed that to a either a B natural or a C flat uh when they printed this edition, this piece. So, the final phrase is one of the most extraordinarily beautiful parts. There are again echoes, little echoes of things that we had earlier in the piece and it kind of just fades away in this incredible glorious kind of haze.

[00:24:32]So this entire last phrase is kind of a glorification of this halfstep idea, this falling half step idea which has been so central motivically throughout.

[00:24:43]It's extended over the course of four bars. [music] So there are three times that we hear that and we keep hearing the C flat again and again.

[00:25:07]And if you play it the way I think it's ideal to play it, I think the the final four bars, there's a strong suggestion that you should play the pedal all the way to the end of the piece. It's almost like the the two tones, the the C flat and the B flat are kind of melded together. They're kind of married into one element and it's no longer a question of there even being a resolution. It's almost like the dissonance and the consonants coexist and form one hole which is about as perfect a summation of the way Scriyan was going to write uh his piano music after this as I could possibly think of.

[00:25:40]his compositional approach in in his later pieces really reconceptualizes dissonance as something which is almost to be welcomed and certain things that before would have been considered to be dissonant become consonant kind of turns things on its on their head so to speak.

[00:25:55]So it's a wonderful way to leave this piece with this kind of question mark uh you know it almost doesn't even feel like it resolves at all.

[00:26:11]>> [music] >> And that's about it. So, thank you very much for watching and stay tuned for the complete performance coming up in just a moment. If you do like uh my videos and you want to see more of this sort of content, you can express your appreciation by supporting the channel, uh just go to patreon.com/independentpianist.

[00:26:42]I have the links in the description box as well and you can sign up to make uh monthly pledges and any amount is uh enormously helpful for me u keeping this project going. So uh thank you very much and until next time, take care and keep practicing.

[00:27:10]>> [music] [music]