Scriabin's Dimensions

Scriabin was derided, by Copland among others, foradhering so closely to the sonata form model,despite his ground-breaking innovations in theharmonic field. Copland called this ‘one of the mostextraordinary mistakes in music’. A copy of A. B.Marx's book still lies proudly on Scriabin's shelfand, to be sure, all of his large forms do evincethe relatively clear tripartite structure of sonataform – exposition, development, and recapitulation.However, Scriabin's tendency was to stage a singlemovement rather than a cycle of three or four. Theprogenitor of this was, of course, Franz Liszt. AsBallard, Bengston, and Young note:

Scriabin also owed a great debt to Liszt's singlemovement ‘Symphonic Poems’, which, together with theB Minor Sonata, became the sinequa non of ‘double-function form’ inwhich a compressed cycle of four movements overlaysa single sonata-form structure. Scriabin's sonatashave been formally described in various sources overthe years, but they have not been rigorouslytheorised in light of ‘double function form’, norits more sophisticated newer variant,‘two-dimensional’ form, offered in Steven VandeMoortele's Two-DimensionalSonata Form (2009). Moortele offers themost cutting-edge approach to understanding thenuances of this complex interaction between themacro-structure and micro-structure. His work buildsheavily on the work of James Hepokoski and WarrenDarcy's seminal Elements ofSonata Theory (2006), which is one of thetouchstones of twenty-first-century Formenlehre. Through asystematic examination of Sonatas nos. 5–10, withbrief consideration of Scriabin's symphonic Poeme de l’extase, thischapter aims to update and extend the debatessurrounding Scriabin's forms and allow them to tellus more about how dynamic and multi-dimensionalsonata forms can be.