Musical Metaphysics: Alexander Scriabin and Russia’s Silver Age

Amid the tumult of war in 1914, Russian religious philosopher Nikolai Berdiaev insisted that, of all contemporary artists, only the composer Aleksandr Scriabin offered a brighter "prophecy" of a "new world epoch" through his musical works. Just five years later, fellow philosopher Aleksei Losev condemned Scriabin in the harshest terms, declaring, "One does not pray for satanists, one anathematizes them". Why did this single artist inspire such dramatic and contradictory responses from his contemporaries? This talk positions the music and ideas of Aleksandr Scriabin within the context of the Russian Silver Age and its violent transformation amid war and revolution. Why did the utopian visions of this controversial figure simultaneously inspire and terrify his contemporaries? Ultimately, Mitchell argues, Scriabin and his music came to represent the fate of Russia itself because of the messianic significance it was ascribed in the unsettled modern epoch.

Rebecca Mitchell is Associate Professor of History at Middlebury College. She is the author of numerous scholarly articles and chapters, as well as two monographs: Sergei Rachmaninoff (Reaktion Press, 2022) and Nietzsche’s Orphans: Music, Metaphysics and the Twilight of the Russian Empire (Yale University Press, 2015). Nietzsche’s Orphans was awarded the 2016 W. Bruce Lincoln Book Prize by the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) for a first monograph “that is of exceptional merit and lasting significance for the understanding of Russia’s past”.  Her research focuses on the intersection of philosophy, religious belief, music and contested identities (imperial, national, religious, regional) in the Russian empire and Soviet Union.

Sponsored by the Smith College Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies Program, Music Department and Lecture Committee. Open to the public.